I managed to accidentally traumatize my four-year-old tonight. He knows that if he leaves his toys out in the living room before going to bed that I will collect them, put them in my closet, and keep them. Today he managed to make the living room messier than usual, taking all of his stuffed animals and books out of his room and onto the living room rug.

“Cooper,” I said after dinner. “You need to put your toys away.”

“But I don’t want to,” he replied, as if that was a factor I had not considered in what he apparently thought was a discussion of terms.

“Okay. That means I get to keep all of your toys, then.”

Cooper paused. His countenance fell when he came to the logical consequence of this action. With tears welling, he asked, “Froggy too?”

Froggy is Cooper’s best friend in the whole world. No other plush frog has ever been loved the way Cooper loves Froggy. And tonight he thought he was about to lose his best friend forever.

It took thirty minutes for Cooper to stop crying. Then he cleaned the living room.

Tonight, I earned this cup of coffee.

After assembling a train table for Cooper, I decided to treat myself to a caffeinated treat.

While this cup brewed, CKT wrapped Christmas gifts to give to AMKT.

Dear one and all,

It was a good year for the Trammells.  We managed not to break anything or kill anyone, except for that hobo in Chattanooga.

We wish you all the blessings of the holiday season, and a Merry Christmas.

Love,

The Trammells

Jim, Anne Marie, Cooper, Glaxtor, Elliot

¹²As Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, a crowd of Southern Baptists approached him and threw a man down at his feet.  ¹³They said, “Teacher, this man was caught in the act of homosexuality.  Now, the scriptures tell us this man is an abomination.  What do you say?”

¹⁴Jesus said, “What would you have me say to him?”

¹⁵The Southern Baptists were indignant.  “Tell him to ‘Go and sin no more.’”

¹⁶Jesus replied, “Shouldn’t I instead put the man to death in compliance with the law?”

¹⁷The Southern Baptists did not know how to respond.  “If we say the homosexual should be put to death, then people will say we are inhumane.  However, if we tell him to sin no more, people will say we are not following the law.”  ¹⁸After discussing among themselves, the Southern Baptists said, “Jesus, you can make this man whole again.”

¹⁹Jesus said, “Woe unto you, Southern Baptists.  You think this man needs to be made whole because he is a homosexual.  But it is you who need healing, ²⁰for you care more about a person’s sexuality than his place in the Kingdom of Heaven.  This man is not an abomination; he is a follower of God.

²¹“Surely I tell you, the Kingdom of Heaven is not for the self-righteous or exclusively for heterosexuals, but for all those who work for justice and mercy in the name of the Lord.

²²“Besides,” Jesus continued.  “You guys really care that much about who he sleeps with?  What’s the matter with you?”

²³The Southern Baptists left one by one until only Jesus and his followers were left.  “Where are those who condemn you?” Jesus asked the man.

²⁴“At church,” the man replied.

Karl Giberson’s recent blog post for Huffington Post connects the evangelical church’s anti-evolution belief with a growing disconnect of young persons.  He argues that the more evangelical churches reject science, the more it will lose teenage-to-twenty-something members.  

 

Dr. Giberson notes that some churches encourage young people to challenge their science teachers by asking “Were you there” whenever they are taught that earth is not 6,000 years old, or that human beings evolved over billions of years.  “The suggestion that scientists cannot speak about the past unless ‘they were there’ is a strange claim,” he writes.  “The implication is that we cannot do something as simple as count tree rings and confidently declare ‘This great pine was standing here 2,000 years ago.’ As a philosophy of science, such a restriction would completely rule out the scientific study of the past. This, of course, is precisely what the creationists want.”

 

I understand why some Christians think challenging scientists is a holy pursuit.  If scientists suggest the Bible is not to be taken literally–even those sections that were written to be figurative explanations of the relationship between God and mankind, such as Genesis 1-3–then evangelicals believe they must do whatever they can to defend their faith from such naysayers.  I understand this, but I don’t agree with it.

 

Christianity is about living like Jesus, and Jesus was not interested in science.  He chastised the righteous and the greedy, and encouraged the desperate and poor in spirit.  He drove out money changers and loved prostitutes.  He said the Kingdom of Heaven is for persons who visit widows and prisoners.  

 

That’s what matters, not defending a poor interpretation of the Creation narrative as a scientific treatise. 

 

Evangelicals, go ahead and believe the earth is 6,000 years old.  Go ahead and argue that “Were you there?” is a powerful defense against reason.  Go ahead and be intellectually impotent and critically irrelevant.  But when you do this, don’t do it in the name of Christ.  Do it in the name of your own deliberate ignorance.

 

 

In recognition of iPod’s tenth anniversary, here’s the first iPod ad: