Lies Assaulting Our Ministries, Part 3

Lie #1 - Darwinian Evolution "A Cosmic Accident"

C) History: Is society evolving or has anything really changed?

A previous post addresses this point in some detail. Please skim that before continuing here, so that this will make sense.

If we take the viewpoint that human cultures are evolving, would we not expect to see a change in human behavior over the course of the centuries? And yet we have not seen this change happen in a positive direction. Just look at war over human history; there was very little peace in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the 20th century was the bloodiest to date. Nothing has changed, we see people attempting to dominate other people throughout all the cycles of human history. So far within the 21st century, we have seen more of the same. So far we have not experienced the worldwide open conflict as the 20th century, but in Africa we see a continent ravaged by war, with the resulting poverty and famine. We see most of the Western world so terrified of a major conflict that they dance to the tune of petty dictators in North Korea and Iran, calling appeasement 'diplomacy.' I would challenge those who think our efforts in North Korea and Iran commendable study the policies of England and France in regards to Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. The comparison is chilling.

Another interesting point to consider is abortion. In our 'progressive' society, we decided in 1973 that this should be permitted, and our Supreme Court decided it was a Constitutional right. So how does the impact of abortion on society, not to mention the women who suffer through it, differ from the impact of child sacrifice to Chemosh in the Old Testament? Is the impact different on the babies who are aborted/were sacrificed? Either way they are dead. How is it we would label our society 'civilized' but theirs as 'barbaric?' Is the difference in the presence of doctor, versus a pagan priest? Or is the difference between the operating table and the stone altar? I do not ask to mock, I ask in an attempt to reconcile what we seem to believe with reality, as it truly is. We want to say that things are different now, that we have advanced. Where is the evidence?

Now we must acknowledge that technology has advanced, and this is a point I don't deny. I would challenge you to think on technology, and break down the net result of our collective advances. Do some live better, longer lives due to advances in medicine and machinery? Absolutely. Does a majority of the population of the world live better lives? Or has the gulf between the technologically advanced and others led to contempt and indifference? Is a gun superior to a bow? What of nuclear weapons? Have things like iPods and cell phones brought us deeper, more fulfilling relationships? Has the Internet increased wisdom, or merely knowledge? How do we define 'better?' What makes one life better than another? This is not to say we should reject technology; we just need to understand its place in an historical context.

These are critical points to consider. I hope the result of our contemplation is humility, an enlarged sense that we are not better, or superior, to those who have come before us. How can I learn from the lives of those in the Bible? Because they struggled with the same things I do. What motivated them, motivates me. What hurt them, hurts me. And when we start to see ourselves in the proper light, knocked down several pegs and in desperate need of the same grace God has given throughout history, it will change the way we think about our present day world. Without a sense of the past, you cannot properly understand the present. Without a sense of the past, we cannot understand the working out of God's plan throughout human history. Too many of us, as Christians, have no sense of the bigger picture because we deny it even exists. Perhaps we don't deny it in our minds, or our words - but what of our actions?