Ken Ham and Christian Colleges: No Doubt in Ham’s “gospel” of Adam

🔊 Listen to Post The other day, Ken Ham took to Twitter to comment on a recent article in Christianity Today entitled, “Lose You Faith at College? That’s Part of the Process.” You can read the article yourself, but the gist of it is this: A lot of kids who grew up in Christian schools often have a crisis of faith when they get into college—and that is okay. Many Christian colleges seethis as a necessary part of the processes in growing in your faith, and they try to be there to help those students work through their questions and doubts to a more mature faith.

Ken Ham, though, saw the article in an entirely different light, saying, “This is not surprising at all given the true state of most Christian Colleges.” Just like a broken record, he saw the fact that students get to a point where they ask questions and wrestle with their doubts as being a clear sign that so many “so-called” Christian colleges were full of “compromisers.” And what were they compromising? Well, the Bible of course, as recorded in Genesis 1-11! Those “so-called” Christian colleges don’t teach young earth creationism and they don’t insist that Genesis 1-11 must be read as a scientifically and historically accurate blow-by-blow account of what literally happened a mere 6,000 years ago.

And, in typical Ham-like fashion, he called for those backslidden educational institutions to repent: “Until Christian colleges repent of their compromise on God’s Word in Genesis & teach the true foundation for a Christian worldview & equip students to stand against the secular attacks of our day, we will continue to see the destruction of the coming generations.”  He then urged his readers to check out “a list of colleges that are bold enough to stand on God’s Word in Genesis as they should,” and to come to the “Creation College Expo” that will be held at the Ark Encounter.

My Evolving View of Ken Ham
Even though I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, went to a Christian high school, and went to church for as long as I could remember, never once in my life was I ever taught young earth creationism. Growing up, I would have told you that I believed Adam and Eve were the first human beings, that Noah’s flood really happened, and it was at the Tower of Babel that we got all the different languages. But at the same time, I had paid enough attention in my sciences classes to know that the universe was really old and that dinosaurs lived long before human beings.

Simply put, I said I believed those events in Genesis 1-11 were historical, but I never really thought about them in that way. Almost innately I knew they were teaching me something about the nature of human beings and the fact that although God created creation as good, that human beings really screw things up. And I was certainly never told—not by my parents, or pastors, or teachers—that if I didn’t believe the entire universe was 6,000 years old, then I was calling God a liar and that nothing in the Bible could be trusted. No one in the Evangelicalism I grew up in ever said that—that was silly.

And so, back in 2009, when a student of mine gave me a Ken Ham video to watch, I was legitimately dumb-founded. At that point, I wouldn’t have said I accepted evolution, but the claims this guy was making were just absolutely bizarre and absolutely fringe. Well, a few years later, when a rabidly devout YECist administrator fired me because I had dared criticize Ken Ham (I had written a few blog posts analyzing the Ham-Nye Debate and concluded Ken Ham didn’t make a good argument), I started to get on Ham’s blog and read his actual stuff.

At that point, I came to see that what Ham was selling wasn’t just silly and fringe, but that it had taken hold of a rather significant segment of American Evangelicalism and was therefore dangerous. And so, for the few years after that, I read a lot of material from Ham and Answers in Genesis, I wrote a lot of blog posts analyzing and critiquing YECism, and I even wrote a book, The Heresy of Ham, that helped me crystallize what was wrong about YECism as well as helped me make sense of what had happened to me.

I’m at the point now, though, where I don’t think I’m really that angry over all that anymore. The typical YECist arguments are just the same handful of talking points, rehashed on a daily basis, ad nauseum. And over time, reading their stuff just gets old and boring. And when I come across the occasional post or Tweet by Ham (like the one above), I’m not so offended any more. In fact, I tend to feel sorry for the man. When you think about it, his take on the Christianity Today article is really, really sad.

Why Ham’s Reaction is So Undoubtedly Sad
Any amount of reading of Christian thinkers and theologians from throughout history will tell you that doubt and uncertainty is a necessary part of the life of faith. One of my favorite quotes regarding doubt is by Frederick Buechner—it is a quote that John Irving begins with in his book, A Prayer for Owen Meany: “Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”

And then are the thoughts of the Catholic Monk, Thomas Merton. He said that reading and wrestling with the Bible is a difficult thing, because it is all too easy to just read the Bible with our pre-conceived notions and official positions—that way of reading insulates us from actually letting the Bible challenge us. He said that honestly reading the Bible “may shock our reason into unbelief, and we may have to struggle with it as a scandal. Indeed, when closely examined, the Bible may pose a threat to what has hitherto seemed to us to be ‘faith.’” Indeed, he said that becoming truly involved in the Bible “does not mean simply taking everything it says without the slightest murmur of difficulty. It means at once being willing to argue and fight back…. The Bible prefers honest disagreement to a dishonest submission.”

And finally, there is the Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware, who wrote, “Almost as traumatic as the death of a friend or partner can be, for many believers, the death of faith—the loss of our root certainties (or seeming certainties) about God and the meaning of existence. But this too is a death-life experience through which we have to pass if our faith is to become mature. True faith is a constant dialogue with doubt, for God is incomparably greater than all our preconceptions about Him; our mental concepts are idols that need to be shattered. So as to be fully alive, our faith needs continually to die.”

In my own life and journey of faith, it has been men like these who have instilled in me that sense that the only way to actually mature and grow in my faith I have to have the courage, and yes faith, to actively admit and wrestle with my questions and doubts. You simply do not grow in your faith and you do not ever become mature in Christ if you are so afraid to doubt that you choose to just blindly accept so-called “certainties” that have been passed down to you. If you do that, you remain naïve and fearful child who is enslaved to a peculiar form of idolatry—theological idolatry. The kind of theology that says, “Here are all the answers! Just accept them! If you question anything, if you admit to any seed of doubt, then God will say, ‘I never knew you!’”

That, I submit, is a very childish and immature kind of faith. It is one that must be questioned and doubted in order for you to actually grow up. And this is precisely what the Christianity Today article was about: the reality that in order to grow in faith, students need to be allowed to question and doubt. Yes, that is a dangerous thing to do, because, for whatever reason, some students will, in fact, walk away from the faith. But the fact is, that is the only way to truly grow in one’s faith. That kind of death is the only way to resurrection.

And yet, there Ken Ham is, taking to Twitter to denounce all that. He sees questioning and doubting as bad, as a threat to faith. He is calling upon Christian colleges to repent for trying to help students mature in their faith! For all intents and purposes, he is saying he wants people to stay naïve and immature in their faith: Just accept the answers…right there…in Genesis, and you’ll be safe!

In truth, that mentality doesn’t surprise me—after all, Ham sees in Adam and Eve the perfect humanity. He sees Adam as the ideal. He sees his nakedness and naivete as good things and doesn’t realize that throughout Church history it has been long recognized that Adam and Eve are depicted as naïve children that failed to grow up and mature into the full likeness of God. That is why Ham doesn’t like the idea of questioning and doubt—He thinks Christians should remain naïve and childish. He reads Romans 5 as Paul saying that through Christ we can get back to the perfection of Eden and doesn’t realize that Paul is saying that in Christ “how much more” will we be than the first man.

Simply put, Ken Ham gets the Gospel all wrong. He thinks it is a matter of “getting the right answers” then saying you accept them, and then never questioning anything, because if you do, you’re subverting the authority of the Bible. I’m sorry, but that gospel is no Gospel at all. That gospel wants you to remain a fearful slave and immature child. That gospel ultimately sees God as an angry tyrant who will strike you down if you dare admit any doubt. That gospel reflects the mentality of the works of the flesh. That gospel is the mindset of Adam, and it is divisive, fearful, and simply sad. It is what death looks like, for that gospel is a gospel of dust.

No doubt…a tragic kingdom.