Shaun Groves
Why do some boys who love hockey grow up to be professionals and the rest don’t? Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? Some folks say hard work. Others claim raw talent. The correct answer might me both and…
In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell argues – no, proves – that your chances of becoming a pro hockey player are higher if you’re born in the first three months of the year and are therefore one of the bigger kids on the team when you start playing the game. And your chances of being a pioneer in the computer business are higher if you were born in 1955, because this makes you young enough to have benefited from certain advances that made programming faster and old enough to have been one of the first programmers in the world with 10,000 hours of programming practice by the time you reached employment age.
Your birthday can be every bit as essential to your success as talent and effort. Had Wayne Gretske been born in October (not January) or Bill Gates born in 1957 (not 1955), their names would likely be unknown to the rest of us today.
Some would call this luck: an unpredictable phenomenon that leads to a favorable outcome.
————————
I remember a debate in my high school science class. After a couple of snide remarks between students over evolution and creationism – of all things worth fighting over in high school – our teacher decided to solve the disagreement by pitting both sides against each other in a more structured way. We were all told to go home and decide which side we were on, research, and them come back the next day ready to defend our position.
On debate day the teacher had us pick up our desk and move it to either side of the room: the creation side or the evolution side. I asked where I needed to go if I believed both.
You know, one sure way to turn adversaries into allies is to give them a common enemy. I was it.
There aren’t many convictions from high school I still cling to today. I don’t think Nirvana is the best band ever. I don’t think dress codes infringe upon personal liberties. I don’t think Texas should secede from the union or that marching band should be an olympic sport or that Kelly Kapowski Morris is my soul mate.
But I do have two lasting convictions pertaining to evolution and creationism: 1) I don’t know how everything was made. 2) I know who made everything.
——————-
I don’t know why my brain connects the dots it does. There are more useful things I wish my brain would do instead.
I made an appointment with a doctor a couple days ago, hung up the phone, and immediately thought about luck and evolution.
A few years ago Amy Grant released a song called Lucky One. In it she told a boy that because he was so awesome she felt like the lucky one in the relationship. Some Christian radio stations and retailers dropped her like a copy of the Book of Mormon. Luck is a secular replacement for God and his sovereignty, their logic went. To believe in luck, they reasoned, is to not believe in a powerful, personal and active God.
This is the same logic that caused creationists in that high school classroom all those years ago to disagree with me and even claim I wasn’t a Christian, or at least not the kind that believes the bible. Evolution, they essentially argued, is a replacement for God. To believe in evolution, they reasoned, is to not believe in a powerful, creative God.
But both luck haters and creationists have doctors, I figure.
When creationists get sick they call a guy or gal with a lot of tools and knowledge about the human body and ask him to fix what’s broken. Does believing in x-rays, stethoscopes and antibiotics mean not believing in a powerful, personal, active and healing God?
When luck haters describe their bout with cancer or bunions or heart disease, do they say God healed them and that’s it or do they also talk about the chemotherapy, surgery and new diet plan that were part of their treatment?
Because, well, do doctor’s make us well or does God?
One thing’s for sure, God or evolution or both, hasn’t seen fit to make us humans very consistent in our beliefs yet. That’s pretty unlucky for Amy Grant and me.
Stephen @ Rebelling Against Indifference says:
I love this answer Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, Walking on Water), gave in an interview about this: “Somebody once asked me in a college setting what I thought about creationism versus evolution. I said, “I can’t get very excited about it. There’s only one question that’s worth asking, and that is, did God make it? If the answer is yes, then why get so excited about how?”
Nancy Tyler says:
“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers.”
.
.
.
.
.
Been chewing on that since I read it yesterday in “A Circle of Quiet” …by Madeleine L’Engle.
(what a lucky coincidence)
Texas in Africa says:
My curiousity is about unluckiness and God’s sovereignty. But easy answers don’t always work there.
Pam says:
That’s a real paradox.
TransitionGirl says:
Love the way you think. I totally agree. We know the WHO. The HOW is not exactly spelled out in the Bible, because it doesn’t really matter. The WHO is the most important.
Holly says:
Ah! I find it so weird that you posted this when my group of friends have been talking about this so often in the last few weeks. I think both too. And I’m thrilled that there are other people out there who are getting picked on because of it.
annie says:
Love this topic. As a paid “scientist,” I had years of college classes to ponder the same ideas. Christians can argue in circles about them. I look forward to getting all the answers when I get to heaven ~ if I even still care at that point.
Mark says:
I will admit to being one of those six day creationists who does think there are theological reasons for literal “God spoke and it happened” creation.
However, I am certainly not going shun someone who believes that God could have used evolution. As has been said, it is the WHO not the HOW. And God using evolution makes so much more sense then pure chance.
As to luck, I happen to like the song “Lucky One.” And I roll my eyes every time someone insists that it isn’t a Pot Luck but a Pot Providence. Give me a break!
Loren says:
Questions:
Why do Christians hate evolution and rally with adaptation?
Why do Christians hate mystery?
I feel others label me as weak when I don’t exactly know how the second coming of Christ will look like or have a strict set of fundamental laws in which to label God. Mystery, to me, requires more faith than having it all figured out…it doesn’t matter to me whether God used a microwave oven or a magic wand, no matter the theory it still points to God.
Does embracing mystery make one a less/more effective/true Christian?
L
fan says:
How could it be more simple? God spoke things into existence, and they WERE. Genesis doesn’t say six million years, it says six days. I’m not rebuking anyone here, or you, Shaun, I’m just saying we can’t compromise what the Bible says to be more friendly or acceptable to the world, or just because we don’t undersatnd what some things mean.
michele says:
For me, it all comes down to death. I have no problem being on a fence and waiting it out, knowing God has all the answers – knowing that he is powerful enough to create in any fashion.
But when I think about evolution, I know death had to exist in a perfect world, before there was sin, if evolution were to be true. That doesn’t make sense. And I know there had to be a real Adam & Eve because they are part of the geneaologies. I know there is lots more to it, but at it’s most basic … Adam & Eve were real and I don’t believe there was any death before sin entered the world.
medyum says:
Buyu, Medyum, Medyumlar, Cinler, Buyuler, Nazar, Fallar, Yildizname, Hipnoz, Telepati, Reankarnasyon, Horoskop, Yorum, Tarot, Palmistry, Numeroloji, Konusunda Lider Site..!