Though Tsagaan Sar is technically over, there are a few private celebrations still going on here and there. Diane, Rochele, Whitney, and I also went to the home of Mongolian friends for celebrations. So while the holiday is technically over, it’s not too late to share an interesting story from the holiday.

We spent about 3 hours with our host family enjoying food and fellowship. This wonderful Christian family was very gracious, and it was a pleasure to get to know the elderly lady of the house, Garmaa. I was most interested in her Christian experience. She came to Christ in 1998. She is 74 years old.

We all know how rare it is for people to come to Christ as they get older. So it was a great experience for us to learn about Garmaa’s walk with the Lord. The most interesting was what she had to say about her first realization, as a little girl, that there must be a Supreme Creator of the Universe.

At the age of 12 (1946), she was herding sheep as so many countryside Mongols do. Unlike modern city life where many kids do their own thing, every member of a countryside family takes an active role in basic family survival. Twelve-year-old Garmaa always wondered where the creation around her came from. She looked at the grass of the field, the sheep she was herding, the family’s other animals, even the mountains and the sky and realized at the young age of 12 that such beauty must have a designer. These were, of course, rudimentary thoughts. But clearly God was at work in her early life at at time when Christianity in Mongolia was almost nonexistent. The testimony of natural revelation was having its effect on her. “For that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attribute, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:19-20).

Garmaa became aware that only a god could do such things, but not any god. The wonder of everything around her, her 12-year-old mind reasoned, could only have been created by a single, Supreme God. This reminds me of an ancient Jewish fable about Abraham. It was said that Abraham used to believe in many gods, but when he looked to the stars he realized that there could only be one God. The gods of false religion were always quarreling, fighting for supremacy. If there were many gods involved in the bringing forth and maintaining of creation, then creation would be a disaster! The orderliness of creation testifies to a single, All-Powerful God.

One day Garmaa went to her father and asked him about the identity of this God whom she realized must be the Creator of the Universe. Her father told her in no uncertain terms, “There is only one God, and He is the One who created all things. All of the idols around us are false and are not gods. We must serve and worship only the One True God.”

For Garmaa this was wonderful confirmation of what she had already deduced. But it still didn’t tell her who God was. Jesus was still unknown to her and her father. Yet her father had learned from his father before him that there was only One True God, and all others were false. Though not the full revelation of Himself, God had preserved a seed in Garmaa’s family that would one day spout to encompass her children.

As the years rolled on Garmaa did what so many religious Mongolians did at that time—she became a Buddhist! The testimony of the One True God was all around her, but the testimony of natural revelation, as already noted, can only take a person so far. Without the special revelation provided through the Scriptures and the conviction of the Holy Spirit, we can never come to a complete knowledge of who God is.

Garmaa’s religious devotion never lessened, it grew. She didn’t just become a Buddhist, she became a completely devoted, totally sold out, Buddhist. She and her daughter traveled throughout Asia for the sole purpose of visiting temples, stupas, and expressing her devotion. As her son told me, “She and my sister were serious Buddhists. Yet at a time of ill health all of her Buddhism came to naught. The family sought the counsel of wise and learned lamas. Her son visited every temple and place of devotion in the country seeking a solution for his mother’s health problems. At the end of his search he came away angry. “They all lied. They knew nothing.” It was only after attending a church service with his sister, who had recently received Christ, that he began to understand the truth. He knew that no matter what happened with his mother, he could not be a Buddhist, but must serve the One True God.

Finally, Garmaa saw the JESUS Film. Her daughter, the first in the family to abandon Buddhism for Christ, took her to church and Garmaa remembered her experiences as a child. The Master of the Universe began to speak to her and she finally realized the truth of her existence. She was made to worship the One True God. That day she embraced the fuller revelation of who God is, abandoned her Buddhism once and for all, and embraced Christ.

I was deeply touched by Garmaa’s testimony. In a land where the true testimony of Christ was silent to most of the population for so many years, decades, and even centuries, where vain philosophies and false religious ideas have held a tight grip of spiritual deception on most people, God reserved a testimony for Himself—even in this one countryside family. That testimony eventually became the cornerstone of Garmaa’s family, who today serve Christ.

The nails in the coffin of macro-evolutionary theory just keep getting pounded. There may be more nails in the coffin than wood! The latest nail may be a new study of human genes revealing that human beings are far more genetically diverse from one another – and from animals, than previously thought. Here’s the latest tidbit from the U.K.’s, The Independent:

The findings mean that instead of humanity being 99.9 per cent identical, as previously believed, we are at least 10 times more different between one another than once thought – which could explain why some people are prone to serious diseases.The studies published today have found that instead of having just two copies of each gene – one from each parent – people can carry many copies, but just how many can vary between one person and the next.The studies suggest variations in the number of copies of genes is normal and healthy. But the scientists also believe many diseases may be triggered by an abnormal loss or gain in the copies of some key genes.

Another implication of the finding is that we are more different to our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, than previously assumed from earlier studies. Instead of being 99 per cent similar, we are more likely to be about 96 per cent similar.

Keep in mind that the 96 percent figure is speculation; an actual comparison based upon the new research has not been done. Suffice it to say that if human beings are 10 times more genetically diverse than previously thought, why would we be any less diverse from Bonzo?

Yes, it’s early to make conclusions of the data based upon a short quip in a science article, but Holy Cow (there’s not such thing), the more we discover the more we learn about the impossibility of macro-evolution.

Maybe macro-evolution doesn’t need a coffin. We can’t really bury what never existed in the first place.

I’m  wondering how much of the creation/evolution debate is caught up in the labels of “Evolution,” “Creation,” and “Intelligent Design.” I say this because of the popularly understood notions of what these labels mean. While you personally may not regard evolution as beginning with the idea that God does not (or must not) exist the published works indicate that the evolutionary idea propagated in public schools does begin from that starting point. I think for most Evangelicals this is where the rub gets raw. Most of us do not object to the teaching of evolution as a theory to explain the process of life or even origins (though we disagree), rather we object to teaching evolution as a finally proven conclusion with no room for another possibility, or leaving out the possibility that the evidence could point to a Designer.

But I digress from what I really wanted to say.

The commonly understood ideas of “Creation” or “Intelligent Design,” for those who have not explored the topic beyond reading the general press reports, gravitates toward 6-day creation positions, Young Earth vs. Old Earth, miraculous intervention (spontaneous creation by an outside force) and so on. In point of fact, Intelligent Design is not necessarily about any of these issues. Intelligent Design is about whether observation of the evidence can lead to a conclusion that creation is the result of an intelligent agent. Or in the case of some, whether the observation can lead to a conclusion that the process of evolution apart from an intelligent agent is the best explanation. Even some in the intelligent design movement still regard evolution as the best scientific explanation for the process of creation, but not its origins.

In the whole debate of whether or not Intelligent Design is science, let’s remove the preconceptions that seem to go along with the terms “Evolution,” Creation,” and “Intelligent Design.” In fact, let’s remove those labels all together and simply place all of these issues under the banner of “Origins.” Possible questions could then be:

• Can the observable, cumulative evidence lead to the conclusion that evolution, without an intelligent cause, is the preferred method of explaining scientific origins?
• Can the observable, cumulative evidence lead to the conclusion that an intelligent agent, with or without evolution, is the preferred method of explaining scientific origins?

This is much better than simply saying, “There is no God,” or “God did it.” If there is no God then we can embark on discovering the process. If there is a God, we can still embark on that same discovery.

Better yet, notice what is not said in my questions. They don’t assume “God” in the Christian sense, or Islamic, or Hindu, or anything else – only an “intelligent agent” that is purposefully undefined. The questions don’t assume Young Earth or Old Earth theories specific to different wings of the creationist debate. They don’t assume opposing theories of evolution such as Process- or Spontaneous Evolution. Nor do these questions assume that evolution is necessarily excluded from the debate as a process whereby life on earth propagated. They simply frame the central issue of the debate. Is creation or in this specific case, the origin of life “caused” or “uncaused” by an intelligent agent? That is the specific issue that Intelligent Design raises – with or without religion. More to the point: Does (or can) the available evidence indicate a designer?

Finally, let me raise one more issue. Some people say that religion does not belong in science classes. Forgetting for the moment that the modern scientific process was birthed out of religious principles found in Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation, there is an assumption by many that religion deals with the “philosophy” of life over the “facts” or “history” of life. Perhaps I’m not framing this part of my discussion very well, if so, forgive me.

Religion, in the case of Christianity, is not about philosophy. Its very foundation is that God is a real person in real human history, past, present, and future, interacting with man in that history.

The Bible portrays God as much an equal part of the normal flow of history and life as you and I. There is a tendency by some to regard Christianity as a philosophy that like many philosophies are interesting mental exercises in theory, but not truly connected to real life, or in this case, history. The Bible itself is often regard as a book of philosophy instead of how the text presents itself – as a collection of historical accounts.

If Christianity and Intelligent Design (the two are not synonymous) are nothing more than philosophies then yes; they belong in a philosophy class as opposed to a science class. This is important because in the final analysis the debate over origins is not really a debate about science; rather it is a debate about history and reality. Putting aside the specifics about Intelligent Design for a moment, Christianity asserts that God is a real person who exists, and not only injected Himself into human history but that He is the originator of that history. In this sense Christianity and Intelligent Design do have something in common. One is predicated on the idea of a Creator; the other can lead to that idea. Evolution as it is taught in public schools today begins with the premise that there is no Creator and in fact I believe it goes further by beginning with the prejudice: There must not be a Creator. And THAT is an untestable assumption/hypothesis that does not belong in a science class.

If there is a Creator as the intelligent agent behind creation then we must ask questions about what our responsibilities might or might not be to that Creator. This where the rub gets raw for many opponents of Intelligent Design, or even Christianity in general – the notion that the normal evidences of life lead to the idea of a Creator to whom you and I might be responsible. Some might think that this is a big jump to go from the debate over origins to personal responsibility to a Creator – but I don’t think so. Evolution is routinely and consistently offered in schools and the media as the scientific evidence that there is no Creator, and thus, there is no objective morality or standard of behavior. Thus we see that science and religion in this case are not as separate as many opponents of Intelligent Design might feign. If the evolutionary theory of origins is popularly used in classrooms to make the case that there is no God (and it is used in this way regularly), then why can’t observations leading to conclusions of an intelligent agent allow students to entertain the idea that the opposite might also be true? This does not threaten the science in any way; only the preconception that some have that science must be devoid of God in order to be science.

If science is in part the discovery of how things work, then automatically discounting the possibility of an intelligent agent for our origins stops short of what could be the greatest discovery of all. Assuming the possibility of an intelligent agent does not stop the questions. On the contrary, it invites an entirely new class of questions and discovery about the meaning of life. For some, that is the greatest discovery of all.

In good fun let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes: “All evolutionists are cannibals. Think about it.”