Letter to the Editor: Response to “Religious theories” article

By Lloyd Fowler–

I read Adam Dahmer’s opinion piece entitled “Opposing religious theories could be reconciled through science.” I am a senior at UofL and a member of the church, Third Avenue Baptist Church, that was pictured in Adam’s article. It was a well written article and it exposed to me new theories in science that I find fascinating and exciting. My church was pictured in the article, so I thought it would be appropriate to share that the Bible teaches us that Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6) and that science cannot reconcile religious theories. It’s the inclusively, exclusivity of Jesus, not metaphysics nor vacuous dynamism that saves people to Heaven. Jesus is inclusive to all who repent and believe, but is exclusive because He is the only way. I will throw in a caveat that I do believe that science is consistent with Christianity.

I just finished listening to a sermon by America’s most famous theologian, Jonathan Edward, called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” for a paper that I am writing for POLS 495. It is deep and heavy about why Jesus Christ is our greatest need. Jesus is our greatest need because sin has separated us from God since the Garden of Eden. Apart from Christ, we (sinners) are in the hands of an angry God who hates sin and rebellion against his creation and His authority. God will crush sinners upon judgement day. Science cannot reconcile this reality of our sin nature.

Jesus Christ (fully man yet fully God) was in the hands of an angry God on the cross. He did not commit sin, but he bore our sin. He remained perfectly holy, simultaneously being crushed by the Father because our sin had been placed on him. He died the death that we deserved. We should have had God’s wrath poured out on our own sin instead of our perfect sinless substitute, Jesus (2nd Corinthians 5:21). If we repent, turn from our sins, and believe in Jesus Christ (Mark 1:15) then we are no longer in the hands of an angry God, but rather in the hands of a God who redeemed us through the life, death and resurrection of His son. We become co-heirs with Christ in the inheritance of salvation as sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:17) when one becomes a Christian. When the Father looks on us, He no longer sees our sin, but Jesus’ perfection and righteousness because we are attached to Jesus through faith. Nothing I do will save me because if I could save myself by being a good person then Jesus died for no reason (Galatians 2:21). God’s love and redemption is so shocking when one considers what we truly deserved to begin with apart from Christ. It’s even more shocking that God would kill a sinless man, His Son, for the redemption of sinners! Yet, God did it because it pleased Him!