15 For other possible ways to understand Paul’s understanding of Adam, see Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Says and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012).
16 St. Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram), Trans. J. H. Taylor, in Ancient Christian Writers (Long Prairie, MN: Newman Press, 1982), vol. 41.
17 “Ignorant,” Oxford Dictionaries, accessed October 08, 2012, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ignorant.
18 “Why Must the Church Come to Accept Evolution?” The BioLogos Foundation, accessed November 12, 2102, http://biologos.org/blog/why-must-the-church-come-to-accept-evolution.
19 Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 3.
20 See Denis Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008); Brian Godawa, “Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography in the Bible,” The BioLogos Foundation, accessed October 04, 2012, http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/godawa_scholarly_paper_2.pdf.
21 See Zondervan.com, search results for books in the Counterpoints series, accessed October 04, 2012, http://zondervan.com/products?search_text=views.
22 See Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian & the Risk of Commitment (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992) and the chapter “Epistemology and Hermeneutics” in Kenton L. Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 25-55.
3
The Joy of Confession
Rev. Shannon Murray
“Really?!” she blurted, surprised that the internal thought had escaped her lips. Everyone else just sat there, stared for a moment, realized that was rude and diverted their eyes. From the other side of the mammoth round table, following the uncomfortable silence came, “Never would’ve guessed it,” accompanied by a few grunts of agreement and then, like it never happened, the Bible study conversation moved on to apparently less shocking topics, like God’s use of Balaam’s donkey. How could I have fooled them so thoroughly? I suspect this was the real question on their minds; how could someone in the inner circle, a leader and preacher, a candidate for ordination have ever not been a part of a church, much less questioned whether or not they believed in God at all?
This was my first naïve leap into radical, expectant, theological praxis. In this year-long Bible study, we’d talked a great deal about how God had a preference for using people who were, well, a hot mess and how Jesus came for the sinners, spending time with prostitutes and tax collectors, etc., but when a real life, flesh and blood former-heathen showed up in their midst, the faithful revealed that they thought nowadays God still used sinners, you know, the ones in the churches, but those outside the walls were surely beyond help. I don’t know that they ever looked at me the same after that but neither did the fourteen people who came forward to be baptized the first time I ever gave an altar call, most of whom had heard the same story; the one where I dispel the myth that all pastors spring forth from the womb wearing a robe and utter the Nicene Creed as their first words. The same truth provoked (and continues to provoke) two very different reactions; what rattled some would reassure others. One big difference is that the latter group (and those like them) asked questions, often over meals. “How did it happen? How did you know that Jesus loved you? That he could forgive you?” They wanted to believe it was possible. They needed to believe it was possible and I need to be continually reminded of it too. In proclaiming the freedom Christ had given me to those who longed to be free, I stopped thinking I was a fly in the ointment and realized I was leaven in the loaf. That’s when I began to embrace the joy of confessing who I was in order to celebrate fully who I’ve become and invite others to the party.
In the inner circle, the church-goer bubble, most everyone I’d encountered had been raised in the church. I had met a few people who had not always believed but they all seemed to know the date when they were “saved” and would ask me when it happened for me. I always struggled to answer because it didn’t happen all at once for me. This confused me in the beginning, filled me with doubt at one point and then became a point of huge frustration. I recall at one point filling out a form for an organization that asked for the date I was saved; I’m not sure that my answer, “Approximately 33 AD”, was what they had in mind but like I said, I was frustrated. For me, it was and is a process. I’m still becoming, growing, stumbling, learning, and honestly, I am a little prickly around folks who feel like they don’t need to do any of that because they have arrived (if I recall correctly, I think Jesus had some strong words for folks like that but anyway, on with my story …)
I was blind to it at the time, but looking back, I can see that God was tapping me on the shoulder throughout my life, always present and offering wisdom but letting me choose whether or not to listen; unfortunately the world had to deal me several blows to the head before I would. My earliest recollection of this was at age four. I was born to an eighteen year old mother and an alcoholic father who divorced in my infancy. My mother and I were then living with my great-grandparents whom had raised her. My family was the type that thought the church was nothing but a bunch of judgmental hypocrites and so you could believe in God and love Jesus but you didn’t have to go to church. Also, you never brought Jesus up in regular conversation; that was rude. Yet in spite of this, there was a constant presence of Christ in our house in the form of a sepia tone Jesus painting on the living room wall; you know the one that is standard issue décor for every elderly folks Sunday school room you have ever been in? Yeah, that one. He had hung there since before my birth, right over the loveseat, a camouflage Christ in browns and beiges nearly blending in with the faux wood paneling and staring off at the television as if deeply contemplating the wonder of rabbit ear antennas. I first noticed him, really saw him, when I was in preschool and I became mesmerized by this Messiah in my midst; how could I have missed him all these years? When I had asked who was in the painting, my Papa gently said, “Well baby, that’s Jesus.” I was a bit obsessed with and even a little afraid of this presence and I was a tad uncomfortable under his constant gaze. I became overwhelmed with a need to somehow acknowledge that he was there even though no one ever talked about him, as a painting or otherwise. And so, when no one was around, often late a night, I would go to the doorway of my room, which faced his loveseat altar squarely and quietly, without knowing why, I would kneel with my face pressed into the matted, musty, burnt-orange shag carpet and feel overwhelmed with peace.
Peace was harder to come by in the years that followed. We moved away, my grandparents died, the painting and the farmhouse faded from memory and my childhood was filled with frequent moves, a series of new daddy-figures, my mother’s battle with alcohol, the realization that we were poor and the multitude of struggles that entailed. I kept my grades up and my eyes fixed on getting through and getting out. There was so much pain in those years (the details of which I will spare you) that I just focused on surviving to get to what was next. Then next came, but it wasn’t any better. College was even more confusing than home had been; I had known what to do to survive in that system but in college I completely lost myself. I was trying to be so many things to so many people that I didn’t know who I was. If childhood was about scraping my way up and out, college was the free-fall from whatever height I thought I had attained. Raped my freshman year and battling anxiety/depression by graduation, I had become a shell of a person. I was going through the motions, convinced that life was all about doing and having and sure