An Open Letter to Ken Ham

Dear Ken Ham,

Let me start by saying I admire your commitment to the authority of God’s Word and your willingness to defend what you believe it teaches. The world desperately needs more people who stand firm in proclaiming the truth of the gospel. However, I believe your zeal is tied up in a sideshow attraction and needs refocusing on the main event: Jesus. This letter has undergone a series of false starts and various iterations, but I’ve persisted with it because I felt that God didn’t want me to give up on it completely.

Looking back, I am exceedingly grateful to the many faithful teachers (of an Evangelical persuasion) who prioritised the transmission of the gospel to me during my childhood, youth and beyond. They did a stellar job of keeping the main thing — Jesus — the main thing. In my experience, setting Christ alone as the firm foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11) was adequate to prepare me for a high school biology class, where I found all eyes (including the teacher’s) on me, the token Christian, after a fellow student pointedly asked, “Isn’t that [evolution] different to what the Bible teaches?” I was bewildered (and truth be told I still am really, though these days for a slightly different reason). Sadly, for those in that classroom at least, I wasn’t yet equiped with any semblance of a satisfying response. However, thanks be to God, this incident did nothing to shake my faith.

In my eyes, those who had passed the gospel on to me had done a valiant job. After all, they had grounded my faith in the historical Jesus who went to the cross, dying to deflect the just anger of His Father away from us on account of our moral bankruptcy, then rose victoriously over the grave before ascending on high. Might they have done more to prepare me for the question I faced at school? Possibly, but I find no fault in them. My classmate, who certainly isn’t alone, conceived a problem, thinking it necessary to choose between two truth claims. These days, without the need to employ cognitive dissonance, I simply don’t consider the creation story and evolution as competing truths. I fail to see why some Christians get so hung up about evolution or, indeed, why anyone’s acceptance of it should be seen as a barrier to faith in Jesus. Rejecting evolution makes just as much sense as denying the theory of gravity on the basis that it isn’t mentioned in the Bible. Evolution just happens to be God’s chosen means of creating us and all life.

As it turns out, despite the objection of my classmate, biology ended up being one of my favourite classes. To me, the truth of creation and the truth of evolution just operate in different spheres. It certainly isn’t necessary to commit intellectual suicide, or to check our brains at the door, to place our trust in the Christ for our redemption (Jesus purchased us back for His Father at the cost of His blood, 1 Corinthians 7:21-23). If I had my time again in that classroom, I would tell them, “The Bible gives us a theological understanding of origins, our failure to live as God intends and the steps Jesus took to mend our fractured relationship with God, while evolution simply gives us a scientific way of understanding our origins. It is a mistake to try and conflate the two, a category error.” I realise a few people will still find this unsatisfying, but it needn’t be any more complicated than that.

Breaking that down further, the primary concern of Genesis is explaining the why and who of creation (the Bible is the go-to guide if you are trying to derive meaning or purpose in life) leaving science free, on the other hand, to grapple with uncovering the how and when. Stephen Gould, even though he was not a Christian, could see clearly that different disciplines exist which explore separate areas of truth. In his book Rocks of Ages, Gould referred to these as non-overlapping magisteria (dubbed NOMA for short). Putting my own spin on Gould’s idea, theology and evolution share a common gravitational pull of truth, yet they maintain separate orbital paths.

It is important to recognise that the Bible, while written for us, was not written to us. How can we expect Genesis to give us a scientific account of origins when science is only a relatively recent concept? Genesis was written with an Ancient Near East audience in mind, for whom our scientific account of origins would have been inconsequential. A major problem with inserting a scientific account of origins within the pages of Scripture is how do you determine which age to get your science from? The fact is that science is constantly being revised and updated to accommodate the latest findings. So, the science from previous ages has already been rendered obsolete and one day the science from our own age will be replaced by the latest understanding. This will, no doubt, carry on unabated until our Lord Jesus returns, as we continually narrow in on unravelling the mysteries of how God does what He alone can do.

I don’t begrudge you, or anyone, the freedom to believe anything you like but I am troubled by your insistence that others conform to your belief. For example, I see included in your Statement of Faith this: “Scripture teaches a recent origin of man and the whole creation, with history spanning approximately 4,000 years from creation to Christ.” What I believe you are guilty of here is known in some circles as ’gospel plus.’ In other words, by insisting your adherents subscribe to a literal six 24 hour days of creation, a mere 6000 years ago, you are in fact adding to the gospel by widening the scope of things we are called to put our faith in. In doing so you are making faith in Jesus a more onerous burden (similar to what the Scribes and Pharisees were guilty of in Mathew 23:4), especially for the vast majority of people — including most of Christendom — who generally accept what mainstream science tells us regarding our origin.

Others have also looked at the Old Testament and seen something they felt could not be dispensed with, like those who sought to impose circumcision on Christians in Acts 15:1, again adding to the gospel and we know adding to God’s Word is a dangerous enterprise (Revelation 22:18). You are only creating an artificial barrier that risks unnecessarily alienating people from the gospel, preventing those who otherwise might come to a saving faith. Believing in a 6000 year-old earth will save no one, ever.

While I’m at it, I think it a shame that your camp should have become known as fundamentalist Christianity. Christian fundamentalism should only be reserved for the distilling down of the central tenets of our faith, such as in the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds because they get down to the nitty gritty, nuts and bolts, of what Jesus and the Apostles taught. You will note that these creeds, which whittle down the fundamental biblical truths central to Christianity, glaringly omit how many days the creation took and how long ago it was. Fundamentalism might also stretch to those who stood for the central tenets of the Reformation, namely, that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone and for God’s glory alone. I would seriously question the wisdom that leads anyone to add anything else to these fundamental truths. Your belief in a young-earth is a superfluous addition to the absolute essentials of historic Christianity.

I’m not saying the six days of creation are entirely irrelevant (it has relevance for the work week and Sabbath rest) but when it comes to the entirety of the New Testament (and even the rest of the Old Testament for that matter) you can hear the crickets chirping on the topic. In fact, even though Jesus had ample opportunity to talk about the six days of creation, the closest Jesus comes to broaching the subject is, in Luke 13:14-17, correcting Sabbath day theology. Instead, Jesus main thrust in ministry was the gospel, calling on people to repent and believe (in Him, not in the age of the earth) in readiness for the kingdom (Mark 1:14-15). There is not one mention of the six days in the creation summaries of the early church in the book of Acts (e.g. Acts 14:15), nor amongst any of the letters. Not. One. Mention. Your fixation, then, on the days of creation and your attempt at nailing down how long ago it was, is completely out of proportion with its treatment in the pages of Scripture. How odd then that you would devote so much attention to it, a whole ministry even.

I wish you would stop forcing Scripture into an ill-fitting straightjacket by insisting we can derive science from it and a precise timeline for the advent of history. We should suffice ourselves with the claims for which the Bible itself lay hold. Namely, that it is “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Notice Paul mentions nothing about God’s Word giving us a rigid and comprehensive record of all of history and science. As the Apostle John says of his Gospel, “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

My faith is not tied to an historical Adam and Eve, but is in Jesus alone (although I’m not necessarily opposed to an historical Adam and Eve, but I don’t believe there was ever just two people on earth because it seems unlikely that Cain would have had anything to fear if his siblings or other close relatives were the only ones around in Genesis 4:14). Genesis 1-11 does not need to be an accurate, factual history to be a carrier of truth. Case in point, Jesus told parables to convey truth, which they do, even though they are not based on real people or events. The story of Adam and Eve could be operating as a microcosm, briefly summarising Israel’s history. Genesis isn’t nearly as straight forward as you might like it to be. For instance, Jesus seems to have thought it important to correct the notion that God the Father ever ”rested” (Genesis 2:2) after the Jews got the wrong end of the stick regarding the Sabbath (see John 5:17). Not so simple. This should be enough to dissuade us from the assumption that a plain, simplistic or child-like reading of Genesis is adequate.

I am really no one that you should listen to me but in God has Spoken, J.I. Packer has you pegged when he makes the point that some are guilty of an overreach when claiming the ‘infallibility’ or ‘inerrancy’ of Scripture. Here’s what he had to say:

“[H]ow these words [infallible and inerrant] are misunderstood. Critics persistently suppose that both words, highlighting as they do the divinity and consequent truth of the Bible, express or entail a policy of minimising the Bible’s humanity, either by denying its human literary sources or ignoring the marks of its human cultural milieu, or by treating it as if it were written in terms of the communicative techniques and conventions of the modern West rather than the ancient East, or by professing to find in it ‘technical-scientific’ as distinct from ‘naive-observational’ statements about the natural order, when the ‘technical-scientific’ study of nature is less than five centuries old. It is understandable that Christians who have not weighed the differences between our culture and that (or those!) of the biblical period should naively feel that the natural and straightforward way to express their certainty that the contents of Scripture, being divine, are of contemporary relevance (as they certainly are) is to treat Scripture as contemporary in its literary forms. No doubt many have done this, believing that thus they did God service. But our words have no link with this naivety; they express no advance commitment of any kind in the field of biblical interpretation, save that whatever Scripture, rightly interpreted (interpreted, that is, a posteriori, with linguistic correctness, in terms of the discernible literary character of each book, against its own historical and cultural background, and in light of its topical relation to other books), proves to be saying should be reverently received, as from God.”

In addition, it has not escaped my attention that, as someone claiming to be a Bible guy, you believe a great many things not contained in the Scriptures. For example, you suppose that there was only one pair of cats represented on your ark (all because you have trouble squeezing all the animals, including dinosaurs, onboard) from which all the various known species (both current and extinct) within the Felidae grouping descend. This would, therefore, necessitate a hitherto unprecedented and unwitnessed version of evolution on steroids — for which there is zero biblical support — in your post-global-flood period (during the past 4,000 odd years). And this is to say nothing of the genetic problems ensuing from such a narrow gene pool. But I digress. If you already embrace evolution to a degree, what do you think we lose by accepting the whole thing? I mean, if anything, accepting common descent should only ever foster within us a greater affinity with the rest of creation, and that can hardly be a bad thing.

Evolution is a foregone conclusion and you see fit to employ it, at least to a degree, to explain how all the extant and perished species squeezed aboard your ark. Non-believers have no trouble sniffing out your invented ’just-so’ stories which are patently false. I mean, for all the difference it makes, you may as well propose that the ark operated like the Tardis in Dr Who, bigger on the inside. Evolution is the reason why flu (and now COVID) vaccines need to be constantly updated to ensure their effectiveness. Anyway, it’s not just evolution that you are opposing. Myriad scientific disciplines all attest to the earth’s vast age.

I, for one, baulk at the title of your organisation, Answers in Genesis, because if answers are to be found anywhere they are surely to be found in Jesus. The only questions worth asking of Genesis relate invariably to Jesus. For instance, Jesus is the fulfilment of the woman’s offspring whose heel is struck in the process of crushing the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). In fact, the whole reason the Old Testament exists is to point us inexorably towards Jesus (Luke 24:27); the New Testament attests (with Jesus’ very own words) that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 5:17). How I long to see a change of direction and a rebranding for your organisation: Answers in Jesus.

My hope and prayer is that we can all be teachable and ready to accept correction. Who knows, perhaps some who have unnecessarily shipwrecked their faith on evolution will even find their way back into the Father’s loving embrace? Jesus now exerts influence over approaching one third of the world’s population, which is remarkable growth considering He started with just twelve disciples. Is it really so preposterous, then, that all life had such a humble beginning, reaching back to an initial single-celled organism?

Your brother in Christ,

Sparks