Friday Fun...Just Like Ol' Abner Drew It Up

In the cold of winter, a baseball fan like me needs to throw a few logs on the fire to keep warm until spring training. Here's one such piece of kindling that was brought to my attention by one of my seminary professors, Jack Collins.

A Very Right Response to a Very Wrong Thing

The question over the historicity of Adam and Eve seems to be somewhat of a hot topic these days in evangelical Christianity.  In June there was a story on it in Christianity Today, and one of my favorite professors from seminary, Dr. Jack Collins recently penned the book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care, published by Crossway.

Yesterday I saw a blog post from Andy Nasseli, quoting the following snippet of the book, originally included in a funeral homily that Dr. Collins delivered:

On Saturday, I heard Jackie say, “No parent should ever have to outlive their own child.” I heard the same words from my father’s mother when my father died; and my wife and I said the same thing when we lost our first child. The pain is horrible; the loss is beyond our ability to describe.

When we feel this grief, we are feeling that it’s just not right for this to happen. We don’t want our loved ones to suffer; we don’t want to be separated from them by death. We want to be sure that they are happy, and we want to be able to enjoy their company always.

The Bible tells us that these feelings we have are right. Death and suffering are intruders in God’s good world; they don’t belong here. And the story of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, tells us how these evil things came in: When these, the parents of us all, disobeyed God, they opened the door to all manner of sin and evil, not only for themselves, but also for us.

You don’t need me to prove it; it’s all around us. It’s why we are here today.

But the Bible story doesn’t end there: instead it tells us about how God wants to help us, to heal us of what is wrong with us.

Though I have not yet read the book, I very much look forward to doing so.  Dr. Collins spoke on this topic at the 2009 Mid-Michigan Conference on Reformed Theology, hosted by our church.  Audio for that (as well as messages from other years' conferences) is available here.

*************UPDATE**************
John Starke had an interview with Dr. Collins regarding the book today (7/8) at The Gospel Coalition website.

Indeed, God Does Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. But...

A couple weeks ago, Trevin Wax posted this picture as part of a blog post which included an excerpt from his book, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals.  In it he pointed out that God's "wonderful plan" for us is not always the same "wonderful plan" we would have for ourselves.  Whereas we would often desire health, wealth and happiness, along with physical and emotional security, what God desires is that we would be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

Often this occurs through pain and suffering, trials and persecution.  And sometimes it happens that we experience these not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of others.  After all, we are not individually (as we so often functionally suppose) the center of God's world.  Rather he is to be uniquely the center of ours.

As my seminary professor Dr. Jack Collins liked to put, "Don't hear what I'm not saying."  Indeed, we should remember (and be encouraged by!) the fact "that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose," (Romans 8:28, ESV).  But we need to remember that the good toward which all things work is not always an earthly good.  As Wax put it:

"Our lives do not always seem wonderful. But rather than trying to see what wonderful plan God has for giving us our best life now, Christians trust that the picture God is painting will be beautiful, so we look to experiencing our best life later. God has a wonderful plan, and because of his grace, we are part of that plan."

Click here to read his whole post.