Adam and Evolution

Forty percent of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form at one point in time in the past 10,000 years. A majority of these believe God created the entire universe in six 24-hour days.  Another almost 40 percent believe that God created human beings by using evolution over a vast length of time -- that the biblical six days of creation are symbolic rather than scientific.  Among those who attend church weekly, the difference widens considerably. Almost 70 percent hold the “creationist” view, while just over 30 percent believe in God-guided evolution. 

The Christian Hope: Heaven or New Creation?

According to Scripture, the ultimate state of salvation in Christ is bodily resurrection in a transformed creation freed from death and decay.  Our bodies will be made immortal and all creation will be filled with the presence of God. Pain, suffering and evil will be forever gone.  Redeemed human beings will become all that God has intended for us to be, liberated from the limitations of sin, disease and death, and fully conformed to the character of Jesus himself.  We will finally become the faithful stewards of creation that God created us to be in the first place, and will know God as fully as he knows us.

This picture – as incredible as it is -- should not be controversial for Christians. It’s clearly what Scripture teaches, as everyone agrees.  But, oddly, many – perhaps most – Christians, including pastors, talk as if salvation is eternal life in heaven after death.  Is that the same thing?

What About Other Religions (and our own)?

What About Other Religions (and our own)?

Many of us have friends and co-workers, perhaps even family members, who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or adherents of some other faith. Some may be religious in name only, like some Christians. But others are devout worshippers with commendable moral lives.

What are we to think of these folks? Do they truly know God, but in a somewhat different way from us? Are they part of God’s Kingdom? Will they inherit the same glorious future promised to faithful followers of Jesus Christ? And what do we think of their religious faith itself?

Does God cause suffering?

When tragedy happens, we often ask “Why?”  “Her number came up,” someone might say, as if everything is predestined. Or, “He was punished for his sins,” as if we aren’t all sinners. Or, “God needed her more that we did,” which is sometimes said to children. But doesn’t that lay a guilt trip on a child who might think, “I should have loved her more”?

Maybe most common among Christians is “God must have had a reason for this to happen.” But does God really make it a decision to cause us suffering? Is God, our loving Father, like an abusive parent?

Who Will Be Saved?

[Note: Updated with responses to comments at the end.]

Are believers in Jesus Christ the only people who will be with God in heaven and have a place in God’s future when heaven and earth are united as one? Some Christians are convinced that’s the reality, perhaps with a few exceptions, such as “children below the age of accountability” and perhaps some of the people who have never heard of Jesus.

But can this be right? If only Christians are “saved,” wouldn’t it mean that after Hitler murdered and incinerated six million Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe that God then sent them to hell forever because they didn’t believe in Jesus? Everything we know about the God who is love tells us that such a view is outrageous and unbiblical.