Giving Thanks for Evolution
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Tonight I gave thanks for evolution.
Does that sound strange to you? Heretical? Anti-Christian?
I’ll admit, it sounds a little strange to me, but not
anti-Christian. Not by a long shot. Because today God used the theory of
evolution to speak to my daughter.
See, my kids are in public school. They hear this stuff. I
don’t worry about it because I know that God is bigger than the theory of
evolution.
He’s also bigger than the war in the Middle East and the
caucuses in Iowa, just in case you tend to get scared about that kind of thing.
But I digress. . . .
Tonight, God proved that He can tackle evolution no problem.
Like flicking a gnat off of His shoulder, that’s the whole evolution thing to
Him. NBD.
My eighth grader told us at dinner tonight that her science
teacher showed a movie in class about the Big Bang theory. I got all up in my
righteous indignation and said, “Oh, and
did they give equal time to the Creation account?” knowing full well that
the answer would be a shrug of the shoulders and a “No.”
Which she did, both.
But to her credit, she also kind of rolled her eyes when she
described her teacher introducing the movie: “This is my FAVORITE movie of the
whole year! And it’s narrated by MORGAN FREEMAN!”
Whatever.
Like I said, I don’t worry about that stuff—we have the
Truth (but I will admit that it makes me cringe that her school does not give equal
time to the Creation account).
Again, whatever. They never claimed to be a Christian public
school.
Anyway, back to why I gave thanks for evolution tonight. As
I was praying with Julia before bed I asked her how God had shown Himself to
her today. (We’re kind of on the lookout these days.) She immediately went back
to her science lesson and the movie they saw in class. She said that at first
the movie kind of made sense to her—she was willing to concede a couple of
points because she’s a good thinker, that one, and able to look at all sides of
an issue.
But as the movie went on, it mentioned something about all
living creatures being made from a mutation of one cell, and Julia said, “It
was like God showed me that there was no way that could have happened. I mean,
how could one cell make both tadpoles and tigers? It just didn’t make sense to
me.”
We talked about God as the Creator, how it just makes so
much more sense to us that, as a creative and loving God, He would create tadpoles
and tigers out of different cells,
not one.
And then it hit me—the
theory of evolution, as it was presented in her class today, only served to
draw Julia closer to her Creator-God, not farther away.
Amazing, isn’t it, that God can take something that most of
us see as evil and use it for good? He does that sometimes.
And for that, I gave thanks for evolution.
Your thoughts? Am I off my rocker with this one? Or have you seen God use the unexpected to draw your kids closer to Him?
