EEEVIL-OOO-SHUN

The following is an excerpt from a journal in which I occasionally make entries about life experiences or concepts that are noteworthy. It happened nearly a year ago. I'm not sure why I'm finally posting it now, but here it is:

CHRISTIANS AND CREATION: To my Christian brothers and sisters: Tonight I explained to my three year old son that, “God made him and put him in Mommy’s tummy.” There is absolutely no untruth in that explanation as told to a three-year old. However, to older people with more highly developed intellectual prowess, not to mention knowledge of basic reproductive biology, this explanation is at best insufficient, at worst flat-out misleading and wrong.

Why is it then, that we as Christians insist on clinging to an explanation for our origins that was given to intellectual and scientific 3-year olds? We have no problem accepting the explanation that I gave to my son, but we all realize that when he gets older, that explanation will not suffice. Later in life he will learn a better, more detailed description of how babies are made.

But, imagine for a moment that no one tells him and that he eventually does the research and figures out the whole story for himself. How many of you would think it right of him, in light of painfully obvious evidence to the contrary, to insist on keeping for his whole life the explanation that I gave him tonight, reasoning to himself, “…because he’s my daddy and he told me so”? None of you, I imagine. I personally would be disappointed with him for doing such a thing. He ought to know better.*

So I ask you, why do we do this to our Father? Now that we are old enough to have figured out the finer details of the story of creation for ourselves, I assert that it is intellectually irresponsible, if not dishonest, to relentlessly cling to an explanation designed only to satisfy a toddler.

* Likewise, if he were to “lose faith” in me because of the “lie” that I told him as a three year old, I would be just as frustrated; either way he would have misunderstood my character and intentions.