My high school chemistry teacher was a good man. Patient during class and willing to work with those that needed help after. He openly confessed his belief in Jesus. As I said, a good man, but one who didn't think long enough, or hard enough about his theology. He was more than a chemistry teacher to me, however, as I also served as his student assistant. I would prep the classroom for next day, making sure everything the students would need. It was on one occasion when I was diluting a mixture of hydrochloric acid that we had an opportunity to talk about our mutual faith in Jesus.

My teacher really wanted his faith to fit with the science he was trained in, so he took hold of theistic evolution. "I believe," he told me, "that God used the process of evolution to create all life on the planet." Now, even at 17 I understood that what we believe about God and the Bible impacts everything else about us. The truth of God and his word permeates every life, even an unbeliever's life. Take our clothing, for example. Why do wear clothes? Because of shame. The same shame Adam and Eve felt when they first sinned. At that time God made them clothes to wear, and humanity has mostly been somewhat fashionable ever since. Believe the Bible is God's word or not, that's your choice, but you probably wear clothes and that's one small part of the impact God has on you.

"You believe the Bible is God's Word, right?" I asked my professor. He agreed that he did. "What is the foundational belief of evolution?" I asked again. He answered correctly. "And survival of the fittest depends on death, right? I mean one thing has to die so something else can live on." He agreed. "So you're telling me that you believe in a God that created a world that depends on death to create life. But I believe the Bible when it says that God created the world without death, and that it was the sin of man that brought death into it." There was a long silence between us. "It sounds to me," I concluded, "that we serve two different Gods."

What if my professor's idea about creation were true? What difference would it make? For starters, it would mean the Bible is wrong and not trustworthy. Even more than that, however, it would mean that created a very brutal world, instead of a glorious one without sin and death. That make's God less than all loving, less that all caring, less than just. Why should we be punished with death and eternal separation from God if it were God that created such an unjust world in the beginning? Everything I know God to be from the Bible would be wrong. The God that created life through evolution sounds more like a devil to me. I think it did to the science teacher too.

When Scripture is not the foundation for everything we believe, we are easily lead astray into worshiping a false god. This is not to say that there is no room for our experiences with God, or our emotions. Both are necessary and find their place in worship. But who we worship must be defined by the Bible alone. From that understanding, we can grow nearer to God and have experiences and feelings that are rightly aligned with the one we worship.