Michael, I’m reading the CT article on Fred Rogers, and this quote from William Orr struck me:

‘Evil simply disintegrates in the presence of forgiveness. When you look with accusing eyes at your neighbor, that is what evil would want, because the more the accuser’—which, of course, is the word Satan in Hebrew—’can spread the accusing spirit, the greater evil spreads.’ Dr. Orr said, ‘On the other hand, if you can look with the eyes of the Advocate on your neighbor, those are the eyes of Jesus.’

I heard this dispy guy on the radio trying to parse Daniel’s visions, and I got to thinking. Then I stumbled on my copy of Schaeffer’s Genesis in Space and Time and got to thinking some more, about Robert’s statements. Then I got to thinking about how much time we spend here on end-times and creation.

It strikes me that Christians devote an inordinate amount of time on questions like, “How did things begin?” and “How will things end?” We don’t spend anywhere near as much time on the truly important question: What are we supposed to do? Yet much of the Bible is devoted to telling us exactly what God requires of us. This ties in with my criticism of Blackaby, as much as it does my frustration over the origins question or over prophecy debates. Now that I’ve re-read Schaeffer, I’m more convinced that he’s right: the point of Genesis 1 is not to relate how God acted, in terms of a specific historical transcription of events. The point is, however, that God has acted in creation, and that his action is historical, in the sense that it is a part of the flow of time. I’m convinced that Schaeffer would ignore the whole young earth/old earth debate, and be frustrated with Ross as much as with Ham and Hovid, because he understood that the fundamental issue of evangelism – and Schaeffer understands his own role primarily to be evangelistic – is to get out the message that God exists, and He enters into history to meet us.

If I had more time and discipline, I’d work this idea up into a full IM article. (I’m not sure if I’m saying that to excuse me from doing it or to goad you into encouraging me to do it…)