Once we had moved through this what I really felt we needed to end with was
looking at the culture of the world. Meaning at that Genesis is really the
explanation. Just as you're seeing with the engagement Genesis is really the
heart of all culture. And it's both the standard and it also shows us how far
we've moved away from it. So interviewing George Grant. It was funny I really
struggled to figure out who do I, who do I interview? Who's this person who's gonna
finish it up? And I've been in George's church now for well, I know George a long
time. He was in our first series 10 years ago, Modern Parables. I've been a big fan
of George. And it's funny that old idea like it can be right in front of your
face and you don't see it. And so I heard him, he was preaching every Sunday morning
and eventually just hit me I was like George is the guy for this. And of
course he was perfect because he's a very much of a polymath when it comes to
knowledge of history and religion and culture and you know horticulture in all
these areas. And so I felt he was just great.
He really summed it up and I felt like in a way brought it into this world of
engagement. Well, he really did and he helped us again reconnect with the
implications of what happens when we walk away from the history that God has
given to us. God didn't give us that history just so we could pass a history
test sometime. He gave us that history because it helps us understand who we
are and why we're here. It helps us make sense and answer the big questions.
What's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of everything? And where do I
fit into all of this? And God gave us that history to help us understand all
of that. And he helps us understand why we live in a world that is so broken, why
there is evil and suffering, and all of that that goes on around us that we don't
understand. Well, when you walk away from that history then you lose all of that
in that context and who we are. So he helped bring us back again to I guess we
would call biblical theology, to help us understand the purpose of life, the
purpose of man, and the role that we play in our relationship to one another,
to the creation around us, and to God. And so that's the that's the essence of what
George was doing for us. He would say to step back again and look at this meta
narrative of God and look at the picture and where we fit into that. And of course
that's what we're going to do in in the the engagement. In fact I'm even going to
propose that there is another epic within the standard
paradigm of looking at a worldview. Creation, fall, Redemption, and restoration.
That we live in the epoch of engagement and that is what God has called us to do.
But George brought us back again to help us understand the importance of
that history in terms of the meaning of life. Well and I think that's the thing
is that what I wanted to do, and I don't know it came out as much as it
did it did in the full interview, was that the conventional paradigm, the
evolutionary view of the world, of progress, of long periods of time, of
death, that is the foundation of our modern culture. So in a sense it's a
pyramid that sits upon this very strong steel post that is of that is the
evolutionary worldview. I mean it's mixing metaphors here cuz it's a long period
there they're putting it into. But issues of marriage and sexuality, of
transgenderism, and all these ideas of life, and the environment. All of this
goes back to our view of Genesis and I was talking with somebody at one
point and discussing this thing these these issues, and he doesn't didn't hold
Genesis as history but as he listened and he said "You know if Genesis really is
history that changes everything." And I think that's what's so vital for
Christians. That looking at a world that seems to be falling apart, and this isn't
the first time a world has seemed to fall apart, that the only hope this
world has is going back to the scripture in Genesis and that until it does so it
is forced, as George said, into moral relativism. That anything is possible. Any
kind of moral idea is plausible. And we'll start to jimmy with our sexuality
and we'll mess around with our environment, thinking that we've become
it. And until Genesis anyways, it's the palliative. It is the plumb line. It's
the medicine that will fix our society. Because even as someone that may say
well you know a society that even it doesn't even recognize Christ ultimately
I don't have to be a Christian but if they, many societies can at least
recognize that maybe Genesis is true, which has happened in many cases in the past,
in our America, that they might we're not all Christians, but recognize it with that
Genesis account made a lot of sense and we base things on it. That is the future
for a healthy society, is knowing how God started everything. It really is. So that
this the roots of a biblical worldview are found in those first eleven chapters.
Yes. If you wipe those out, or smudge them, or twist them into another form
you're messing with the very foundation of a biblical worldview. But it's
more than that, it's the foundation for culture, it's the foundation for society,
it's a foundation for who we are. And so when you take away that
foundation, then what happens, and this is what George is pointing out, what happens
is we all end up being corks bobbing on an ocean with no shore. And Miley
Cyrus, who is... she said I'm gender-fluid -Right- Which really in essence
means she's floating. And I feel sorry for that. She thinks it brings her
freedom. It does not. It puts her into a bondage where she's floating on ocean
with no shore. And that is what happens to our whole culture. We lose the
foundation for marriage, which will destroy the family. We lose the
foundation for male and female we lose the foundation for what it means for us
to be ordered and gathered together in communities and in nations and states. So
it's critical. And that's why we say that nothing makes sense except
in the light of Genesis. No, you're right and so I I guess that's a good place to
end is that so that quote comes of course, for those who many people
watching this knows that that's uh I think it was Theodora Dobzhansky, the
famous Russian, emigrated United States and was a great biologist, a
evolutionary geneticist. and he used to say nothing in biology
makes sense except in the light of evolution. And there's an interesting
story, supposedly, that Leonard Brand told me about him,
he said that Dobzhansky was teaching an old man down in Central America
and, Dr. Brandi s an Adventist so he was an Adventist school, Dobzhansky was, and he
went out with in the middle of his lectures, which is curious I don't know
how well the story is, I think he must not have been at the Adventist
school teaching, but there were some Adventists who went to a local college
where he was and heard him so that's how the story came back to Leonard. And he
said he walked out it was kind of taking some students out and went out and
picked a flower and said there's a lot of design here. And the one of the ladies
was like "what are you talking about? You know you're one of those famous
evolutionary genesis?" And he was looking at some the bees and said this is just
incredible design. He said look he said "I'm not gonna be able to change," he said
"but you, you can. And you need to be..." And I mean it's probably not a perfect paraphrase of a
story, but it was a stunning admission by Dobzhansky that this world is designed
and that really when you start applying evolutionary thought to the world it
begins to fall apart. Death happens. Does it make sense? Things don't really work.
And in a long period of progress versus a short period of fiat creation of design.
And I think that's really the heart of this, is that when you come back to
everything you realize that well Genesis is really the it's the the lodestone
it's the key that unlocks all of things for meaning. And without it nothing
really has meaning.