GENESIS THREE, ADAM, THE FALL, AND THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS

How should we regard Genesis 3, which describes the Fall of humanity into sin and death? Is it historical or non-historical, as the theistic evolutionists (TEs) maintain?

You might find it strange that TEs are passing judgment on the Bible. However, they have a vested interest in claiming that all the chapters that might contradict evolution as non-historical. For one thing, they believe that death and the survival-of-the-fittest was God’s original plan for evolving us, but this contradicts the plain historical account of not only Genesis 3 but also of Genesis 1-11.

However, does the Bible provide any basis to regard Genesis 3 as non-historical and mythological as the TE claims?

Genesis 3 claims that there was no sin and death until Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit. This is consistent with the creation account in which God states that everything He had created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Did this estimation preclude sin and death? Evidently! The creation account is explicit that animals were not intended to eat other animals (1:29-30), and that there had been such a state of comfort and peace that Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed (2:25), because they had not yet sinned.

Meanwhile, God had warned His first human creation against one thing – eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

·       And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

After their sin, God gave further details of what this death entailed:

·       “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

According to the Biblical account, God’s creation had been “very good,” but we brought sin and death, not God. Sin and death entered the world together, in contrast to the evolutionary account. The NT also affirms its historicity:

·       For the creation was subjected to futility [corruption – the Fall] not willingly, but because of him [God], who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:20-22)

The “groaning” hadn’t been according to God’s design, but He allowed the Fall “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption.”

Instead, had sin and death been part of God’s glorious plan involving the survival-of-the-fittest, the rest of the Biblical account would have opposed it. For instance, if death had been part of God’s “very good” creation, then He couldn’t blame Cain for killing his brother Abel. After all, it could have been justified by God’s own tool – the survival-of-the-fittest. Cain was simply the fitter one. In fact, any murderer or rapist would have been able to justify his behavior with such a perverse rationale.

There are many reasons that we regard the Genesis accounts as historical. For one thing, the genealogies which include Abraham and even Jesus argue for the historicity of Genesis. If Adam and Eve weren’t historical, then there would be no reason that the rest of the people in his genealogy should be regarded as historical.

Besides, all of the later Biblical commentary also regard these chapters of Genesis as historical. Here is a sampling from the NT affirming the historical creation order we find in Genesis:

·       When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” (Acts 4:24)

·       He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” (Hebrews 1:10)

·       By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3)

·       Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3)

Adam as the first man:

·       For Adam was formed first, then Eve. (1 Timothy 2:13)

·       So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

·       [Jesus] the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. (Luke 3:38)

·       Enoch, the seventh from Adam. (Jude 1:14)

·       Jesus replied, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Mark 10:5-9)

·       “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. (Acts 17:26)

·       For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Corinthians 11:8-9)

Adam as the original sinner and the cause of the Fall:

·       For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

·       Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:14)

If Adam’s work had merely been a matter of myth or parable, then too should we regard the work of Jesus.

Other verses regard even the serpent/Satan as historical :

• And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. (Romans 16:20; Compare with Gen. 3:15)

·       And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)

• He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; (Rev. 20:2)

To deny that Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve were historical is to undermine the integrity of the entire Bible. It is to disregard the Bible’s own commentary in favor of an alien worldview that is being imposed on the text. It is also to add and to subtract from God’s Word:

·       You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19)

When the TE denies the historicity of Genesis 1-11, he takes away from God’s Word. When he imposes evolution upon it, he adds to God’s Word.

While the TE claims that he is salvaging the Christian faith for the educated who find themselves in conflict once introduced to the theory of evolution, even atheist Dale McGowan, Managing Editor of the Atheist Channel at Patheos, and author of Atheism For Dummies, is not so sure about this. He quotes Tullio Gregory who expresses his concern:

• Once you cast doubt on man’s place in creation, the entire Biblical story of salvation history, from original sin to Christ’s incarnation, is also threatened.

Even though he is a strong advocate for evolution, McGowan confesses that he is “conflicted” and troubled by message of BioLogos, a TE organization peddling evolution to the church:

• In a BioLogos video titled, “Adam and Eve: Engaging the Tough Questions,” an advisor notes that there are “a lot of proposals out there of when the first sin might have happened, what it might have looked like… we don’t have a simple answer on the question of the historical Adam…who were Adam and Eve, when did they live?”

• This is always the first step in a crumbling theology – the suggestion that the answer is out there, it’s just very, very complicated. The problem is our ability to grasp the answer. But no worries, there are a lot of proposals. It all makes for an impressive simulacrum of rigor, an army of question marks in search of meaningful questions.

As McGowen points out, Biologos has undermined both the clarity of the biblical message and the church’s assurance about it.

However, TEs have often counseled me “to be humble about our interpretations of Scripture.” However, they are not at all humble about their dismissal of the first eleven chapters of Genesis as history. Nor are they humble about dismissing the NT’s clear assertions that Genesis is history.

CORRUPTING SCRIPTURE, SIN, AND CHRISTIAN EVOLUTIONISTS

The Spirit had led Jesus into the desert, where He and Satan exchanged Scripture:

·       Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6; ESV; quoting from Psalm 91:11-12)

The devil’s quotation illustrated the fact that Scripture, although cited accurately, can be used deceptively. Jesus responded by making the necessary distinction between trusting God and acting in a presumptuous manner:

·       Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7; quoting from Deut. 6:16)

Jesus corrected the devil’s deceptive use of Scripture. Although we are to trust the Lord to protect us, we shouldn’t jump off a mountain to coerce Him to protect us, as the devil had suggested to Jesus. He had invoked Scripture in a demonstrably sinful way, in a way that it was never intended to be used.

Manipulating Scripture to serve our purposes or to support our cause is very common. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ™, made popular by The Beatles, claimed

·       “Christ said, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Be still and know you are God and when you know that you are God you will begin to live Godhood, and living Godhood there is no reason to suffer.” (Scripture Twisting, James Sire)

For one thing, Jesus never said this. Instead, it comes from Psalm 46. However, Maharishi adds a twist. Instead of knowing that God is God, he admonishes us to know that we are God – so characteristic of the non-biblical faiths.

In contrast, Jesus warned us against this kind of arrogance:

·       For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

In many ways Jesus warned against arrogance and pride and commended the humble. A Roman Captain of 100 men asked Him to heal his servant. However, he astonishingly added, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matthew 8:8). Jesus was so amazed by this appropriate display of humility and wisdom that He proclaimed that He had never seen such faith.

Joyce Meyers is a product of the Word of Faith movement:

·       “Unto every man is given the measure of faith, and faith is a powerful force.” “It says in Romans 4:17 that …we have a God who gives life to the dead and He calls things that be not as though they already existed…If there’s something in your way, speak it.” “When I talked with Dr. Roberts today and we talked about this seed-faith thing, he said…when you give you get a receipt in heaven that when you have a need you can then go with your receipt and say ‘You see, God, I have got my receipt from my sowing and now I have a need and I’m cashing in my receipt.” (CRJ, Hunter)

However, Meyers and other “word of faith” preachers have manipulated Romans 4 to say something that it doesn’t say, that we have the same power that God has to give life to the dead. However, this verse says absolutely nothing about our having this power:

·       As it is written, “I have made you [Abraham] the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:17)

If we do have the powers of God, this verse says nothing about it. Instead, Scripture informs us that we do not have such powers:

• Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

Another “word of faith” preacher, T.D. Jakes appeals to Proverbs 18:21 to justify his claim that our tongues have supernatural power:

• Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

However, this verse and the entire context fail to suggest that our tongues are endowed with supernatural power. Instead, they do have natural power to build someone up or to break them down.

This is a matter of using God’s Word in an improper way. The Apostle Paul had commended his ministry because this was something that they did not do:

·       For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:17; KJV)

To use Scripture in a way that it was clearly never intended to be used is to “corrupt the word of God” as the devil had done with Jesus.

I am particularly troubled by Christian evolutionists in this regard. In order to advance the theory of evolution, they not only corrupt a few verses; they corrupt the entirety of Scripture by claiming that Genesis 1-11 is not about history but purely about spirituality. By claiming this, they empty Scripture of much of its content and historical context.

Why do they denigrate Scripture so severely? To demonstrate that Scripture does not contradict evolution! If evolution is simply about the physical world and Scripture is simply about the spiritual world, then Scripture can no longer contradict evolution. It can no longer say that God historically spoke things into existence. Instead, the CE insists that this is a spiritual message without any bearing upon the historical, physical world.

Denis Lamoureaux provides a common CE example by his denial of an historical Adam and Eve:

• Paul was a first century man steeped in the historical and scientific categories of his generation… Paul had no choice but to believe in the historicity of Gen 3 [the Fall with the introduction of sin and death] and the causal connection between the sin of Adam and the entrance of pain and mortality into the world. Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Cor 15:20-49 are evidence of this fact [that Paul had been mistaken]. However, the historicity of Adam, the attribution of divine judgmental action for his sin, and the origin of physical suffering and death as a consequence are notions conceived from an ancient phenomenal perspective. These events in Gen 3 never happened because they are based on ancient history and ancient science, and Paul had no way of knowing this.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol. 37/Number 06, 22)

In denying that Adam, Eve, and Genesis are historical, the CE must also malign the testimony of the NT to their historicity. According to Lamoureaux, Paul was mistaken, and, therefore, Scripture cannot be trusted in every instance. But this doesn’t matter to the CE. After all, who really cares about the Bible’s teachings regarding the physical world as long as its spiritual teachings can be trusted, right?

Wrong! History and theology – the spiritual message – are inseparable. One depends on the other. We cannot have a theology of the Cross without the history of the Cross – that Christ historically died for us.

The same is true about the teachings of Genesis. We cannot have a theology of marriage without the history of marriage – how God had historically joined Adam and Eve together, making them one, as Jesus commented:

·       He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [quoting Gen. 1:26-27 as actual history], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [quoting Gen. 2:24 as history]? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

The various writers of the Bible have uniformly quoted Genesis as historical, even where written poetically. There is absolutely no biblical basis to regard Genesis as non-historical. This is also affirmed by the various Biblical genealogies, all assuming Adam to have actually existed.

·       But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2)

The CE has massively “tampered with God’s word” and, therefore, has no basis to make the same boast as had Paul, who had justifiably appealed “to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” Instead, the CE has sinfully tampered with God’s word, leading many perplexed students astray.

In contrast to the CE, God has commended those who have correctly interpreted Scripture:

• Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

The stakes are high. If Adam’s role in the Fall wasn’t historical, then what Jesus had accomplished is also thrown into doubt. Here is how Garrett J. DeWeese puts it:

• If Adam is not the progenitor of H. sapiens, then the doctrine of the fall as it has been understood in Christian theology for two thousand years is false, and the entrance of sin into humanity remains a mystery… There is a strong correlation between accepting TE [theistic evolution] and rejecting substitutionary atonement [that Christ died for us] as an antiquated doctrine rooted in medieval retributive thinking. (23)

And why not? If Paul had been mistaken about the history (as had Genesis), then, perhaps also, he was mistaken about the theology. If his statements about the world of history were errant, why not also about the world of the Spirit!

The CE has corrupted the Gospel message and has made it difficult for those who seek truth, as Jesus had charged the Jewish leadership:

• "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." (Luke 11:52)

As a young Christian, I too had corrupted the teachings of Scripture. I was intent to find in Scripture, not what God had intended, but instead what would validate me and my philosophy of life. The CE is doing the very same thing by coercing Scripture to validate evolution. This is sin! Let us pray that the Lord will awake them and expose this deception.

PETER ENNS AND THE DENIAL OF CERTAINTY

For many years, I had struggled with painful doubts about the Bible and even my salvation. Painful? These doubts were devastating! Fortunately, there were no local churches to assure me that certainty is “impossible.” Fortunately for me, there was no one available to flatter me that my doubts were the result of being a deep and thoughtful person. If so, I might have given up my quest for assurances.

However, today there are many churches and theologians available to teach against any expectation of certainty and confidence in the Gospel. Just recently, Peter Enns, theistic evolutionist and a former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, came out with a new book: “The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust Not Our Correct Beliefs.”

Certainty has now become a sin, at least for some modern theologians, but is it designated as a sin in the Bible? If so, Luke was a sinner and his Gospel was sinful:

·       Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have CERTAINTY concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)

In a glowing review, John Seel, “a millennial thought leader, cultural renewal change agent, speaker, author, and consultant,” writes:

·       Children of evangelical parents are at risk. Raised with the belief that the truth can be cornered, they live in a world that suggests quite the opposite. As cultural pressures increase, parents and pastors double down. The kids feel torn and are left without meaningful onramps to a more open and humane framing of faith.

Oddly, Seel also believes that “truth can be cornered” or acquired, since he has a lot to say about his own brand of truth. Seel praises Enns for his “humane framing of faith,” intended to enable the young Christian to fit into a world of growing “cultural pressures.” What about Enns’ “The Sin of Certainty?” Seel continues:

·       The tripping point for them [the children] is the dogmatic religious certainty of their parents and childhood churches. For these young people, as for most millennials today, faith is a fusion of belief and doubt, coupled with skepticism that any one person or group has it all figured out.

This is a typical strawman argument – misrepresent the opponents’ position to make it look ridiculous in order to easily blow it over. No Christian is saying that he “has it all figured out.” However, far from being a sin, Paul prayed that believers would be filled with a confident understanding of the Gospel:

·       That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may KNOW what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (Ephesians 1:17-18)

·       That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:2-3)

Admittedly, Paul’s prayers were an acknowledgement that many Christians had yet to acquire the “riches of full assurance of understanding.” However, his prayers demonstrated that a robust confidence in the faith represented “treasures” and not sin. Even more, this “full assurance of understanding” is essential to living a robust Christian life:

·       And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:11-12)

Without this “full assurance of hope,” it is difficult to conceive how we would not become “sluggish” and eventually fall to the side.

In contrast, Enns preaches a form of Biblical sluggishness. How? By downplaying the Bible’s teachings in favor of a substance-less, belief-less, amorphous trust!

·       “We have misunderstood faith as a what [doctrine] word rather than a who [God] word—as primarily beliefs about rather than as trust in.”

However, this distinction is foreign to the Bible, where we find that belief and trust are inseparable. In contrast with Enns, if we trust in God, we believe His teachings and do what He tells us to do. As Jesus taught, we cannot separate trusting God from His Word and commands:

•  “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him...If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” (John 14:21, 23-24)

In order to follow these commands, we need some degree of certainty about what He is commanding us to do – the very thing that Enns claims to be sinful.

In fact, living the Christian life is impossible without some degree of certainly about what Scripture teaches. Exhorting, correcting, disciplining and even loving require some degree of certainty or confidence about what the Bible is teaching us to do. Without confidence in the Bible’s teachings, evangelism certainly becomes impossible.

Besides, in order to trust someone, we have to know something about him! Likewise, to trust in God, we have to know Who it is we are trusting. Consequently, trust in God is inseparable from the Gospel of God.

To trust God, we need to know what He has promised us? How am I not hate Him unless I am convinced that He forgives my sins (1 John 1:9), loves me (Ephesians 3:17-20), and will never let me go (Romans 8:38-39)? How can I trust Him if I fear that He might grow tired of me?

In contrast to Enns’ uncertainty theology, Paul confidently asserted:

·       …our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I KNOW whom I have believed, and I am CONVINCED that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. (2 Timothy 1:10-12)

We too must “know whom [we] have believed” and be “convinced that he is able to guard…[us].” To not be convinced of these things, is to live in fear and timidity and to default into acquiescence to the prevailing culture and its temptations.

We are not free to trust in God in a way that merely feels right to us. It has to be according to His Word. King Saul had decided to serve God in a way that felt right to him, but in God’s sight, this was rebellion:

• “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:23 ASV)

Consequently, if we are to honor God, we must honor His Word, His truth:

• “I will worship toward thy holy temple, And give thanks unto thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” (Psalms 138:2)

Instead, Enns doesn’t seem to believe that we can trust in God’s Word:

·       “Here is the temptation,” Enns explains, “we can forget that we are human and delude ourselves into thinking that we can transcend our tiny place in the human drama and see from on high, as God sees.”

Instead, God has given us His Gospel so that we can know:

·       He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we KNOW that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may KNOW that we are in him. (1 John 2:2-5)

However, Enns disparages any “correct thinking,” even thinking based upon Scripture:

·       “Life’s challenges mock and then destroy a faith that rests on correct thinking and the preoccupation with defending it. And that is a good thing. Life’s challenges clear the clutter so we can see more clearly that faith calls for trust instead.”

For many of us, “Life’s challenges’ have actually validated the Bible and its teachings. We are not saying that we need not labor to reconcile the Bible with our experiences and to defend it. Admittedly, society contradicts our faith in many ways. This is why we are required to meditate on His Word “both day and night.” However, the Bible consistently teaches us that it is defendable and that we are required to make a defense for our hope:

·       But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, ALWAYS being prepared to make a DEFENSE to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15)

Instead, Enns has renounced his responsibility to defend the Biblical faith. Meanwhile, he has written much in defense of his own faith:

·       “Maybe my purpose on earth isn’t to be the thought police first and love others after all their ideas line up as they should. Maybe my first order of business is to risk my own sense of certainty about God and love others where and how they are no matter how they do on my theology exam.”

However, sometimes love requires us to correct. We must correct our children, our dogs, and those who wish to hurt others. Love requires us to correct our neighbor who intends to join ISIS or even the neighbor who disturbs the entire neighborhood with his blaring boom-box.

Besides, love requires Biblical wisdom. We need to have some sense of moral and Biblical certainty about how to love. Not everyone requires the same thing. We would need to understand how loving Hitler would be different from loving a 15 year-old who is ready to jump off a building because her boyfriend had just jilted her.

In their dogmatic defense of uncertainty, Seel and Enns have narrowed their lives to the point that life becomes unmanageable. What has led them to take such a myopic and needlessly constraining stance?

This seems to be the stance that just about all theistic evolutionists have adopted. Why? When they embraced Darwin, they had to take a “humble” and uncertain stance in terms of biblical revelation and interpretation. Why? Ultimately, the two – Jesus and Darwin – cannot be successfully and coherently married. There always exists tension between their many discordant elements.

It is like trying to button your shirt after starting with the wrong button. Every subsequent button will be out-of-place. This is the inevitable result of the unholy marriage between Darwin and Jesus. This is why theistic evolutionists consistently tell me, “We have to be humble about our interpretation of Scripture.” If only they were so humble about Darwin!

Enns is wearing a shirt that will not properly button together. Therefore, he flees from trying to justify it. Such a shirt will ultimately prove costly.

And what about my own excruciating doubts? My pain forced me to plunge on, as King David who written:

·       It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:71-72)