by James M. Kushiner, Fellowship of St. James
Much of what people know to be true is not, and much of what is always true they have forgotten. The best songs, writings, art, poetry, and hymnography remind us of what has always been true. Love is stronger than death. Pride goes before the fall. The wages of sin are death. Life needs sustaining graces, and virtue requires cultivation. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways not our ways. (This was seen on Golgotha, which is why the Lord invites us to follow Him by carrying the cross, daily. Something we forget, daily.)
But even with less lofty “truths” that are not true, the above dynamic remains. Progressive people know that ancient and medieval people were not as smart as us moderns, that they thought the earth was flat, that they thought the earth was the center of creation and that made it central and most important, that Galileo was a pure scientist and the Church opposed science (not merely Galileo’s book), and that science liberated man from superstition and ignorance—or is trying to do so.
Progressive people also know that Darwin proved man arose by natural selection working on random changes occurring in organisms. Few know that many scientists of his day disagreed, more scientists after his day disagreed, and that even some agnostics and atheists don’t think his grand theory holds water or has ever been “proven” even in the sense that it is the best possible explanation for the empirical observations that we all agree have been made.
I have finally made a small dive into some of the contra-Darwin literature that explores the larger picture of Darwin’s times, his predecessors, current thought at the time, how his thinking fit into older ideas and prejudices—such as: God can’t possibly be involved in something as messy as “nature red in tooth and claw” or involved in the mundane creation of various species of butterflies, insects, trees, shrubs, and the entire planetary menagerie of animals and conservatory of plants. This was an argument relied upon by Darwin and, today, by Dawkins and company.
“What would God do?” If His ways are not our ways, then how would we know what He would do? As to God’s direct involvement in Creation, let’s go a step further and say that God is still directly involved in Creation:
“If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (Job 34:14–15).
“For by [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17).
Deism is not true, even if widely assumed to be true by most people who say they “believe in God,” based on the way they live. If God is not involved in the lives of the species, why would He micromanage or give a hoot about my “sexual activities”?
However, not only is God’s eye on the sparrow, His Spirit is the “Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who is everywhere present and fills all things, Treasury of blessings, and giver of life” to whom we pray, “Come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every sin, and save our souls, O Good One.”
That’s just wishful thinking to modern man, who knows that God, even if real, is far away, outside the cosmos. He knows something not true. And we forget the truth that He is present, that what we do to the least of these little ones we do unto Christ, who is the Key to it all.
Richard Dawkins, in a “debate” with John Lennox, objected when Lennox spoke of the centrality of the Resurrection of Jesus. This gave the game away to Dawkins, to whom “science” as they had debated it was “grand and wonderful.” Having produced a scientific case using physics and the laws of the universe, Lennox “comes down to the Resurrection of Jesus [Dawkins says with disdain]: It’s so petty, it’s so trivial, it’s so local, it’s so earthbound, it’s so unworthy of the universe.”
He has forgotten what all men should remember, what is true: death is our enemy, not our friend. The Resurrection and re-heading of the Cosmos by Jesus is Good News, and hardly local.