This week we learned that Cain married his sister and founded a city which he named after his son. We also learned about his grandson Lamech who had two wives and killed a young man just for dissing him which makes him the patron saint of gang-bangers. And we learned that everyone lived several hundred years and that the Earth is only about 15,000 years old at most. Mostly we learned about people having sons. This one had a son and that one had a son. Oh, and Adam and Eve got busy in the sack again and had another son, Seth, to replace Abel.
Something doesn't add up and it's not just those numbers. Reading this part of Genesis reminds me of those provinces in China and India where men are said to vastly outnumber women. Where are all the women? Assuming that the birth rate is about 50-50 for both sexes, that's a whole lot of women who are not mentioned. And why not? Well, they just weren't important to the story, that's all. Make no mistake about it, this is a man's book through and through. Women are there just to provide sons. Otherwise they are not to be seen or heard. The New Testament explicitly draws on Genesis to justify its ban on women's leadership in the church. It's all because of Eve, we're told.
It's pretty hard to come up with material for a sermon when it is this dude had a son and he had a son and they all lived for hundreds of years, but Pastor did his best. We learned that one of the things that stumps atheists and secular humanists is that they don't know who invented music but we do, his name was Jubal and he was one of Lamech's boys. He invented the flute and the lyre. Archeology tells us that those were the earliest musical instruments invented so the Bible must be true. And we mustn't think that technology is bad even though Cain's line invented it, although some churches (which ones? the Amish?) say it is. (Funny, I did not know that that was behind the Amish rejection of technology; I thought it was because they did not want to become dependent on the outside world.) Naturally there was nothing about stone points, no Folsom, no Clovis, no Lascaux cave paintings, no Neanderthals or the other more recently discovered extinct Homo species. Of course not. Like the women, they don't fit into the story either. So we will ignore them because odds are our audience won't know anything about them either.
Now I did check with one of the assistant pastors and he said that while all the elders believe every word of this it is not necessary to do so to become a member. As long as you believe the core doctrine about Christ the other is not all that essential. And he's probably right. Most of the people in that type of church don't know and don't care about all this science stuff and they live perfectly happy lives without it. The question I did not ask him is do you think such a person (who does care and know) would be very happy in your church for long? Or would they go elsewhere? Thus a kind of "natural selection" takes place whereby the church tends to limit itself to those who have no interest or education in the sciences.
I have written about these things in length, describing my journey and my struggles, because Evangelical churches like this one are among the fastest-growing in the United States and they have a lot of influence among those who are not so well-educated. This is the type of church you are most likely to get invited to. And no, they will not tell you up front that believing in a young earth created in six 24-hour days is part of the deal. They will not tell prospective female members that a second-class role in ministry (if at all) is part of the deal. And yet these things are part of the deal. To say it isn't required for membership is somewhat misleading because if this is what the leadership believes and teaches from the pulpit and what the majority of the members believe, then there will be a lot of pressure on nonconformists like myself to either conform or hold our tongues.
Something doesn't add up and it's not just those numbers. Reading this part of Genesis reminds me of those provinces in China and India where men are said to vastly outnumber women. Where are all the women? Assuming that the birth rate is about 50-50 for both sexes, that's a whole lot of women who are not mentioned. And why not? Well, they just weren't important to the story, that's all. Make no mistake about it, this is a man's book through and through. Women are there just to provide sons. Otherwise they are not to be seen or heard. The New Testament explicitly draws on Genesis to justify its ban on women's leadership in the church. It's all because of Eve, we're told.
It's pretty hard to come up with material for a sermon when it is this dude had a son and he had a son and they all lived for hundreds of years, but Pastor did his best. We learned that one of the things that stumps atheists and secular humanists is that they don't know who invented music but we do, his name was Jubal and he was one of Lamech's boys. He invented the flute and the lyre. Archeology tells us that those were the earliest musical instruments invented so the Bible must be true. And we mustn't think that technology is bad even though Cain's line invented it, although some churches (which ones? the Amish?) say it is. (Funny, I did not know that that was behind the Amish rejection of technology; I thought it was because they did not want to become dependent on the outside world.) Naturally there was nothing about stone points, no Folsom, no Clovis, no Lascaux cave paintings, no Neanderthals or the other more recently discovered extinct Homo species. Of course not. Like the women, they don't fit into the story either. So we will ignore them because odds are our audience won't know anything about them either.
Now I did check with one of the assistant pastors and he said that while all the elders believe every word of this it is not necessary to do so to become a member. As long as you believe the core doctrine about Christ the other is not all that essential. And he's probably right. Most of the people in that type of church don't know and don't care about all this science stuff and they live perfectly happy lives without it. The question I did not ask him is do you think such a person (who does care and know) would be very happy in your church for long? Or would they go elsewhere? Thus a kind of "natural selection" takes place whereby the church tends to limit itself to those who have no interest or education in the sciences.
I have written about these things in length, describing my journey and my struggles, because Evangelical churches like this one are among the fastest-growing in the United States and they have a lot of influence among those who are not so well-educated. This is the type of church you are most likely to get invited to. And no, they will not tell you up front that believing in a young earth created in six 24-hour days is part of the deal. They will not tell prospective female members that a second-class role in ministry (if at all) is part of the deal. And yet these things are part of the deal. To say it isn't required for membership is somewhat misleading because if this is what the leadership believes and teaches from the pulpit and what the majority of the members believe, then there will be a lot of pressure on nonconformists like myself to either conform or hold our tongues.
