It is being well received, and
each time Tim does it, he is able to make a few improvements in
the program. We’d be happy to send it to anyone interested,
though it is rather large, at about five megabytes.
New articles are going up on our
Web site dedicated to articles on faith and science, including
two in English and Japanese. When it comes to the “creation
(or intelligent design) vs. evolution” debate that is raging
in the United States, one of the biggest problems is the dominance
of “young earth creationism” (YEC) as the recognized
representative of the Christian voice. There are not very many
of those folk in the United Methodist or Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
churches, but they are the “default” position of most
of the conservative churches. Likewise, since they are such a
convenient “straw-man” for the secularists to shoot
down, the media generally portrays that as the Christian position.
In fact, the term “creationism” is almost always used
to mean “young earth creationism,” thus skewing the
debate and making it difficult for those of us who value conventional
science to refer to ourselves as “creationists”—even
though we believe in God’s creation (however long and by
whatever means God accomplished it).
One strategy to deal with this is to provide a convincing argument
to Christians who have uncritically bought in to the YEC position
that not only is that view “unscientific” but it is
unbiblical. Two new papers can be viewed on the English
page of our Web site. The first is “The Age of the Earth
in Light of the Bible,” which has been online for a few
months now, and the other is its companion, “Noah’s
Flood in Light of the Bible,” which is up only in the English
at present. The Japanese version is still being worked on, but
should be online shortly. If you have YEC friends, please pass
these papers on to them.
Concerning the Gallup Poll we reported about in March, the “sparkplug”
behind it all, Bill McKay, came to Japan on April 17 to do a seminar
for interested mission personnel, and he had some fascinating
insights to share. He reported that the Japanese “experts”
(sociologists, etc.) that they worked with to prepare the poll
questions had assumed that most typical Japanese would not want
to discuss such “taboo” subjects as their personal
religious beliefs. Despite their advice to steer away from such
topics, the Gallup people wanted to give it a try, and they were
surprised by how much average Japanese were willing and even anxious
to open up on such subjects. It seems that no one had asked such
comprehensive questions before.
Those of us who heard the two presentations made in English are
curious to know more specifics, especially the wording of the
questions in Japanese. While the funding and overall direction
came from the Gallup organization, the final formulation of the
questions and the actual mechanics of taking the poll were done
entirely by Japanese. The Gallup people have promised to put the
entire poll on line for review, and so we look forward to seeing
that. Likewise, there is great interest in a follow-up poll to
see how things are changing. It seems apparent that there is a
great deal of openness to the Christian message among youth if
it can be presented in a way that answers the questions that they
are struggling with. But in order to be effective at doing that,
we have to do our homework to understand just what those issues
are and how to formulate the message so that they can see how
those questions are answered in Christ. We need to “scratch
where they itch!”
Concerning the family, Lisa came for a visit during Easter for
the first time in three years. She is finishing up her degree
in Oriental medicine and expects to graduate in December. Jennifer
is graduating from Biola University this month and plans to return
to Japan to live and work.
Love,
Tim and Yuko (Juji) Boyle
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
252 |
