The Stop Sign, Part 8

The Stop Sign, Part 8

The warm reception by his parents gave young Jimmy Wilson a sense of doing the right thing, and knowing that he was now on the right road, not only to heaven but also to a life of goodness. Little did he realize that he would eventually leave that road.

The departure came gradually. It was hard, he thought, to put a finger on the precise moment when things began to change but it seemed that there were subtle things in the air when he began high school. It was there, he recalled, that teachers were not so kind to the words of the bible. They began casting some doubts on it. At first, he thought, this was a horrible thing but he discovered that in order to get a good grade in the class, he would have to accept what the teachers were saying. Initially this was a problem but eventually it became easier to see that what they were saying was “more scientific” and must be right…and the bible, somehow, incorrect…maybe even downright wrong.

In high school he began to hear more and more about evolution, especially in biology(i) but also in other science classes; even in things dealing with politics and economics. It seemed that wherever he turned, someone or some book was talking about evolution. Seeing it mentioned in so many ways, Jimmy Wilson had to assume it was true. And increasingly he set aside his determination to hear and read what God had to say about things. “Those things in the bible are only myths,” he kept hearing from teachers, people he was expected to honor. Besides, could they be wrong, he thought.

When he started college and was working his way through the years of undergraduate and graduate studies he became committed to the evolutionary perspective, setting aside all he had ever thought to be true of God. He stopped attending church by this time, though he knew that he shouldn’t have. About the only time he returned to church was the day he married Sally Witherspoon, a beautiful gal from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She was a music major at the time and later gave private voice lessons in their home, all of that followed the addition of three children to their home: two boys and a girl. After graduation, with a Ph.D. in biology, Wilson secured the job he has been holding for nearly 30 years, a job he was about to leave.

It was much the order of the day for him to teach evolution as he had been taught. Of late, however, the task had not been so easy. Several years earlier he had come to read some books that cast serious doubts on the idea of evolution. Maybe the first was Michael Denton’s book: Evolution-A Theory in Crisis. Other books followed this and lectures, all of which cast dark shadows on the things he thought were true. He came to realize that the orientation of amino acids didn’t make sense in a world unless they were created. He came to see that there was no way the complexity he observed in living organisms could have occurred through chance. He understood that the design he saw in nature was not an “apparent” design but was real design, requiring a designer. Increasingly he felt tension in what he was hearing and reading and what he was telling his students. But he had tried to ignore this tension, arguing that it wouldn’t be long and he would be outside the campus, no longer having to worry about what he taught or what he said. If he could only hang on, he thought, just a little longer until retirement, then he would be able to shed the cloak of evolution which had so much been a part of his life but which he now knew to be wrong and unscientific.

It is hard, he thought, to admit he was wrong….but Sally knew something was awry.

“What’s the problem, Jim? She would ask this over supper. She had a way of knowing these things but he seldom had the courage to admit the real problem. “I’m alright,” he said…”Maybe a little tired.”

Dan Schobert, W9MFG@charter.net

"(i)..you could say that I lost the last remnants of my faith in God during biology class in high school when I first was taught that evolution explained the origin and development of life. The implications were clear. Charles Darwin's theory eliminated the need for a supernatural creator...."

So says Lee Strobel in his 2000 (Zondervan) book, The Case for Faith which I had the occasion to read this week, on audio tape. Strobel's work follows closely on the heels of his earlier piece, The Case for Christ. Strobel, a former atheist and award winning legal editor at the Chicago Tribune, used the approach of a journalist by raising important questions, in this particular case about faith and going to several experts in the field for reasonable answers. On the question of faith and science, he spoke with Walter Bradley. Though I believe Bradley might be classified as an Old Earth Creationist, he did point out the vast data which points, on the basis of the information, to an initial source of intelligence.

Perhaps more than anything, this work of Strobel builds the case for understanding and accepting the Word of God as being true. This book is easy to read and a handy tool to give unbelieving friends.

(Footnote added in May 2004): Strobel has now added another book to this discussion. The Case for a Creator, from Zondervan became available in 2004 and, like the earlier works, presents information which places into question much of what has so often presented as evidence for evolution.