Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180008A
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00:31 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:34 I'm Tim Standish. 00:35 And usually, 00:38 when I introduce myself, I say that I am a biologist, 00:42 but I actually have a PhD in biology and public policy. 00:47 Wow. 00:49 And public policy is all about laws 00:51 and how people relate with one another, 00:54 the rules by which a society will operate. 00:58 Well, Tim, I'm glad you're here to do this series with us, 01:01 and we're so glad that you are joining us today. 01:06 We will be talking about human relationships. 01:09 If we look from the biblical perspective, 01:12 God made us special, He made us in His image, 01:16 and He had a plan and a purpose for our lives. 01:19 And He made man to dominate the rest, 01:23 to go out, have dominion over the rest of His creation. 01:28 And when we use that word domination, 01:31 we do not mean to somehow lord over the rest of the creation. 01:36 We mean caring for the creation. 01:38 Yes. 01:40 God has entrusted it to us. 01:42 But what about with each other? 01:44 God clearly defines the relationship 01:47 between humans and the rest of the creation. 01:50 What about humans and humans? 01:53 Well, here in Matthew, 01:55 we have a record of something that Jesus Christ Himself said. 01:58 He was talking about the sacrament of marriage, 02:02 and He said this, "'Haven't you read,' he, 02:06 this is Jesus, replied, 'that at the beginning 02:11 the Creator made them male and female, 02:14 and He said, 02:15 'For this reason 02:17 a man will leave his father and mother 02:19 and be united to his wife, 02:22 and the two will become one flesh'? 02:26 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 02:29 Therefore, what God has joined together, 02:33 let no one separate. 02:36 So God intended for there to be perfect harmony 02:39 and unity in human relationships, 02:42 particularly between us, between spouses. 02:46 Between spouses, yes. 02:47 There is something beautiful and glorious about that, 02:50 something that tells us something about God 02:53 in the relationship between a man and a woman, 02:57 something incredibly special. 02:59 And of course, we use words like love to describe that. 03:03 But then sometimes, 03:04 we confuse love with sensual things... 03:07 Lust. Or lust, those sorts of things. 03:11 Love is a lot more than that. 03:14 Especially when you think of God's love, 03:16 it is other-centered love. 03:19 And that's how we grow. 03:20 When you grow in love, 03:22 I mean, we don't really say follow them. 03:23 Self-sacrificing. Yes. 03:25 It's other-centered, self-sacrificing love. 03:29 True love is putting the interest of another being 03:35 before your own. 03:36 And that's God's. 03:38 That's God's, that's God's love. 03:40 Now I want you to compare that. 03:41 Or think about this in the context 03:43 of what James Rachel wrote a few years ago. 03:46 He is talking about morality 03:48 from an evolutionary perspective. 03:51 And he says, 03:52 "An evolutionary perspective denies that 03:55 humans are different in kind from other animals, 03:59 and one cannot reasonably make distinctions in morals 04:04 where none exist in fact." 04:08 You can imagine why today we have some of these 04:13 strange and confusing ideas sort of being tossed around 04:17 about how humans should relate to one another. 04:21 This is a source of that. 04:24 I don't want to blame everything necessarily on this. 04:27 But certainly, if you say, "I am an animal. 04:31 And therefore, 04:33 God has no dominion over me." 04:40 I can make up my own things. 04:43 If I feel like doing something, 04:46 I should just be able to do it because I'm an animal. 04:51 A quick story. Yeah. 04:53 I interviewed a gentleman who was a sheriff 04:55 who in Northern California went to high school. 04:59 He worked with gangs. 05:01 And he was meeting with a group of boys 05:04 that were 17-18 years old. 05:06 And they had never heard the gospel, 05:08 they never heard about Jesus and God. 05:11 And when these young men understood 05:14 that they didn't evolve from an ape, 05:17 that they were truly made in God's image for purpose, 05:22 he was able to rescue 90% of them, 05:26 came out of the gang. 05:27 Isn't that wonderful? 05:29 You know, the gospel is so transformative. 05:31 Yes. 05:32 You can see the way that God can, 05:36 in fact, change people's lives. 05:38 We are more than just subject 05:42 to whatever we feel like doing at any instant in time. 05:47 But this different morality 05:52 has massive implications in a society 05:56 and the way that people relate to each other. 05:59 Let's jump back and just, well, see what Charles Darwin, 06:03 how he applies this, not just to relationships 06:07 between two individuals in a marriage or something 06:12 but how he sees things working out 06:15 for different cultures or different races of people. 06:19 He says, "I can see no difficulty 06:22 in the most intellectual individuals 06:25 of a species being continually selected. 06:28 And the intellect of the new species 06:31 thus improved, 06:33 aided probably by effects of inherited mental exercise. 06:38 I look at this process 06:41 as now going on with the races of man. 06:46 The less intellectual races being exterminated." 06:50 He's saying, "Hey, this extermination of people 06:53 whom he called savages..." 06:55 Some of whom, by the way, were my ancestors. 07:01 He sees that is the way it should be. 07:03 That's how evolutionary progress occurs. 07:08 No regard for the value of life. 07:10 Exactly. 07:11 Obviously, there can be no possibility 07:16 of racial equality in the Darwinian view of things 07:21 because it's all about survival of the fittest. 07:24 Some people, some groups, some individuals, 07:27 something has to be more fit than something else. 07:31 So was Adolf Hitler a fan of Charles Darwin? 07:35 Oh, yes. 07:36 Yeah, we're actually gonna get to that. 07:38 But first, I wanna contrast this 07:40 with the biblical view, 07:42 which is rooted in creation. 07:43 Here's Paul and he's talking to Epicurean philosophers here. 07:47 People who believed 07:48 in a materialistic view of reality, 07:52 and he writes, "From one man He, 07:54 this is God, made all the nations 07:56 that they shouldn't inhabit the whole earth. 07:58 And He marked out 08:00 their appointed times in history 08:01 and the boundaries of their lands." 08:02 He's saying, "Hey, we're all descended 08:04 from one man, 08:06 Greek, Jew, slave, free, all those sorts of things." 08:11 Paul actually lays this out very, very clearly. 08:14 And this is rooted in the idea 08:16 of we're all descended from Adam 08:18 and we can all become children of God 08:22 by adoption by the second Adam, 08:26 Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Creator. 08:30 So prejudice, 08:31 when you see somebody that's being prejudiced 08:33 because of their skin color, for example, 08:36 really, they have 99.9999% more in common with that person. 08:43 They just have something different externally. 08:46 You know what's interesting, there are a lot of people 08:47 who try to somehow quantify differences like this 08:51 and then draw conclusions from it. 08:54 My view is this, 08:55 "Hey, you know what, 08:57 somebody who is of African ancestry 08:59 is just as human as I am. 09:01 Somebody who has an Asian ancestry 09:04 is just as human as I am." 09:06 God made us diverse 09:09 and we are all profoundly equal. 09:14 It doesn't matter if we are 80% the same. 09:19 We are human beings 09:21 and God made all humans absolutely equal 09:28 in a very profound way. 09:30 Here's Paul writing again. 09:31 He's writing here actually to the Galatians, and he says, 09:34 "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, 09:36 neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, 09:41 for you are all one in Christ Jesus," 09:45 who, of course, is our Creator and Redeemer. 09:49 It's a very, very clear message 09:51 rooted in the biblical view of creation. 09:57 Now let's jump again back and look at the sorts of things 10:00 that Darwin was writing. 10:02 He says, "There is reason to believe that 10:05 vaccination has preserved thousands, 10:08 who from a weak constitution 10:10 would formally have succumbed to smallpox." 10:12 And you would think, 10:13 "Hey, this is only a good thing, right?" 10:15 Yes, indeed. 10:16 Now Darwin equivocates on this. 10:18 And I'm giving a short quote here. 10:19 So anyone who's interested, I invite them to go and look. 10:22 This is in a book called The Descent of Man. 10:24 Look this up and read it in context 10:27 because, you know, 10:30 he's obviously struggling himself with this, 10:32 how could this be a bad thing. 10:34 But he goes on and he says, 10:36 "Thus the weak members of civilized societies 10:39 propagate their kind. 10:41 No one who has attended 10:43 to the breeding of domestic animals 10:45 will doubt that this must be highly injurious 10:49 to the race of man." 10:51 Ultimately, vaccinations are bad 10:54 because it saves lives. 10:55 Because it saves people. 10:58 You know, the logic is absolutely incredible. 11:03 Jesus Christ is not willing that any should perish. 11:06 That's the biblical view. That's the Christian view. 11:09 Every human being, we want to do 11:11 what we can do to save them. 11:14 Darwinism is to a large degree 11:16 about the week being eliminated 11:23 and, of course, 11:24 viewing human beings as animals. 11:27 Yes. 11:28 But what happens as we apply that 11:31 in a logical way. 11:33 I'm just gonna give you this example here. 11:36 But this is not unique. 11:39 This is in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. 11:42 This is not in some crazy fringe sort of thing. 11:46 These are people who are taken seriously. 11:50 And they write, 11:51 "We claim that killing a newborn 11:55 could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances 12:00 where abortion would be." 12:01 Now I personally don't think 12:03 that abortion is ethically permissible, 12:08 but these people do. 12:09 They think that, you know, in their view, 12:12 if this thing is not fully human, 12:15 then it's okay to destroy its life. 12:18 They're talking about an actual newborn. 12:20 They're talking now about a baby, 12:22 a baby that's been born. 12:24 And they say, "Such circumstances, 12:26 where it's okay to kill this child, 12:28 such circumstances include cases 12:31 where the newborn has the potential 12:32 to have an at least acceptable life, 12:35 but the well-being of the family is at risk." 12:39 I'm not even going to say anymore. 12:42 Yeah. Adolf Hitler. 12:43 These are ideas about destroying the weak. 12:46 If you're not strong enough to protect yourself, 12:48 you don't have rights are really horrifying. 12:50 Hitler wrote, "By means of the struggle, 12:52 the elites are continually renewed. 12:54 The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle 12:58 by allowing the survival of the fittest. 13:00 Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, 13:04 a protest against nature. 13:06 Taken to its logical extreme, 13:07 Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation 13:10 of the human failure." 13:11 And we know the outcome of this, 13:13 the slaughter of the weak. 13:15 The Bible says, "Defend the weak 13:17 and the fatherless. 13:18 Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. 13:20 Rescue the weak and the needy. 13:22 Deliver them from the hand of the wicked." 13:25 That is what we get. 13:26 And of course, 13:28 Marxism also built off this Darwinian foundation. 13:31 It's all about struggle. 13:33 And we know the outcome of these things. 13:38 And yet what did Jesus say? 13:40 He said, you know, when I come, this is what the King will say, 13:44 "Come, you who are blessed by My Father, 13:45 take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you 13:48 since the creation of the world. 13:49 For I was hungry 13:51 and you gave me something to eat, 13:52 I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink." 13:54 And so on. 13:55 It's all about caring for the weak. 13:59 It's not about destroying people 14:03 who can't protect themselves. 14:04 So what does this reveal about the Creator? 14:07 His existence has multiple persons, 14:10 but one being is illustrated in the sacrament of marriage. 14:15 But in addition to that, 14:17 His care for everyone 14:19 is shown in the way He defines our relationships, 14:24 love, care, not power and destroying the weak. 14:30 What we believe about the sanctity of life, 14:33 about the value of life 14:35 will determine how we treat other people, 14:39 not only in our personal circles 14:42 but in our government. 14:43 So please stay tuned 14:45 because we have a human rights attorney 14:48 that will be joining us to talk about it. |
Revised 2019-03-28