Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the stars, trees, apples, as I reflect that he is Lord over all things. …God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Martin Luther

 

 

 

A few days ago we got another deep comment from a drive by detractor. Several people tried to engage in a dialogue with “Anonymous “ but he didn’t respond since his only agenda was to make silly comments and disappear. No courage of conviction here, uh uh. Although we believe this was personal and aimed directly at your glamorous blog queens, we think he demonstrated a typical characteristic of abusive behavior that is often seen in some church leaders.
 

“You gutted ole Ham rather nicely. I mean you left him bleeding. Great job.Once I was in Patterson’s office and like you two he is an avid hunter. I was amazed by the number of animals he had hunted, killed and then mounted. It reminded me of the demonized men, churches and institutions you have listed on the right side of your page (Wall Mounts). Love it!”
 

I know of a number of situations that involved pedophiles harming children in the church. I also know of some instances of those in the church who use child pornography. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of sympathy such perverted individuals engender. For example, in one church, boys who were desperately harmed by a pedophile got no offer of counseling until some members stepped forward to reveal such lack of compassion. Those members were deemed the troublemakers. Yet, the pedophile got all sorts of visitors and offers of help. There was even a woman in the congregation who wanted the boys not to testify in the trial of this poor, abused pedophile since he was a Christian and needed help which the church could handle. Good night!
 

Also, a man who accessed terribly abusive child pornography was discovered and convicted. Well, he found the faith and a pastor of his new church went to court to plead for the court to delay his jail term because he was such a nice guy and had turned his life around. Thankfully the court did not listen to such nonsense. This is the same pastor who told one molested kid that he was just fine after “evaluating” him for 45 minutes. Both of these situations can be found on Stop Baptist Predators.
 

I guess it is cooler to show love to a desperate sinner and ignore a child who has been raped and sodomized. Kids don’t get the press that a converted pedophile might. This “love the sinner and don’t hurt him” and “ignore the abused” is found in other segments of the church. Might I be so bold to suggest that the church love the sinner but also love and go out of its way to help the abused and the lost. It might also be prudent to err on the side of caution with pedophiles and those with other sexual deviations since most of these folks show a greater than 90% recidivism rate.
 

So, Mr. Anonymous , man up and answer the questions asked of you. And take a hard look at how Ken Ham is harming the cause for Christ. He is hardly bloodied and is making bank on his little enterprise. Stop defending the man who has caused many to leave the faith by his crusade to tie salvation to a literal belief in 6 day creation.

 

A homeschooling mom who goes the moniker of “shadowspring” left a telling comment at TWW. It needs to be about the children

 

“But, once you start exploring the religious branches of the home school sub-culture, especially the “Christian” support groups, curricula, seminars, etc., you quickly find that it is a rigid, doctrinaire, fear-based, lifestyle. Ken Hamm rules in this world. Apologetics are taught in every spelling lesson, math workbook, history text, and especially in what passes for science education.

I am a curious person, and I watched closely the family that had gone before me. One thing I began to notice after only a few years in the home school community, was that children were not turning out to be the principled holy warrior world changers the home school prophets were promising. I noticed quite a few home school grads starting families awfully young and not according to script, i.e. out of wedlock, and certainly outside of mom and dad’s master plan for the lives of their young people.

 

It is this rigid fundamentalism that is destroying the faith of our children. 61% leaving the church? Jesus said in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

 

So who IS driving these children away? Rigid ideologues are driving their own children out of the faith. They are doing so by relentlessly insisting on a more and more stringent belief system. YE creationism is at the heart of this movement.

Ironically, the tighter controls they are taught are necessary to keep their children in the faith are the very thing that is causing their children to reject the faith. These youth are not rejecting Jesus, they are rejecting the false Jesus and his ridiculously narrow and mean- spirited dogma that their parents are presenting to them.

 

These same parents insist that anything less than complete agreement with the whole paradigm is apostasy. So when broken and discouraged young people finally realize that there is no earthly way possible to be happy and healthy in that paradigm, they choose apostasy. The teaching allows for no other options.

 

YE creationsim is responsible for creating more atheists than Darwin himself, from where I sit.

 

So what was the religious home school communities answer to this? More control! Vision Forum sprang up, and scared parents willingly shelled out the money and started putting a stricter milieu control into their children’s lives."

 

For me, this about the children who are leaving the faith.I know a bright young man who is a friend of my daughter. He was taught only YE by both his church and school. He got to an Iy League university. The “science” he was taught was easily dispatched by his professors. This young man decided it was all a lie and has walked away from the faith.

 

Dr. Hugh Ross has also written extensively on the tragedy of scientists who feel they cannot become Christians because Christian faith is being defined as a belief in young earth creationism. Is he, along with others exaggerating? I think not. I provide evidence from the Answers in Genesis website. Ken Ham and AIG are linking salvation with a belief in YE creationism. And he has the audacity to think that OE folks are heretics?
 

Proof One:

Recently, AIG conducted an AIG seminar in Bulgaria. Interestingly, on the AIG website they call this “Creation Evangelism.” Not evangelism involving an understanding of the redemption of Jesus Christ alone but evangelism involving first and foremost, YE creation.
 

“An older student asked why the evolutionists are so strongly in control given the kind of false information, which gave me the opportunity to emphasize the battle about origins was not science vs religion as the evolutionists want us to believe but both in Bulgaria and the former communist world as well as in the West, it was the religion of atheism vs Christianity—a conflict of worldviews used to interpret the scientific evidence.

 

Another student asked what I thought of Francis Collins’ “middle way” approach (of theistic evolution) in his book The Language of God (which, sadly, apparently has been translated into Bulgarian). I explained that the problem was that Collins claimed to be an evangelical Christian, a follower of Jesus, but he almost completely ignores what Genesis says, which Jesus took as literal history (e.g., Mark 10:6). So, his view must be rejected because it cannot be harmonized with Genesis.

So, it was a good meeting at the university. Christians were strengthened and non-believers were challenged with the truth.”
 

Note how they subtly add that one can only interpret scientific evidence in two ways, as an atheist or as a Christian. Christians can only interpret it as YE. Therefore, Christians who believe differently may not be Christians and may even be atheists!
 

Note how deviously they attack Francis Collins’ faith. They say that Collins “claims” to be an evangelical, just as they frequently do with others. They allude to his lack of faith. What they mean is you can’t believe that he is a Christian because he believes in theistic evolution.
 

Finally, they refer to Mark 10: 6 as “proof” Jesus” believed in YE. This is patently ridiculous. All Christian, including Collins, believe that God created man and woman. How He did it is what is open to debate.

 

Proof Two
 

The AIG website also claims the following.
 

“Answers in Genesis is the world’s largest apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry, dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith, and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively

I want to take you “behind the scenes” by telling you the stories. There are dozens of stories every day. People whose lives are changed, challenges we face, issues to deal with. I hope you enjoy reading them—and pray as you do!

We also desire to train others to develop a biblical worldview, and seek to expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas, and its bedfellow, a “millions of years old” earth (and even older universe).”

 

AIG ties the gospel of Jesus Christ to a belief in young earth creationism. They claim to be an apologetics ministry yet they spend their time defending a bankrupt science and questioning the faith of those who do not believe in their definition of Christianity. Ken Ham is redefining the faith and that is very, very dangerous. It’s either Ham’s way or hell.

 

Young people are leaving the faith over this illegitimate addition to the Gospel. Adults leave the faith because of those who insist that YE+Jesus=salvation. Please read the “anti-testimonies at ExChristians. Net for proof of this. Scientists will not consider Jesus because they are under the mistaken assumption they must believe in a young earth to be a Christian. Who is responsible for this? I lay the blame at the feet of Ken Ham.

 

I once wrote to a pastor who holds degrees in Christian education and a Master of Divinity. He is a devotee of Ham and AIG. I begged him to consider the faith of children from his church, some of whom were leaving the faith over this issue. His response is telling. “My research has not shown this to be true.” This man didn’t care. He never conducted an unbiased study.I doubt he "researched" the evidence at all except to read some half-baked YE contention that kids are leaving the faith because they don't know about YE creation. Rubbish!  He refused to read some personal testimonies of those who had left the faith over this issue. This man is like Anonymous above. They are far more concerned about poor ole Ken Ham who has made a living out of questioning the faith of his fellow Christians than he is about those who are leaving the faith due to the ministrations of Ham. Ken Ham is doing untold damage to the faith and so are his followers.
 

Finally, I am saddened by the following note that was posted at AIG. This poor boy was at one of their “Creation evangelism” seminars.

 

“Today I received a postcard from a child in Pennsylvania. It is one of the most precious things I have ever received. I thought I would share it with you all. It reads, “Me, my sisters, and my mom loved the services. Me and my mom came to every one. I like how could a loving God service because my dad died over the summer June 20th and I’ve been mad at God. My hampster died 2 weeks ago and I’ve been mad at God but we’ve been bought with a price and are not our own.” This note was signed by Tyler. (As I transcribed the note, I added all the punctuation, which was missing, but otherwise, the wording and spelling is Tyler’s.) All I can say is, “Thanks, Tyler. You truly blessed the heart of this tired old doctor today.”

 

This child now has the Gospel firmly tied to young earth creationism. One day, he will see the evidence of on old earth. The debate is over, the evidence is in and Ken Ham and his cronies are going the way of the dinosaur. There is a high likelihood that this child will experience a crisis of faith or even reject his faith altogether because it is been inextricably woven with a nonsalvific issue. This is adding to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and AIG is beginning to sound more and more like a cult.
 

As a mother, I am furious that this group would put the faith of children and others on the line for such an unproven doctrine and debunked science. I am angry that dedicated Christian scientists like Hugh Ross and Francis Collins are deemed “so-called” Christians by the likes of a high school biology teacher (Ham's intensive training to tell the world about the complexities of science and the theology). As one man commented on this site “These people are guilty of faith murder.”
 

I would like to leave you a quote from a former young earth mathematician, Jeffrey Zorn. Thie entire article may be found at this link to the American Scientific Affiliation. He left YE because it was scientifically untenable. He almost lost his faith along the way. May God open the hearts of these ice-cold zealots of the YE movement.
 

"The worst aspect of YECS teaching is that it creates a nearly insurmountable barrier between the educated world and the church. Certainly God in his sovereignty has allowed some to be persuaded to believe in Christ through the arguments of YECSers. But how many more have not accepted the Gospel because of the unnecessary demand that converts believe that the world is no more than 10,000 years old? And how many have unnecessarily gone through a crisis of faith similar to that which I described above? How many have chosen to give up their faith altogether rather than to accept scientific nonsense or a major reinterpretation of Scripture? How much have we dishonored our Lord by slandering scientists and their reputation? How much have we sinned against Christian brothers holding another opinion by naming them "dangerous" and "compromisers"? How much responsibility do we bear for having taught others (James 3:1) things that probably are not even true? Each must search his own heart."

 

May God have mercy on us all.

 

Lydia's Corner: Genesis 28:1-29:35 Matthew 9:18-38 Psalm 11:1-7 Proverbs 3:11-12