Last year, on this very date, Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis, wrote a blog post, eviscerating Christian singer Michael Gungor because Gungor dared to talk about how he was not a young earth creationist. Since it is the one-year anniversary of the original post, I thought I’d share my insights.
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In a September 1, 2014 post entitled, “Christian Singer Michael Gungor Makes More Outrageous Claims,” Ken Ham turns his personal inquisition on yet another Christian, Michael Gungor, who came out as saying he was not a young earth creationist, and instead leaned toward theistic evolution. He took issue with some comments Gungor made on a podcast co-hosted by Mike McHargue, and proceeded to accuse Gungor of giving up biblical authority.
Does Ham Make YEC a Litmus Test for Salvation?
He first took issue with a comment McHargue made about him, namely that he essentially equates “belief in Christ and participation in the Christian tradition with acceptance of the modern incarnation of biblical infallibility.” To this, Ham responds the way he always responds:
“Salvation is based on faith alone in Christ alone—nothing more. If McHargue wants to make it seem as if I believe that people have to accept biblical creation to have faith in Christ, he’s making a totally false claim. I have never said that someone must believe in a young earth to be saved. …[But] when believers like Gungor refuse to take God at His Word in Genesis, that’s not a salvation issue—but it is an authority issue, and an important one.”
This is the standard mantra of Ham when he is charged with making YEC the litmus test for salvation. What makes is so comical is that not only does then then turn around and actually say, “It really is a salvation issue,” his entire M.O. is to call any Christian who accepts any part of evolutionary theory a “compromiser” who essentially is working for the devil (yes, he has actually said this!). But I have to ask, how can someone be a Christian if that person undermines biblical authority and works for the devil? The obvious answer is he can’t—yet that is what Ham says time and time again. Not to get too “Genesis 3” here, but the man seems to speak with a forked-tongue.
Genesis 1-11, History, and Authority
Ham then points out that Michael Gungor gave up the view that Genesis 1-11 is literal history while he was in college. Of course, Ham doesn’t put it that way. Instead he asks the question, “When did Gungor give up scriptural authority in Genesis?” Very subtly, Ham puts forth his own interpretation of Genesis 1-11 as “scriptural authority.” So no, Mr. Ham, Michael Gungor didn’t “give up scriptural authority in Genesis.” He gave up the YEC take on Genesis that has absolutely no scientific proof, no basis from Church history, and that violates the most fundamental rules of proper biblical exegesis.
What Gungor said was that while he was in college he came to see that when he tried to argue for YEC, he came to realize that it wasn’t his professors who were “biased” in favor of evolution, but rather it was his own sources that were biased and trying to twist the facts. So how did Ham interpret this? He wrote, “Eventually, after being repeatedly indoctrinated into evolutionary ideas and millions of years, Gungor gave up biblical creation.” And then he proceeded to peddle his book Already Gone, and bemoan the fact that so many Christian colleges are now compromised on the issue of biblical authority.
His complete ignorance of genre and literature also shows through when he says, “Today, he [Gungor] believes that Genesis 1 is nothing more than a ‘poem’ and therefore not literally true.” Ham, being the true Enlightenment thinker that he is, thinks that the only things that can constitute truth are historical/scientific facts. Therefore, to call something a “poem” is to say that it is “not true.” That really is a shame, because using Ham’s definition of truth we are going to have to throw out all the Psalms and all of Jesus’ parables—they didn’t really, literally happen, therefore they can’t be true! Or I guess we can go the other route and insist that trees really do have hands that clap, that mountain literally skip like rams!
Inerrancy and Idolatry
Ham then laments that Gungor “has adopted the idea that holding to the inerrancy of Scripture is treating the Bible as an idol,” and proceeds to defend the fundamentalist take on inerrancy by saying, “Our God doesn’t lie and He doesn’t change—so how could it be idolatry to take the Bible at its word?”
Well, I have to say that Ken Ham is an idolater. He does turn the Bible into an idol. When you claim a passage that was never meant to be read as literal history is to be read as literal, scientific history, and then make it the cornerstone of your life’s work—I’m sorry, that is idolatry. Now just to be clear, thinking Genesis 1-11 is literal history does not make one an idolater. I have many Christian friends who think that way, and we have interesting discussions on the topic, and we don’t agree. Having that opinion is not the problem. The problem is making that view the cornerstone of your faith. And despite what Ham denies, that is precisely what he has done. Look at the name of his organization—Answers in Genesis.
As for his question, “How could it be idolatry to take the Bible at its word?” Well, first, Ham is not taking the Bible at its word—he is injecting a 18th century, modern-Enlightenment notion of truth and reality back into the Bible. Secondly, what Ham says about the Bible is essentially the exact same thing the chief priests of Stephen’s day said about the Temple: “God told us to make the Temple (He didn’t)! It is God’s house (it was, as long as they kept the covenant, which they didn’t)! How dare you claim it is ‘made with human hands’ (i.e. that’s Bible-talk for “idolatry”)! You deserve to die!”
Is Jesus a Liar?
Ham then commented on the part of the podcast when McHargue asked Gungor about the oft-repeated YEC claim that since Jesus quoted Moses that he was implicitly endorsing the belief that everything in the Torah (including Genesis 1-11) was actually factual, and thus to claim that anything in the Torah was allegory was to reject the divinity of Christ. Gungor first stated that there were a lot of assumptions in the question, and that to assume you can know what Jesus was thinking about the entire Torah based on a few times when he quotes Moses is quite problematic. But then he said,
“And even if He was wrong, even if He did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don’t understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ. . . . The point is it wouldn’t freak me out if He was wrong about it, in His human side. But I still don’t see the issue. If Noah and Adam were mythical ideas, the point of what Jesus was saying still applies to me. . . . It has very little do, in my perspective, with Jesus trying to lay out a history of world to a historical-minded people. . .”
He then also proposed that maybe Jesus knew Noah and Adam were mythical, but “knew he was talking to people who thought they were real.”
Now the thing to realize with Gungor’s comments is that they are, by his own admission, simply speculative, and that they were predicated on his previous statement that we can’t know what Jesus was thinking about the entire Torah, based on the few times he quoted from the Torah. Gungor was simply engaging in a hypothetical, “What if?” type of scenario. But Ham didn’t catch that. Instead, Ham interpreted Gungor’s comments as follows:
“So not only does Michael Gungor deny the historical accuracy of the creation and Flood accounts—but he believes Jesus Christ was probably wrong, too! Or worse yet, that Christ might have just lied to the Jews about it.”
First off, yes, Gungor does not believe the creation or flood accounts are meant to be read as literal history, that’s not the same thing as “denying historical accuracy.” The former is an exercise in genre recognition, whereas the latter is essentially saying, “Yes, I think the writer was trying to give history, but he is wrong.”
Secondly, Gungor did not say he believed Jesus was wrong; and he didn’t say he believe Jesus lied to the Jews. Such a characterization by Ham border on slander. Gungor’s point actually has merit to it. Just because we believe Jesus was indeed divine, that didn’t mean he was omniscient in regards to knowing all the facts of history—he was also a man, limited in his humanness. If anything, Ham’s assumption of Jesus is the heretical one that essentially ignores Jesus’ full humanity. Furthermore, nowhere in the Bible does it ever state that Jesus knew all the facts of history perfectly.
In addition, if, as Gungor speculated, Jesus knew Adam and Noah were mythical, but spoke in the way he did because his fellow Jews thought they were historical, that is not lying. All throughout Church history, from Augustine to John Calvin, there is a recognition of something called “divine accommodation.” This is essentially the idea that since we humans are limited in our knowledge and understanding of the universe, God will “lower himself” and “dumb down” things so that human beings could at least get a general understanding.
Think of trying to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity to a freshman in high school—you’re not going to go into the nuts and bolts of everything in the theory because it would be over the freshman’s head. So what you are going to do is use analogies, examples, etc., to essentially put it in terms the freshman could begin to understand. Over time, as he continues in school, his understanding of Einstein’s theory will become more complete, but you had to start somewhere! “Dumbing it down” for that freshman initially would not be considered “lying.” Far from it—it would be considered taking the first step to true understanding.
Conclusion
In any case, Ham ends his tirade against Gungor much in the same way he does for all his victims, with plenty of pharisaical condescension:
“I urge you to pray for him, that he’ll accept our offer to visit the Creation Museum and that he’ll come to accept the authority of God’s Word in every area—including the history in Genesis!”
This is yet another hallmark of Ham and his acolytes. After eviscerating the enemies of his own making, he then calls for people to pray for those wayward souls who disagree with him—sometimes he even calls for them to repent of their sin (…of disagreeing with him)!
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POSTSCRIPT: Given the fact that Ham was so much against Gungor, I decided to check out his music. I have to say, he’s really good! I would recommend his album, I Am Mountain.
I really enjoy Michael Gungor’s music and this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of him inadvertently becoming the enemy of hyper-conservative Christians either – after the Sandy Hook shooting, he tweeted something like “It’s a sad state of this country that it’s easier to get a gun permit than a permit to sell flowers.”
Over the next few weeks he had to relentlessly reinstate that he wasn’t pro-gun control, because lots and lots of people had sent him angry (and even threatening) e-mails, calling him pacifist and liberal and whiny and everything in between. Watching the whole thing was really kind of sad.
That’s an interesting comment, Mike. I’m mulling in my head a post about how too often certain issues (like “creation vs. evolution”) automatically get wrapped up in this bizarre political name-calling matrix. I don’t get it, and it’s very disturbing. Sometimes I think that ultra-conservative Evangelicals identify themselves more with Donald Trump than with Christ; and by the same token, far-left Progressive Christians identify themselves more with Socialist Bernie Sanders than with Christ. In both instances, in both camps, people are mistaking political ideologies for Christ’s kingdom. I for one have been labeled as “liberal” by some, simply because I don’t think Genesis 1-11 is literal history. I don’t get how people make such a connection.
Poor Ken got upset, and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The actual tweet used on his blog is mine when in discussion with Gungor about the idolatry of people like Ken Ham.
Very funny, Karl….Ken Ham certainly gives one a lot to comment on. I believe I’ve written something else about Ham’s paranoia with Gungor…I might have to dig it up and post it. Very entertaining stuff.