What came first the chicken, or the egg?

What came first the chicken, or the egg? This is not the first time I was asked about this little paradox but it has been a while sense I had truly thought about it. Just start by thinking about the complexities that this question had. Was a chicken just proofed into existence or did it come from something smaller, less complex? Is the chicken a metaphor for humanity? And if it is was the world brought into existence by an all-powerful father figure willing it to happen or by some means of complex random evolution? I know that that is a lot of questions to come out of one small 8 word sentence that we have been asked since first grade.

 Its confusing isn't it? When you sit down and really try to reason it out for yourself. In our little Christian bubbles a lot of us don’t really think about the scientific discoveries that can lead us to think about the poetic nature of the book of Genesis. Some individuals and communities tell fellow Christ followers that if you agree with the theory of evolution that, you are not a real Christian and will die in the burning lands of gnashing teeth. But can that really be a fair statement? Will I myself be condemned because evolution makes sense to me? Is being right in the argument between evolution and creation really important enough to stake your eternity on?

My thesis for this post is that whether you believe in creation or evolution it doesn’t really matter to God if you are right.

To me this issue is not an issue of spirituality but of tolerance. Does one idea of how God really created the world even matter. Does the strict belief in a Garden of Eden make me less of a Christian? Honestly if I am put in a community where I get attacked for thinking that evolution created humans is that really a loving community, just kind of how I feel right now over this whole thing.  Scientifically speaking there is plenty of evidence to support the Theory of Evolution. We have records of small scale evolution in Darwin’s experiments; there are distantly similar skeletons of what look like a growth from ape to human. The fact that our genetic make-up is 2% different than a chimpanzee and 50% similar to a banana says something about the commonality of life. As animals we have the same types of cells and the cells operate with many of the same proteins and many functions are the same. There is no way that I can discount any of these facts and just say that we are that way because God made Adam and Eve. That is too easy for me, to simple.

 People have been telling me that I cannot do this but I am going for it anyways. The God in Genesis basically makes the earth like a sandwich. He gets all the ingredients and then perfectly places them where he wants and how he wants them but one rouge piece of cheese decides they don’t want to follow the rules of the sandwich maker and the cheese ruins the world, I mean the sandwich. But how I see it is that God made us like a cake. He got what he needed, matter, and mixed it all together. Then he added energy or heat. And the cake rose and expanded and the world was formed. Maybe the cake is not all perfect, but its working towards perfection and is still pretty incredible.

Why is that so wrong? Why is that God couldn’t have gotten all of the matter in the universe together smashed it into a singlet and let it go? What makes it so that it is less amazing and awe-inspiring that God created rules like physics and evolution to create all the verity of plants and animals? It’s not at all less impressive, nor does a belief in creation effect my salvation.

Salvation is not earned by us looking into a book and deciding how we interpret the book of Genesis. It doesn’t matter if we are right about the creation of the world and it doesn’t matter if I don’t believe what everyone else does. My roommate told me once that “We are the Pharisees of our day.” We as a whole Christian community have not been showing the proper love and acceptance to the people that we supposedly outreach to. We hide behind a 774,746 word book and don’t even understand the whole point of it. Thus is the nature of humanity, we think that we are the biggest and best but we barely think about what we believe in. I am not saying I am any different. Many times I am the worst of these peoples and many times I get angry and hide behind my perception of reality. When the true fact of the matter is that I am flawed and I may be completely wrong but that is not a factor in if I will be saved when my time comes. What matters is that I believe in God and work towards my spiritual relationship with him. And I am so thankful that I don’t have be correct to be saved because then I would be stuck here worrying about, if I am a Christian that believes in natural selection, then am I a walking contradiction, or if I am going to be saved. And I am thankful that I serve a God that loves me and will take me even when I am wrong, and if he isn’t that way I would never had started following him.

To follow without love is missing the point,

Cyrus Schaaf

I Raise My Hands Up and Worship?

So I spent my summer working and not really doing anything and this is the first time in a while that I have felt like writing about anything. It’s not really that profound or revolutionary and most of you already know the truth in my topic for this post. Well without any more delay my question. Is singing worship songs and hymns the only way that we can worship God? I know this is kind of a lame question but I think it has some substance to it. I know that not everybody goes to church or a campus ministry that when they say worship they mean sing song time. But I realized last week that when we talk about worship nights in my community or worship time it is quite often a song or a general feel good kind of thing. My point is that worship is not just in the times we praise god explicitly but as a Christian it should be in every thought I have, and action I take.

For one we as a church focus a lot on the singing. When I first started going to church two years I felt so out of place because it seemed everyone knew all the songs. I felt lost and confused which caused me to be disheartened and stop going. Once I got more comfortable and started to look at what the songs said and what they meant then I started to feel more comfortable with the worship part of church. Its uncanny really how fast I was turned off of the idea of singing when I looked around and saw all the hands raised and that one random dude dancing in the hall way. He later became a mentor to me and one of my best friends. Still it was super weird seeing his way of worship. It seemed so different and scary because it was different. We have put the practice of worshiping and infinite God into a box. Even though we say that there are all kinds of worship as a community we are stuck in comfort zone of calling song time worship time. I know for a fact that singing about how great God is not the only way.

Couldn’t how we think and say things be a reflection of God and therefore be a way that we try to give Him glory. The way we show love and reason out hard issues, shouldn’t those be forms of worship? Of course, when we worship we praise and give thanks to God.  We should make sure that we give thanks to him in all things we do. When we give thanks to him with our actions we show love and mercy because of the grace he has shown us. This conscious idea of we are worshiping God is the very point of worship music and is the very point of truly being followers of Christ.

Conscious worship and praise for god comes in all shapes and forms. The very use of the gifts that we are given by him is an act of worship. Like someone who speaks in tongues worships god by using that gift to talk to him and share it with others or a person who has a gift of teaching uses it to teach others. People can worship god with painting, poems, songs, even science. Let’s take science because it may be a little unclear what I mean. I believe that God created the rules of life and process that we see for the growth of organisms and change in matter. And science being the study of matter and life and the world he created then it is a form of worship for me to do science. Another way I worship him is this blog and going to core and all that stuff Christians do. Can we agree that we should truly worship him with everything we do right? Do we?

Not at all. For one we are all flawed and sin on a pretty much daily basis. And for two I know that I don’t give him the credit he really deserves. If I do well on something like a test or get praised for how I think I don’t ever think “I did it for you big man.” But it’s more of a “Yeah that is right. I am awesome.” I for one needed to realize that everything I do in this life is truly for God and happened because of him. I am who I am today and think how I do today because he made me, put me with the family I grew up with, and shaped me these last twenty years. I didn’t really realize that truly until right now. The way that I think, act and, speak is all because of my Father in Heaven, and he deserves to be worshiped in all things that I do. No matter what I do, writing a blog or singing a song or even just thinking and spending time using what he gave me. All the glory is truly his.

Following blind is not following at all,

Cyrus Schaaf