Re: [asa] YEC social dynamics

I'm afraid that one of the major reinforcing factors of the YEC
worldview, one that makes it so hard to let go of, is Bible worship.
Unfortunately I think that many Christians have placed their faith in
the innerrancy of scripture, instead of grace alone. This is not to
say that they don't have faith in Christ too, but I think if we put
our faith and hope in anything other than Christ we are in for a big
faith crisis. If your faith is in the literal truth of Genesis, then
an honest look at the evidence of science has the potential to crush
your faith. There are many cases of people who have had a traumatic
faith crisis in the process of releasing a YEC worldview. But I think
there are others like me who have gone from YEC to TE very smoothly
with no crisis of faith. Please don't take this as arrogance or pride
when I say that I think the reason is that my faith was in Christ,
not The Word or any particular interpretation. Of course my faith is
no better than anybody else's a!
  nd I have been severely diciplined by God for putting faith and
hope where it didn't belong. But I think a solution to this in some
cases may be authority. As a kid I was brought up in a very
conservative Christian household. One evening when I was 7 or 8 the
family went to see the movie "One Million Years BC" I was too young
to be impressed with Raquel Welch, instead I was impressed by the
cavemen fighting the dinosaurs. But my dad had to correct the
anachronisms saying that humans and dinosaurs never lived at the same
time, in fact dinosaurs went extinct 60,000,000 years ago. My dad's
authority had a big effect on me. Last year our Sunday School class
at a Baptist church did a series on Genesis. The teacher was a
retired professor of religeon at Baylor and very well respected in
the church and by his class. The class was mostly middle aged and
older folks who had mostly been christian since youth and mostly YEC.
To make a long story short he acknowledged that the earth is!
   billions of years old and argued for a local flood. By the en!
  d of thi
s series about a dozen former middle aged YECs quickly and painlessly
became old-earthers just because their beloved Sunday School teacher
told them to. Authority is very powerful. Unfortunately appeal to
authority just won't work on YEC leadership. They are their own
authority. But for rank-and-file church members who have been misled
by them, good teaching from the pulpit and those in authority is very
effective.

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Received on Thu Sep 7 02:13:43 2006