May 10 - Creation Goes To Court

Creation Goes To Court

            In 1931, my grandparents, Otto and Martha Risser, started a Foursquare Church in Dayton, Tennessee. Only 6 years earlier, this previously unknown town of 3,000 had drawn the attention of the world as John Scopes, then a 24-year old High School Football Coach and General Science teacher, attended a meeting in Robinson’s drugstore.

            Scopes had agreed to become the defendant in a trial testing Tennessee’s law against teaching “any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man had descended from a lower order of animals.” It would forever be known as the 1925 “Scopes/Monkey Trial”.  Having visited both the courthouse and the drugstore in Dayton where my dad was raised, it’s hard to imagine that almost 90 years ago, this “Media meets Mayberry” drama would change the way our culture thinks, like nothing else in our nation’s previous history.

           

            Today, it seems strange to think, that at one time all that was taught in schools was that man was created by God.  After all, up to 1900, 104 of 110 national universities were founded on Christian beliefs, so our nation considered little else.  That is, until William Jennings Bryan representing “Team Creation” and the Bible, faced Clarence Darrow speaking for “Team Evolution” on Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”

           

            In the end, the “Scopes/Monkey Trial” was a draw inside the court but not outside.  The town would eventually settle into a fireside chat, but the rest of the world would change forever.  It was the shifting of the tide that would turn our nation to eventually teach only evolution and shortly remove creation from the classroom.

           

            The problem that we find today is that somewhere we decided to accept the false notion that evolution is science and creation is not.  Our culture reasons, since religion can’t be placed in a test-tube, it has no place in our school curriculum.  The truth is, neither can evolution.  These two can only battle in the way that they did almost 90 years ago, and that is in the courtroom of rationality, history, and evidence along with objectivity.

           

            C.S. Lewis reasoned that “When it comes right down to it, we have to decide as to whether everything around us came from a creative mind or not.”  If it did not, you are an evolutionist.  If it did, you are a creationist.  Furthermore, all scientific laws affirm creation’s premise that all things come from something (Someone?) greater than itself.  Even the most reluctant mind would not debate that a simple paper clip or complex computer would just simply  “evolutionize” if given enough time (millions of years), let alone a human being.  Darwin himself wrote later in life, “When I see the human eye it’s impossible for me not to believe that there is a Creator.”

           

            In Psalm 14:1, David wrote, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.”  Somehow, David never beat around the bush.  Not only did the Creator reveal His glory through creation, but in the fullness of time revealed Himself through  the person of Jesus Christ that all would know His purpose and plan through a loving relationship with Him (John 1:14). When it comes down to it, you can take it to court…and to the bank.

Terry Risser

Consider reading the Word today:

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