Fifty Acts 23. An Evangelical Church (Part one)

I had been to this particular church a long time ago, when a friend asked me along to hear a particular speaker.  Twenty or so years later and I've finally made a return visit.  You shouldn't rush these things.

I was welcomed at the door where I was told that today wasn't a normal day, as once a month, they focus on one theme for the whole service.  The most important thing, for me at least, was that they started with tea and pastries.

I was taken in to be introduced to a few members of the congregation, so there was no chance of anyone feeling unwelcome.  They certainly know how to admit a stranger into their midst.  Like many congregations I have visited, they are between pastors, however the new pastor takes post pretty soon.

The topic for the morning was evolution, so the service started off with a video showing the wonders of creation (I think it was the trail for the BBC "Africa" series) before the pastor started his lesson.  He had said that he finds it hard to believe that we are descended from apes, and used a number of examples of how he believed this was improbable.  At one point there was an image showing the timeline from the big bang to present.  The pastor said that he did find trouble understandig some of this, and for a lot of the science, I can't say I blame him.

Mid way through the presentation there was a video where Richard Dawkins was asked to explain how bacteria could evolve into something as complex as an ape.  Dawkins gave some possible examples of how complex life could have evolved, and he gave general examples of how life could have evolved.  It's hard to compress billions of years of life evolving into a few sentences, however Dawkins gave a good account suggesting this could have happened.  But it was this pretty insignificant uncertainty that was latched upon as supposed proof that Science is wrong and only religion is right.

One thing I did agree with him though was when he said there's a lot of people who won't approach God because they feel they are too imperfect.  God loves us just the way we are.

 I was chatting with the pastor afterwards, along with a few members of the congregation and I found them to be very nice people, and I would like to go back.  I'm not convinced that he prepared for a talk of this magnitude.

I have given a lot of thought to our existence, and I do like hearing about the physics of the big bang, and evolution.  This doesn't shake my faith, it only makes it stronger.  I thought the evolution "debate" was mainly confined to Kansas school books, so it's not something I expected to encounter directly in the UK, a developed nation.

The thing about a scientific theory is that it is an idea that is used to explain a set of observed evidence.  The evidence is the facts, not the theory.  So when a scientific theory is explained by someone saying "we believe that X happened..." religion jumps on this by saying "you aren't sure, so it must be wrong.  Only the Bible is fact!"    All the person that proposes the theory is saying is that this theory fits observations.  come up  with a better set of observations and the theory may be changed.  Even gravity is only a theory which we are not entirely sure of.

The thing is, I don't see anything wrong with a universe of  nearly 14bn years old, and evolution.  If God kicked off the universe with a big bang, it's his playing field, so he can set all the rules leading up to this point.  What if it turned out that God really did make us the pinnacle of his creation, but he used a chimp as a prototype?  Let's get over it, and remember we're loved the way we are.

To be continued.