Does This Dress Make My Theology Look Fat?

There's a wonderful documentary on PBS about a creationist museum in Kentucky based on a view that the Genesis account of creation is literal history. I learned a lot just looking at how a truncated worldview can be hammered into a whole universe that seems logical on the surface. The technology and the mountains of money behind this museum are very impressive, but all in service of an ideology that I find curious at best. I find I'm filling with questions listening to the young earth proponents explain their beliefs. Obviously they're scrambling to uphold a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation, where it would be much easier, much cheaper, and involve much less mental gymnastics to simply enlarge their thinking. For some reason this they find beyond their imaginative capabilities.

I'm very intrigued with the PhD's that the museum employs to give detailed scientific explanations to uphold their ideology. But I can't imagine that if these "Doctors" were still in school that any of their ideas would get a passing grade as real science. But even more frustrating is their bizarre, inexplicable theology. I find I keep coming back to examine their amoral and ludicrous God. If God really punished the wicked, for instance, why does it only happened once in history? What kind of silly God would wipe out evil prehistoric humans but then when something like the Holocaust happens says, "well, boys will be boys!" ??  Here is one downfall of the idea that has haunted all of Christian history that God only really loves the righteous. It's a thought all people like to have when they think of themselves as the "good" people in the room, a transparent hope that illuminates the believer much more then they realize. I find in it an attempt to cling desperately to the Old Testament view of righteousness––that the good will be saved and the sinful forever punished––that was specifically refuted by Jesus. Such self-destructive theology (for instance that "all are sinners, yet God forgives, but then not really, only if you, well... follow whatever elaborate justification I can think of... give me a minute here...") These people seem to ignore Jesus' admonition that we all sin (including himself) and are all forgiven by a universally loving God. That's the only Christian theology that hangs together. It's terrifically ironic to me that such people who reject the New Testament and Jesus message of a Loving God call themselves "Christians". If they're going to follow the Old Testament, why don't they call themselves Jews? Or Yahwehists? That's ok, too, you know.

The hope here seems to be in a god that will rescue only the righteous. (That always refers to the speaker and never those who disagree.) I really get that; it would be a wonderful thing if evil people suffered and good people inherited the earth. But not only is that inconsistent with history, it's Jesus himself who refuted that to the rather dim religious authorities of his time. (News flash: religious idiots are not a recent invention!) Whenever I'm confronted with this twisted theology I can't help thinking, "this poor person really needs to get a bigger God, but they simply cannot imagine it!". In fact they end up living in a kind of hell that Jesus was sent to rescue us from! It's almost as if they patently refuse the salvation that is promised them by their own savior.

So then I start thinking about the mentality behind these failures of imagination. Such people seem incapable of using their whole brains. For instance I'm dying to ask them if they believe there's poetry in the Bible. They'd of course say yes since the Bible is crammed full of Psalms and lamentations and––for heaven sake–– The Song of Solomon––which is a glorious sexual romp (I have yet to hear a fundamentalist Christian tell me that's not a metaphor!) So I'm dying to ask: if the Bible is full of poetry how do you know went to take a passage metaphorically? I assume that when they read that Jesus said," I am the door", they don't expect to see him sporting hinges. Obviously the Bible is full of metaphors. Poetry is perhaps the most beautiful language for telling the truth. So at what point do they fall off the poetry wagon and insist that the Bible is literally true? (That brings up all those internal self-contradictions, but that's a whole other story!)

I happen to find the book of Genesis a beautiful, scientific description of creation. But only if you read it as poetry. The wonderful recent book illuminates how deeply scientifically accurate the Genesis story is––down to such details as the timing of the eye's evolution––but only if you have poetry among the tools used to unpack it. Without that tool you don't get a better description, only the bizarre, unimaginative, tragically empty description arrived at by the Creationists. I'm angry that they're so powerful they seem to control a lot of American textbooks and can blow their money on impressive but foolish museums. But beyond that, it really makes me sad that so many have not evolved a better imagination.  God help us all!

That is, unless God is about to wipe us out for being so incredibly stupid!