Leaning Hard on Evolution for Coherence

I had a long conversation today with some sharp ex-students regarding theology, cosmology, and epistemology (the study of God, the earth, and knowledge, respectively). We started out talking about the foundations for Christian thought, a discussion quickly taken over by one young man's suggestion that Christianity is merely one idea of many that for certain reasons has a disease-like quality to invade minds susceptible, for example, to fear of the idea of hell. In effect, he sees Christianity as setting up its own pit, so to speak, which it then dangles non-Christians over for a time before figuratively removing them from danger by telling them of Jesus. A functionalistic understanding of Christianity, no doubt, and one which leads for this young man to evolutionary thought.

It's fascinating to behold, really, because what the smart Christians say really is true: evolution is not simply a way to explain the way the earth started. It is a comprehensive worldview--or at least it tries to be. The answer to God? Chance and random happening. The answer to purposeful living? Randomly begotten internal drive to exist. The answer to morality? Total and utter inclusivism except--here come the caveats--for bad things that happen to evolutionists themselves. One could go on. As evolutionists talk, one feels something akin to the way we do watching the villain unfold his plan of destruction to the hapless hero. A sense of deep foreboding emerges as it becomes clear that this person, intellectual and kind and personable as they may be, has bought wholesale a worldview scrubbed clean of any notion of God and His truth. Here was a profound reminder to myself and to those who wish to offer hope to this world: don't just know the four key tenets of the gospel. We need to know what others think, and when we're engaging college kids indoctrinated in soft postmodernity and hard evolutionism, we need to be able to give an answer. It's not enough to quote verses. Know what lost people think, and then engage them, and give them the gospel. I was convicted by this today. To give an answer--that's the call, that's the responsibility, that's the help we can offer this world.