Rachel Held Evans, with an EXCELLENT post…

    Last week Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an excellent blog post about intellectual discipleship and the importance of loving God with our minds. I actually agreed with quite a few of his conclusions, including this one: 

    A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth… The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear.

    Face all questions without fear.

    That’s exactly what I tried to do about two years ago when, despite some serious trepidation, I decided to learn all I could about the science behind evolutionary theory and the biblical scholarship surrounding interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. I’d been raised with the young earth creationist view and was familiar with the arguments from that camp, but what little evidence I’d studied from “the other side” struck me as compelling and sound. I figured that if “all truth is God’s truth,” then there would be no harm in honestly examining the evidence for myself.

    Within a few months, it became clear to me that to deny the scientific veracity of an old earth required an interpretation of the data that I could not in good conscience accept. And by the end of the year, I’d uncovered so much rich biblical scholarship regarding creation narratives in ancient Near Eastern culture that to demand that Genesis 1 and 2 address modern scientific questions seemed wholly unnecessary to preserving the inherent truth of the text.

    (Note: Some of the most helpful books I encountered during this period of study included The Language of God by Francis Collins, The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton, Saving Darwin by Karl Giberson, and Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne.)

    I spoke one-on-one with scientists. I read through commentaries as old as Augustine. I got connected with the BioLogos Forum and even attended a conference on science and faith where I pretended to understand jokes at the lunch table about protein biosynthesis.

    I did my due diligence to love God with my mind, even when it required a dramatic shift in my perspective.

    And Al Mohler didn’t like it…

It continues on from there.  An outstanding read from Rachel, especially in light of my previous post.