There is a lot in the news now days about school boards taking up the issue of how we humans appeared on the scene.

A school board directed that a four-paragraph statement be read declaring that Darwin is a theory - only. The statement said that another possibility was intelligent design by a higher being.

The science teachers refused to read the statement. It ain't science they say.

The same newscast says that 61% of us believe the literal Genesis account of creation.

Preachers are screaming. Parents are disturbed that their children are being sent mixed signals. The talk show lines are all lit up. School boards are trying to represent their constituencies and science teachers are balking. The Civil Liberties Union is all geared up to intervene and file lawsuits.

Well ain't this a fine mess!

What do we the people of the church have to say about all this fuss?

I fall on the side of intelligent design working through evolution. Now I know that is not science, but it works for me!

We simply cannot deny what God has revealed to us through the sciences that continually find evidence of human types going back millions of years. It is obvious to me that God is not done with us yet. We are still evolving as God's creation.

We are certainly not who we were even 200 years ago (much less millions of years ago). We are not now who we will be 100 or 200 years from now. We are not yet a perfect people.

Well, is it intelligent design or something else?

A member of an earlier civilization was discussing creation and another said that the Earth rested on the back of a turtle. His companion asked what that turtle was on, and he explained that it was on the back of another turtle. Well, and what is that turtle on, the conversation continued, to which the reply came that "it was turtles all the way down!"

Is the cosmos a product of a big bang? Is what we know from our primitive telescopes and communication devices revealing to us all that we need to know about how it all began?

Are we just a by-product of an evolution of genes and DNA's that brought us from creatures in the sea to two legged creatures that stand upright and breath through lungs?

Is life just an accident or happenstance? Are we just wisps of smoke that will disappear when our last breath is drawn? Is this all there is?

What is the church called to say to all of this?

What kind of witness can the church be as this debate rages on?

Will be offer balm for the wound or fuel for the fire?



A Jim Lane Commentary
January 18, 2005