Ken Ham has chosen to respond once again to some things I’ve written, this time offering my very brief description of how I came to a personal faith as “a warning to the contemporary church.” If the disdain with which Ham uses words like “experience” is anything to go by, he probably has never had a life-changing experience of being born again. But I’ll leave it to him to share his own experience, if he so chooses, and if he has one to share.
His complaint is that, in a post I linked to which provides a very brief account of how I came to a personal faith, there is a lack of reference to Scripture. Apparently complete, unconditional surrender of one’s life to God in Christ is not enough for Ham. Yet I suspect that someone having gone through “4 spiritual laws” (on a tract featuring verses taken from their context) and/or having uttered the “sinner’s prayer” (which of course Jesus makes his disciples say in all four Gospels, as I’m sure you know) would have their faith accepted by Ham, no questions asked – as long as that person was a young-earth creationist, preferably one that supports Answers in Genesis.
Ironically, my born-again experience was followed not long after by my embracing young-earth creationism. The only difference between Ham and myself when it comes to this particular point is that I continued to learn about both the Bible and science, whereas Ham has emphasized that he has nothing to learn from those with genuine expertise in either area.
So once again I’m delighted to say that my faith is not what Ham thinks it should be. It is a result of a life-changing experience, not a merely intellectual assent to theological propositions. It arose from an encounter with the divine reality to whom Scripture points, not a bibliolatry that substitutes Scripture in the place of God. And yet precisely for that reason, I’ve felt free to let go of views I had once assumed in my immaturity were the only true Christian stance, precisely because the evidence provided by the Bible itself necessitated my doing so.
As for Ham, his online biography says nothing about how he came to a personal faith, and so I wonder whether Ham would agree that, since there is no testimony provided, never mind one that mentions Scripture, his faith must by definition be less adequate by his own standards than my own?
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