For those still reading Ocellated, sorry for the lack of blogging goodness lately. Grad school has officially consumed my life, and I love it.

This week shows absolutely no signs of letting up either. A test today (bird orders of the world - which I’ll ace) and one tomorrow (advanced genetics — I’ll be beaten and disfigured to the point of being barely recognizable) will keep me snowed under. I also leave for a weekend in the Davis Mountains this Friday! I haven’t been back since I left this summer from thesis research.

What’s really been sucking up my time though is the Wednesday bible class lessons I’ve been doing over evolution. When I’m not working on school or other business jobs I have on the side, I’ve been working on those lessons.

Last week (the second lesson) was large scale evolutionary change. Cool things like the reptile-mammal transition, theropod dinosaur - bird transition, biogeography, adaptive radiations, vestigial traits, and the 2000 pound elephant in the room all along, human evolution. The audience (with a conservative evangelical background) did quite well, and took in stride human chromosome number 2 being the combination (fusion) of chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13. Indeed you can read a little about that evidence yourself here.

I have been spending much of the week since that lesson though struggling with a desire to feel merciful and forgiving, and a sense of righteous indignation. I expected some people to be upset. I mentally prepared myself for it and was (and am) fully determined to be polite and gracious in my conversations that ensue.

What’s frustrated me so was a conversation that I overhead as I made a beeline to the kitchen to grab liquid refreshment to quench the cracked and burning surface that was my throat after an extended period of talking with no breaks. One person in the class was talking to another and “refuting” everything they’d just seen. I completely stayed out of the conversation. But as I thought about it, what troubled me so was that this person was wasting an opportunity. At the front of the room, two biology grad students who’d just taught the class, both Christians, were available to answer questions. But instead of taking the opportunity to ask further questions and reflect on what they’d just heard, this person instead cornered someone to gripe about the class.

The irony is ripe here. The very creation story some cling as having to be literal teaches much about the dangers of pride and the virtues of humility. Yet pride and a lack of humility rear their ugly head when the evolution / creation issue gets discussed.

Oh well. That’s why I’m teaching the class. And at least for some people, I have little doubt they’ll find it worthy of their time and consideration.

A recent post over at the Panda’s Thumb by Mark Isaak addressed The Larger Issue of Bad Religion. The Panda’s Thumb is a rowdy kind of place, and this post was no exception, spawning 324 comments (at the time I write this) since it was published.

Anticipating the backlash from a topic such as this, the author tries to narrow the definition of what bad religion is.

Everyone has different ideas about what is good in a religion, so it might seem that defining bad religion would be impossibly contentious. But there is one simple criterion which gets to the heart of most religion-related problems and which must be embraced by anyone who accepts the Golden Rule: A person is practicing bad religion if he or she, uninvited, attempts to impose any of their religious beliefs on another. A bad religion is any religion which condones such behavior. Other bad practices and beliefs can appear in religion, but by sticking to that one criterion, we can keep this simple and hopefully less controversial.

Hmmm. What do I think of that? Can I, as a Christian, agree with it?

First off, I don’t know the author at all, so I’m left to interpret what he’s written. Quite simply, if by impose he’s talking about forcefully or manipulatively bringing your religious beliefs to others, then I wholeheartedly concur with this definition. I believe there is strong Biblical precedent for such a view.

In fact, my real desire to comment on this post was its relevance to a discussion along these exact lines at church just last Sunday (the same day this post was published). We’ve been having a series of classes on grace — both how we receive it and how we extend it to others. Our class looked at the text in John 4: 1-26. In this passage, Jesus meets a women at a well who by cultural standards was probably held in low regard, and through the course of the story we learn that she’s been with at least five men. The interesting thing about the story is that Jesus simply does not confront her in the sense that many Christians today might confront someone they view as living in sin. Her actions and choices, even when face to face with Jesus, are her own.

Along the same lines, when I read the story in the beginning of Genesis, the picture of God I see does not include His creation on a leash. Adam and Eve have authentic meaningful choices, and their relationships with God are not contrived. Incidentally, Christian evolutionists are often derided for their treatment of early Genesis. Here again I suggest (not wishing to sound arrogant) that we’re actually getting the point of early Genesis as it was really intended, rather than missing it by turning it into some kind of warped scientific or historical text.

These two stories (and I could come up with many more no doubt) serve as examples of my core understanding of God’s relationship with us. It’s not a forceful or manipulative relationship. This is where many of His people and God now seem to differ. And this is precisely why I’m happy to concur with this definition of bad religion.

Back to the original post though. If, however, impose includes even talking to people about your beliefs, then I must withdraw my support from such a definition of bad religion. This touches upon the larger issue of the dirty word evangelism. I call it a dirty word because I am so put off by the ways in which many Christians conduct it. They clearly meet the criteria for bad religion by crossing the line of forcefulness and manipulation. But like so many things in life, this is a fuzzy line. While I certainly don’t choose to go up to total strangers and — uninvited — try to tell them about my religious beliefs, would doing so constitute “bad religion” if I were polite, immediately went elsewhere if they weren’t interested in talking, etc? While I would certainly find their approach distasteful — and even argue against it were I in a conversation with such people — I can’t say that all forms of traditional evangelism are necessarily bad religion.