KEN HAM'S HAMMER

I don't care for Ken Ham - the Creation Museum guy. I mean the museum and the ark are fine enough, but some of the guy's theology and his attitude are too much for my tastes. He is the quintessential "man with a hammer" to whom everything looks like a nail. 

That doesn't keep me from listening to his videos now and then - I do what I can to avoid echo chambers. 

I caught Ham's latest video this evening as I drove home from Indianapolis. (I was listening, not watching!)

I have to give him credit for pointing out a couple of things that maybe should be obvious to believers but that tend to fly under the radar.

He showed how, in the book of Acts, the gospel was delivered differently to Jews than to it was to the Gentiles. The Jews had an Old Testament understanding of God's nature and human sin and this served as a foundation for upon which the Apostles could build their explanation of Jesus as the Messiah.

The Gentiles, on the other hand, were coming from a completely different worldview and Paul needed to start back at the very beginning - explaining a God who was unknown to them.

This makes sense of Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that "Christ crucified" was a "stumbling block" to the Jews - as they were on board up to the point where God's Messiah has to die. 

And "Christ crucified" was "foolishness" to the Gentiles - since they were having to process this whole new way of understanding their relationship to God.

Ham was making this point in order to say that a generation ago, evangelization in America could employ an approach to presenting the gospel to unbelievers much the way the Apostles presented it to the Jews - there was already a foundational understanding in place. 

But now? Ham made his case that presenting the gospel in modern America is more like explaining it to the Greeks in the 1st century. 

I agree and it is a point worth considering.

Of course Ham then takes the whole thing one step too far. 

But I knew it was coming: According to Ham, to lay that needed foundation for the gospel, we need to teach people to read the Genesis creation account as literally as possible and to reject evolution out of hand. 

Well, Ken, I was with you up until you made an unquestioning embrace of a young earth and a total refusal of evolution a necessary step in receiving the gospel. 😕

But, that's his hammer.