Reason #368 How I Can Kill Your Buzz

Have you ever been the one person in the room with a frown? Everyone else appears to be having some sort of positive experience, while you just sit there, wondering what's wrong with you.

I've been in situations like this before. Probably the oddest time was in a Holiday Inn Conference room with a handful of people listening to Roman Catholic apologist Gerry Matatics invoke a number of saints. They all stood up invoking a number of people, I sat there looking around the room. Then there was the Pentecostal service I went to a number of years ago in which everyone was jumping around except for me. The minister, noticing my dour demeanor decided to anoint the audience and threw a glass of water, directly  at me (the water, that is). At least in those situations, I expected to be the one buzz killer in the room.

I recently sat through this video as part of a presentation about how the human body testifies to God as creator as well as savior, and I was not expecting to be that odd man out in the room:



The people with me during this presentation appeared to be just as amazed as the audience in this video.  I had quite the opposite experience. Sure, I was amazed by the intricacies of the human body. My faith in the gospel though was not enhanced with this fact about cross-shaped Laminin.

As I sat through this video, I prayed silently, "Please dear Lord, don't let anyone in this room ask me what I thought about this video when it's finished." Seconds after the closing prayer, the person next me said something like, "Wow, wasn't that video incredible?" At first I thought to simply say something affirming but not definite like, "Yes, that was interesting." Instead I blurted out something like, "If I told you what I think of the video, I'm probably going to kill your buzz."

I then explained I thought the basic problem with the video was placing special revelation in general revelation. General revelation is God’s non-verbal revelation of Himself. He has revealed Himself to all mankind through creation displaying the fact that He is creator (Psalm 19, Acts 14, Acts 17). General revelation does not reveal God as redeemer. Special revelation is God’s verbal revelation of Himself (the Scriptures), and also His supernatural revelation of Himself to specific people and circumstances throughout Biblical history. Of course, special revelation also reveals God as creator, but in a fuller way. We understand exactly who this God is who is the creator. The basic problem with the cross-shaped Laminin was that it's placing an aspect of special revelation into general revelation.

Probably some of you may not have a problem with this, but here's what I think happens when these categories are confused. If you place the cross outside of special revelation, you then are in a completely different epistemology ballpark. If you think that cross-shaped Laminin serves as proof of the Gospel or the Christian faith, how would you explain someone else finding some other sort of non-Christian icon in either the body or in nature somewhere? You see, if this sort of thing serves as proof for you, a similar sort of natural icon could just as easily serve as proof for some other religious worldview. This sort of thing isn't new. For those of you engaged with Rome's claims... this is the same sort of thing when an image of Mary shows up somewhere in nature.

So I managed to get out of the room with only killing one buzz.

Addendum
Ken sent me a link on this issue. In that link, the author states:

"...the Ebola virus, which causes a horrific form of hemorrhagic fever that usually results in death, happens to have the structure of what is commonly referred to as a shepherd’s crook. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:14). So, if the shape of laminin supports the biblical truth that Christ holds all things together, then what would we conclude about the Good Shepherd from the shape of the Ebola virus? And if laminin can represent a cross, then why not a sword (Ephesians 6:17; Hebrews 4:12)? As Christians, we cannot allow our fallible, finite interpretations to supersede the Word of God (2 Peter 1:20)."