Noah, the Flood and Other "Idiot Ideas" - Vol 4 No 2

Zeke said, "I'm not a Christian who has to follow all of the dogmas and the doctrines and the other idiot ideas that other Christians seem to try to follow. I embrace Christianity intellectually."     

I'm an Intellectual Christian

The Philosophy class was about to start and a few students, including the gray-bearded sophomore we all love, were already at their desks and talking about what they had read to prepare for class.       

Zeke leaned on his desk. "I love this idea that the mind is a mirror.  What we think is reflected in what we do. That is an early Egyptian, early Israeli concept."     

Mike responded,  "Yea, the Bible teaches that.  In Proverbs it says ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’”     

Zeke looked straight at Mike and reported matter of factly,  “I am an intellectual Christian.”      

"An intellectual Christian?" Mike repeated. "What does that mean?"     

"I'm not a Christian who has to follow all of the dogmas and the doctrines and the other idiot ideas that other Christians seem to try to follow. I embrace Christianity intellectually."     

Mike was interested.  “What are some of these dogmas, doctrines and idiot ideas?”     

“Like the Flood. I don’t believe the Flood story. We had the Gilgamesh account of a worldwide flood way prior to the Bible’s record of the flood. The writer of the Bible probably made up the story based on the Gilgamesh legend."     

"So, you don’t believe that the Bible is true?" 

Truth is fluid   

Zeke shook his head. "Truth is in the idea.  Truth is in tse concept that the words give you as you read them.  It’s not objective.  It'd fluid. It becomes my truth as I consider what it means to me."     

Mike looked at him. "So, the Bible can mean anything you want it to mean or anything you think it needs to mean?"     

Zeke became animated. “Exactly! I use it to develop my personal truth. It would do away with a lot of conflict between people if we didn’t have right and wrong. If we didn't have to be right all the time, we could each have our own truth.     

The professor who had started listening, joined in. “That’s right. Whenever we think that we're right and the other guy is wrong, we are being naive.”     

Mike smiled and raised his eyebrows. “I assume you think you are right in this principle and that I am wrong.  Are you being naïve?”     

The professor dodged,  “It’s a bigger question than that.” 

Black and White    

Zeke replied flatly,   “You’re one of those who has to have things black and white.“    Mike sat back, "Well, morally things are black and white.  I have no control over that.  God has made it so that we have to recognize truth, and we have to recognize error. It’s a fixed paradigm outside of me or you."   

"As a Christian, I know that the Bible asks us to walk by faith," said Zeke.

There was a hint of hopelessness when Zeke continued, "The Bible tells us that we're to walk in an unknowing and uncertain way. The Christian learns to live with uncertainties."     

Mike asked, "Are equating faith with uncertainty?"     

"Yea," said Zeke.  "That’s the essence of faith.  You don’t really know something for sure, but you believe it by faith anyway. I know that science is provable because I can see and touch it. But God has to be believed by faith, without knowing for sure."      Mike replied kindly but confidently,  “Actually, the Bible teaches against what you're promoting which is the truth-faith divide or the divide of the secular and the sacred.  Kant promoted this.  He divided the world into feelings, that are true only for me and facts, things that are true for everyone.  He then lumped prayer and religion together with other things we can't be certain of such as love or right and wrong and we call that the sacred. Like prayer belongs to the feeling world of personal opinion and ought to have no place in the public arena.  Over and against that world is the factual world which contains that which is true for all.  This is where we have publicly verifiable facts like science, history and things you can be certain of.  Our values are in the sacred world while truth, what you can verify is in the secular world.  God does not allow a divide."     

Mike paused.  He had read a lot of Nancy Pearcey and Greg Bahnsen so he was ready to take this on.  He had their attention so he continued.

“Christianity is total truth; there is no divide. The Bible speaks with equal authority about science and conscience and makes no distinction between what is factual and what is of faith. Our faith is factual. God tells us that God sent His own Son to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, save us from the just wrath of the Father Who is holy and against Whom we have sinned.  That is the truth, not my truth.  It simply is.  It can't be my truth/ your truth or my faith /your faith. Either it's true, or it's not true."     

The professor persisted.  “That’s true for you”.     

Undaunted Mike said, "If it's true for me, it is true for you because we're talking universal principles here. We're talking that God has spoken to all mankind in propositional truth in the Scriptures, things that we could not know apart from His revelation. When we don’t acknowledge that, we’re doing exactly, particularly, and precisely what the Bible says we are doing in Romans 1 --- suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Paul said that when we reject what God has said about Himself in the Bible about creation and about ourselves, we are suppressing the truth in our unrighteousness and that's why the wrath of God is being poured out against all unrighteousness and wickedness of men."   

A Worldwide Flood?  

Zeke ignored Mike’s sobering remarks and went back to his original querry, “You really don't believe that there was a worldwide flood, do you? Gilgamesh is legend and like I said, it was written much earlier than the Bible."      

Mike continued, “Both accounts could have come from people who experienced the flood and talked about and wrote about it.  I believe that the account from the Bible is more to be trusted because among other things, God guided the writers by Holy Spirit to chronicle it accurately."     

"So you say."     

"If there was not a worldwide flood, that means that the Bible is wrong. Are you willing to say the Bible is wrong?"     

"I don't need to say the Bible is wrong because the Bible isn't meant to be right or wrong."     

"Whenever you turn away from God, you have to start inventing things to answer life’s questions. Likely the epic of Gilgamesh was an invention based on remembrances of the actual flood by those who survived and their offspring who related it by oral traditions which have elements of truth but, like a lot of oral tradition is prone to be imprecise."     

The Professor who had been listening, said to Mike, "Don’t you think you're a little outlandish to make such a claim? A worldwide flood? Really?" 

Looking for Certainty   

"I think my logic is a whole lot better than sitting here guessing at the timing of the epic of Gilgamesh versus the book of Genesis. God is not playing ‘I've got a Secret and gives us what we need to know through His preserved Word, things that we need in order to think and live properly. We need true data to have a reasonable faith and God has given that data. I don't have faith in something I just come up with, faith in something that I think might be the case. I have a faith that is certain and is based on truth outside of me.   And I have that faith, a reasonable faith founded in the Bible which is true.     

Two or three people in class had leaned into the conversation and one young man said, "Well, if you're looking for certainty, I'd like to know where you find it because that's something I've never ever had."     

Mike said, "Like I said, I have a reasonable faith that gives me confidence about how to interpret life.  I'll buy all the coffee you can drink if you'll talk to me about it."      The guy nodded.      

And the class started...

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