Easter 2020. The churches are empty, and the shadow of death hangs over our land. As Joni Mitchell sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….” Have we, as a society, lost something that we’ll never recover? I hope not, but [...]

Becoming Adam Podcast – Becoming Adam, Becoming Christ

The Death of Death

Like any human enterprise, culture can serve as a vehicle for good or evil. What of our culture? The values modeled by those in power give us a clue.... In Part 3 of Adam’s Evolutionary Journey, I said, “Human beings are indoctrinated into sin at the same time and in [...]

A Primer on Culture and a Warning about Role Models

Was Adam directly created from dust and placed in a sinless, deathless paradise? If so, how does he represent me before God? What does a perfect man in a perfect environment have in common with anyone?

Kierkegaard’s Complaint: Putting Adam ‘Fantastically Outside’ of History

Since everyone is obsessed with politics this week, the time seemed right for another episode of Becoming Christ. As I mentioned in the first episode, to understand Jesus, we must enter his story and view him through the eyes of his first-century audience. Seeing Jesus as they saw him requires [...]

Becoming Christ: The Political Context

Before my unexpected “vacation,” one of my podcast listeners had asked for clarity on my series, Adam’s Evolutionary Journey. “After listening to Episode 3,” she wrote, “I was left feeling a little empty. Where is God in the evolutionary process? Did he just start the universe with the Big Bang [...]

God’s Presence and Guidance in Evolution

My formative years were spent in ultra-conservative Amarillo, Texas, during the 1970s. My family faithfully attended a Methodist church down the street from our house, and this being the ’70s, we piled into the car and drove to the end of the block to get there, rain or shine.

Culture War, Inerrancy, Tolstoy, & the Gospels: A Personal Journey

Living in a predominantly Christian culture, all of us – even those of us who don’t identify as Christian – think we know who Jesus is. We grew up decorating Christmas trees, singing carols, and watching Charlie Brown specials. Many of us attended church as children; others were dragged there [...]

Becoming Christ: The Birth of Jesus the Anointed

Biologist Joshua Swamidass claims the ‘fall’ took place as recently as 4000 BC. Are murder, cannibalism, magic, and idolatry not sinful? ... In my previous review of Genealogical Adam & Eve, I focused mainly on the scientific problems with the book. Specifically, the isolation of Tasmania adds at least 10,000 [...]

Genealogical Adam & Eve Makes God a Monster

Can the ‘fall’ be an actual event in human history? Is ‘original sin’ something real, or just a Christian fairytale? ... The structural metaphor that MORAL KNOWLEDGE = COMING OF AGE is immediately grasped by every human being in every culture, and in Genesis 2–3 it’s applied to the “the [...]

Adam's Evolutionary Journey, Pt. 3: Genesis & Evolution in Dialogue

Biologist Joshua Swamidass says a literal Adam and Eve could have lived as recently as 6000 years ago. Tasmania says otherwise. ... What does genealogy have to do with Adam and Eve? Simply, it allowed them to become everyone’s “parents” without requiring them to be the first humans. In the [...]

The Death of Genealogical Adam: Shipwrecked in the Bass Strait

The opening chapters of the Bible hint that language, empathy, and morality hold the keys to human uniqueness. What does science say? ... The first steps toward human language required walking on two legs. In four-legged animals, breathing and running are synchronized to one breath per stride as the thorax [...]

Adam's Evolutionary Journey, Pt. 2

Given the fact of evolution, was there a historical “fall”? Without a literal Adam and Eve and a literal command to break, was the biblical “fall” even possible? ... In the last decade, genetics effectively ruled out an original “first pair” as the origin of our species, and 10 million [...]

Adam's Evolutionary Journey, Pt. 1: Science & Scripture in Conversation

Genesis for a New Generation: Adam and Eve, Evolution, Original Sin and the Fall

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Becoming Adam Podcast – Becoming Adam, Becoming Christ

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