By the time I reached my last year in school, I had come to believe that there was no God. Of course I had to believe in evolution; how else could our existence be explained?
My beliefs changed when I was confronted with the fact that Christianity had a civilising effect on people. Christians go to isolated tribes and write their language for the first time so that the people can read the Bible in their own language. The abolition of slavery and of child labour are Christians initiatives as well as compulsory education for all. I decided to accept the teachings of Jesus in general, and the Sermon on the Mount in particular, as the moral code for my life. I was in good company since Gandhi and many other famous people had done the same.
To be confirmed in the church of my parents, one had to accept the Twelve Articles of Faith, two of which I found hard. One was the existence of God but this became reasonable when I considered that Jesus believed in God. The resurrection of the dead was more challenging to believe, but I did not think it was reason enough to remain un-churched. There was no longer a need for me to believe in evolution but I did.
About 5 years later I gave my life to God. My confidence in the reliability of the New Testament resulted from testing some of its teachings in my own life. It became hard to believe in hell and evolution at the same time, and Jesus did speak about hell (Matthew 5:29). How could a just God punish an ape-like creature eternally for sinning?
I started to take the Old Testament literally because Jesus did. He spoke about God creating male and female, about Noah and Jonah (Matthew 19:4; 12:40; 24:37) and about Lot ’s wife (Luke 17:32).
Creation of two perfect human beings made much more sense than every living thing evolving out of sea slime. Even after the fall people lived for hundreds of years, because there were very few flaws in their bodies. These bodies had been designed to heal themselves but harmful mutations caused parents to pass their weaknesses on to their descendants.
The universe was fundamentally changed when God cursed the earth (Genesis 3:17). In my opinion the Second Law of Thermodynamics became operative at that time. Things started to naturally tend to disorder. Evolutionists believe the opposite, namely that order automatically arose out of disorder.
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