How I Joined a Cult (Well, Not Quite, But...)

Ever since I committed my life to Christ, I've wondered how so many people in my own culture could commit equally, with equal fervor and certainty, to false religions. (By false I mean belief systems that don't stand up to the test of biblical truth, and that contradict the central doctrines of the Christian faith.) Any Mormon or Jehovah's Witness could easily read and analyze the many scholarly exposés of their particular sect if they so choose. Of course, human nature habitually denies uncomfortable truth, or allows itself to sincerely believe the unbelievable. Not me, of course. Didn't I have a critical mind with a scientific bent? Hadn't I, after four years of resistance, embraced Christ? I pored over books like Dr. Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults, preparing myself for the weekly visits from the Mormon missionaries I had allowed through my door. And, for my intellectual duals with the irreligious, I had happily discovered the works of men like Dr. Duane T. Gish, whose Evolution: The Fossils Say No! and other books convinced me at once that not only was Darwinism wrong, but that the age of the Earth could not possibly be greater than 10,000 years. 

  En garde! Everyone I met now had to listen to me rabbit on about how the theory of evolution was nothing more than a huge conspiracy, designed to keep people from accepting biblical truth. There were, after all, enormous difficulties with Darwinism. (To this day, I am patiently waiting to see fossil evidence of the evolution of bats. I've dubbed the yet-to-be unearthed, half-evolved version Semichiroptera.) But to me, evolutionary thought was the chief obstacle to global evangelization, since everybody except for fundamentalists believed in it, didn't they? After all, I'd been an evolutionist ever since the book my grandmother gave me when I was seven posed the rhetorical question, "Which came first, the bird or the egg? Answer: The reptile came first." A quick description of evolution followed, moving me to accept it immediately and uncritically. I knew nothing of the genetic, biomechanical and logical difficulties that Darwinism faced, and when I finally became aware of them as a young adult, I took them as immediate proof that I'd been had. Now armed with Young Earth Creationism, I set forth to lead people to Christ, convinced that the theory of evolution was all that stood in their way. 

 And guess what? NOBODY got saved! Some couldn't argue with my "science", but not even those people were convinced that they therefore needed Jesus. And those I did manage to lead to faith in Christ came to Him on His own merit, without my dogmatic assertions that a literal interpretation of Genesis was necessary for one to be in right relationship with God. And for years I continued, although I managed to shift my emphasis more toward our need for salvation, instead of some intellectual barrier to faith. But I persisted in my doctrinaire belief in a young earth creation model, which I just knew could be easily proved and accepted by any honest scientist. 

 Enter Dr. Paul Simms , then-Professor of Nuclear Physics at Purdue University. His daughter and my wife had been friends for many years, and he was quick to note my interest in his field of expertise. One day, as he took me on a private tour of the Purdue particle accelerator, Dr. Simms, a passionate believer in Jesus, gently began to bring to my attention recent scientific data that affirm the hot Big Bang model, accepted almost universally by scientists. He also introduced me to the works of astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross, whose analysis of the ongoing findings about the cosmos overwhelmingly support the declaration of Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Rather than feel threatened by any scientific discovery that might be supposed to contradict scripture, I began to rest easy in the certainty that all truth is God's truth, including scientific data. The light arriving here from stars billions of light years away might in fact have taken billions of years to get here. (Those who assert that God just made it look that way could theoretically be right, but I've never yet been able to believe in such a deceitful, puerile Creator.) 

 I'm not here to slam those whose Christianity clings to a young earth model, or even those who claim to believe one on purely scientific grounds. I do disapprove of those Christians who tactlessly mock anybody whose beliefs on the subject do not mirror their own. Such people place treacherous stumbling blocks in the paths of many an honest seeker. (Conversely, the irreligious people who mock creationists have no moral basis for respecting others' beliefs, but sometimes they're right about us anyway.) In case anybody had forgotten, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the center of our faith. He will judge us according to His grace and justice, not according to our take on the age of the universe. 

 So what's my point? Sorry if I hadn't made it clear, but it's simply that I personally had to change my position on something I used to rigidly assert just as unyieldingly as does an LDS missionary who knows that the Book of Mormon is true. I see no particular virtue in my having done an about-face once I decided I'd been intellectually dishonest (even though I'd never meant to be.) But I do see that I can fall prey to bad data (and therefore bad doctrine) just as easily as anybody. Whether we believe that we (and Christ) came from mud or from primordial soup (and when you think about it, there isn't much difference), it must be Him that we declare. It's Christ who changes hearts and lives, not "correct" beliefs about things that will one day pass away. And besides, truth will win out in the end anyway. 

 So, all you evolutionists out there, next time you make an impassioned plea for responsible ecological policies: Remember that, if you're just an evolutionary accident, then everything we do is completely natural. We're just animals, and mere animals can't ruin the ecology. Global warming, deforestation, greenhouse gases - no worse than flatulent buffalo herds! But if we're somehow more than animals, if we really have a moral responsibility to protect the environment, then let's go for it, knowing that no mere animal's moral compass can lead to the words should and shouldn't. Such words inevitably lead either to God or to hopeless contradiction. 

 And as for you Young Earth Creationists, you're entitled to your beliefs, but please don't leave them where any honest seeker of truth might trip over them. There's too much at stake.