Tag Archives: Creation

An Open Letter to Sasha Laxton

If you have not yet read any of the recent news articles about Sasha Laxton, the child whose parents are raising him as “gender-neutral,” you can do so here.

—————————————————————————————————

Dear Sasha,

I know that you are too young to understand what I want to tell you right now. I also know that you will probably never read this letter, but still my hope is that one day this beautiful truth will find it’s way to you one way or another.

What you may already know is that your parents are kind of crazy. Not crazy because they are trying to raise you as a gender-neutral kid, but crazy because all parents are crazy to one degree or another. Also, though, they are crazy over you. Everything they are doing as parents is because they love you and although they are misguided, deep down they really do want to do what is best for you. I hope you remember that when you get older. It’s a blessing that many children do not have.

However, what I want you to know is that no matter what your parent’s intentions are, there is no such thing as a gender neutral person. You see, having decided that equality between humans means that differences must be abolished, our society is going to great lengths to ignore reality. The truth is that you are a boy and we can’t ignore that. Physically, you have certain body parts unique to little boys, and you also have DNA and hormones that will one day grow you into a man emotionally as well. Sure, you can find doctors who can change a lot of those things, but to do so is to mutilate who you are meant to be.

I know that phrases like “meant to be” will be foreign to you at this point in life, and I’m sure you will hear the opposite of that plenty from people near you. Nevertheless, it is true. You do exist with a purpose, and being a boy is part of that.

See, the reality that people like your family want to ignore is that men and women were created equal, yet different, by a God who doesn’t make mistakes. The Bible says that God created humanity as male and female, and then stepped back and said that it was “very good.”

Later on in the Bible a great King named David sang this as part of a song to this God:

“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
(Psalm 139:13-16 ESV)

My favorite part of that song is when he says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” It was true of King David, and it is true of you, Sasha.

God made you to be who you are, and that includes the fact that you are a boy. That doesn’t mean that you cannot grow up to be sensitive, like things that our culture doesn’t consider masculine, or refuse to be a macho “alpha male.” What it does mean, though, is to deny what God has wonderfully created you to be is a slap in the face to a Heavenly Father who loves you infinitely more than your parents here on earth are able to.

He sees you in His perfect love, and wants you to grow up to be a mighty man of God, who follows in the example of His firstborn Son, Jesus Christ.

See, Jesus got a bad reputation, too, because although He was the epitome of what it means to be a man, He didn’t fit into the box of what His culture thought He should be. However, He didn’t bow to meet anyone’s expectations, either. Instead, He lived His life committed to following the path God laid out for Him, even though that path carried with it a lot of pain.

Sasha, I know your life will be confusing, and that you are going to have a lot to deal with one day as you begin making real life decisions about who you are, and who you want to be. Just know, that no matter what pressures you feel from outside, and no matter what it is your desires are going to lead you to become, God loves you, and wants you to follow Him. He has the best plan for your life if you are willing to follow Him.

If the life of Jesus-follower is the one you decide, I hope your parents will still be as open-minded about the decision you make. Maybe through your journey they could meet this Jesus, too. Know this, though, there are many of us out here who you will never meet, but we are praying for you all the same.

I hope you find your way to accept who you are, even in the face of those who want to deny it.

May God bless you and keep you,

Sincerely,

Scott Ingram

Evolution versus Intelligent Designers

This post was originally published on 11/19/07 on this blog’s predecessor. Somehow in the move to WordPress it didn’t come along, yet it is one of my favorites, so I did some editing and brought it back.

———————————————–

I have been thinking a lot this weekend about the arguments for evolution and the big bang theory compared to the Biblical accounts of God’s design for creation. This came up Sunday night in my church’s study through Job and I again found myself pondering the subject while talking to my grandma today about her house falling apart. Even now, watching an old episode of Star Trek Enterprise, I can’t get it off my mind.

I have been thinking about God as the “Intelligent Designer” and mankind who was created in His image. We were put in the Garden of Eden and told by our Maker to take dominion over the earth. In essence, we were told to continue in God’s footsteps of creating. We were to take His garden and extend it out into the rest of the untamed world. It amazes me to look at the history of mankind and see where that God-given creativity has brought us. Look at our buildings, cars, airplanes, ships, computers, and so on. Look at the Egyptian pyramids, China’s Great Wall, France’s Eiffel Tower. Think about the marvelous works of art that have been put out there throughout the ages. Read some of the classic writings of history (and even think about how we have taken those same tales and turned them into spectacular movies). Think about your favorite meal and imagine the culinary experiments that had to take place to bring it to you today. Throughout history, one thing has been proven true. Man is a creative being.

It is because of this I can watch shows like Star Trek and then walk outside, look up, and tell myself, “someday…” I believe that it can happen, and unless God intervenes in opposition or by ending our time here on earth, I think it will. He created us for those things. He created us to explore His creation and then continue to create. I think God created science to give us the ability to achieve the things we have (and will) and gave us an imagination to get us started in that direction. I believe that by God’s design we are people of infinite possibilities. But that can only be true if we really are His creation.

On the other side of the creation debate you have the arguments for evolution and the big bang. In essence, for no reason whatsoever a giant explosion out of nothingness created everything in the universe. From that explosion, this newly created matter then turned that energy into forming giant rocks, which somehow mutated into living cells, creating plants and animals and ending up in the current time of humans, which according to this story came from monkeys.

What is interesting about the formation of the evolutionary theory is that it is based on the “rule of uniformity” (which should be called the theory of uniformity because it can not be proven, like evolution which stems from it). The rule of uniformity says that evolution is possible because the ways the universe have worked have always stayed the same so that millions of years ago we see the same natural processes taking place that we see today. It must do this to deny the possibility of divine intervention such as the flood of Noah’s day or Jesus’ miracles of healing and the resurrection, because that breaks the chain.

However, by applying the rule of uniformity to this theory, it undoes itself. First of all, the rule of uniformity would state that there could be no big bang. If there were no matter in existence and nothing to create an explosion to create matter, then the universe is impossible.

After this flaw, we come to the one I want to focus on here. If the laws of physics apply then we must look at why my grandma’s house is falling apart. When you take energy (such as the sun, and the process of natural decay) and apply it to matter (in this case, the house) and extend it out over time, you get destruction.

Throw a log in a fire, that energy applied for a length of time destroys the log. Put a rock in a stream and leave it for a few million years. It won’t get bigger and then come to life. It will, in fact, be weathered down to nothing, long before that time period ends. It is not the natural process of the universe to create, then to maintain, and then to better itself. This is why it takes a handyman to come along and fix the house problems.

This leads to another dilemma. A monkey does not instinctively come along, pick up a paintbrush, hammer and nails and fix a house. Even if you could teach it to do so, the animal does not have the reasoning mind to figure out the work that would need done. They don’t instinctively care about improving the environment in which they live. They hunt and forage, rather than cultivate. If we came from monkeys, then the question comes in as to why we have this ingrained in us fully, yet monkeys (or any other animal) do not have it at all.

Mankind is designed to be creators, builders, and cultivators. That doesn’t happen by chance. Imagination is not a trait developed by evolution. In fact, imagination would be something phased out in the evolutionary process because day-dreaming would be a flawed characteristic in an environment where “only the strong survive.” Imagination and emotions would both be put away to ensure our survival.

I am optimistic about the future of mankind, because I can imagine a brighter future. I can imagine things getting better, because it is in the design of the human race to make them better.

Why is flight possible? Because the human mind saw it in birds and could imagine it for ourselves then used science to bring it about.  Same thing with space travel and electricity and the internet and everything else we have achieved throughout our history.

We were designed to be designers and everything we design takes cues from God’s original creation. The fact is, if a builder doesn’t build the house, the house doesn’t get built. If we don’t maintain the house, it goes away.