I accept the fact that there is a great moral and cultural divide in our country that may never be healed or reconciled. What often disturbs me about this divide is when a so-called intellectual expert uses false information to explain the evangelical core beliefs. Sometimes I brush off such distortions of truth but when I read an article written by a university professor entitled, “Evangelicals See the Universe from a Different Starting Point,” I had to respond.

His article was at once disappointing and disrespectful. It was disappointing in that the academic premise of his definition of evangelicalism was shoddy at best. I could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his article was written out of ignorance and not malice but I expect more out of an academic in terms of research and information. The article was disrespectful in that clearly his core premise was not based on discussions with genuine evangelicals or study of their beliefs. He made a basic erroneous theological assumption about the core beliefs of evangelicals and built a case against the social conscience of the evangelical community based on this faulty premise.

He stated, “Their (evangelicals) ultimate authority for their views is to be found in the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John…They might insist on the priority of the Gospels over other scriptures, especially the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament - except for the stories of the creation and fall of man and the Ten Commandments.”

His assumption was that we evangelicals do not take the whole of Scripture as Scripture, only those parts that promote our social agenda. For example, he asserted:
<

1. Evangelicals use the first three chapters of the book of Genesis to preach and to impose Biblical creationism into our public schools. 2. The creation account of Genesis 1-3 serves the social purposes so they use it contextually. The implication is that evangelicals do not consider the rest of Genesis as the Word of God.

Sadly, this is a flawed premise used by liberal critics in academia to intimidate and scorn evangelical young people in the college classrooms. From this premise he proceeded to attack our social agenda on Creationism, prayer in schools, abortion, and homosexuality with a plethora of falsehoods and prejudice.

What is his source for this nonsense? I know of no evangelical confession of faith or standard of any evangelical church or denomination. I know of no evangelical pastor worth his weight as a spokesman for evangelicalism that would hold to any other belief concerning the authority of Scripture than its verbal and plenary inspiration. I am an evangelical and I believe the Bible to be one book made up of 66 chapters all of which are equally the inerrant, inspired, and infallible Word of the Living God from Genesis to Revelation, Old and New Testaments inclusive. In fact, that is a core belief that defines an evangelical.

For this professor to miss that point makes for a critical flaw in the rest of his arguments. Evangelicals do not insist on imposing a Christianized society. Nowhere do we preach or teach a spiritual demagoguery. But because we insist on the inerrancy of Scripture, we take our citizenship very seriously. We take the Great Commission to preach the good news to all men very seriously. We hold to the Scriptural belief that we must be a Redemptive Presence in a fallen world.

Yes, the world is fallen. This is a core teaching throughout the Bible, not merely in the Genesis account of the fall. Yet, it is in the Genesis account we find the first inklings of the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the all-encompassing love of a God Who would initiate His plan of Redemption in grace and mercy. It is there we find a thorough discussion of the origins of man, the presence of evil and the evil one, and the covenantal promises God made to His people.

It has always intrigued me that the pseudo-intellectuals take great pains to attack the Bible's message - more specifically the Book of Genesis, and even more specifically the first three chapters of Genesis. It stands to reason if those pages can be ripped out of the Bible the scoffing cynics will be able to escape the issues of sin, the fallen nature of man, and man's need for a Savior.

Evangelicals do not adhere to a mythical “Big Bang” theory. The only Big Bang was when God said…and it was. I have listened ad nauseum to the emotional arguments used against Creationism. This is not the purpose of this article. That can be done another time. I did, however, actually debate a professor at a local college who posited the theory on the origins of life (only when pressed by me to do so) that the first life forms arrived here on a spaceship. And this is academia at its best? Hardly. It takes more faith to believe these theories or a scientifically flawed Darwinism than it does to believe in the creation account of Genesis.

There is no group more demanding of the rights of freedom than evangelical Christians. We do not wish to impose a Judeo-Christian culture by force. But as evangelicals we do believe in that Judeo-Christian worldview and that we must call men and women everywhere to hear its message. We believe in a critical role for the church. We do not believe the charter documents of this great country teach anywhere of a separation of church and state. We do not believe in state-imposed religion. We have preached and taught for generations that man has the freedom to believe whatever he desires about matters of faith. But we also reserve the right to preach the truth whether or not man chooses to believe it.

This last election showed the enormity of the influence evangelical Christians carry when convinced of the issues. It appears the evangelical values are also core values of mainstream America. We are opposed to abortion because it is Biblical to do so. But we minister in love to those who choose death over life because that, too, is Biblical. It is not the local abortion mill or Planned Parenthood that is there to pick up the pieces of a shattered life caused by the horrors of abortion. It is the Church that spends countless hours weeping with and reaching out to that young girl because it is Biblical to do so. We are opposed to the gay agenda because it is Biblical to do so. But we have reached out in love to anyone who wants help because that, too, is Biblical. We are opposed to the ban on prayer in school because it is Biblical to do so. Yet we encourage our kids to keep on praying for and loving those who mock because it is Biblical to do so. We preach against sex before marriage because it is Biblical to do so. Yet we have loved and ministered to sexually active teenagers in youth groups, Sunday School classes, campus outreaches, and we have spent millions of dollars to embrace them because it is Biblical to do so. We preach against cruel name-calling if we disagree with someone. We do not need to do so. Truth is truth, regardless of whether or not you decide that it is.

So I encourage academic dialogue. But make the dialogue fair. Do not assign false core beliefs to the evangelical. Understand that the starting point for the evangelical is the inerrancy of all of God's Word. We adhere to the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture, that every Word is God-breathed and is true. We contend for the faith and do so with vigor and determination to be that Redemptive Presence in a fallen world.