Thinking Out Loud, Volume CDLX

I had two uncles named David. The first one I don't really know much about, because I never knew him, and have heard little about him. I have no doubt that he was a good man, but from what little I HAVE heard, he loved his booze, and if you saw him, chances are, he would be inebriated. The other Uncle David, I knew well. He was a pastor, an awesome father to his four daughters, an ideal husband to my aunt, a man of his word, a great family man, and I never knew of him to touch any type of alcoholic beverages. So....why did I know one and not the other? It's because when the second Uncle David showed up, the first one disappeared forever. You see, according to the birth certificate, they were one and the same person, but otherwise, two completely different individuals. I'll work my way back to that topic, but for now, I'd like to shift gears. Many people today like to place all people into one of two categories: believers and non-believers. I see it somewhat differently. I consider everyone to be a believer, but the big difference is in just who it is they believe in. Christians believe in Christ, Muslims believe in Allah, Buddhists believe in Buddha, while agnostics believe in mankind. Here in our country, however, it most often comes down to those who believe in Christ and those who believe in man. The way it's usually broken down, though, is either a person believes in Christ, or he doesn't believe in Christ, and that's the reason each one of us is classified as a believer or a non-believer, so for the rest of this article, I'll go with that school of thought. When the question arises as to how we got here, Christians will point to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, and the believers of mankind will look to science books for man's theories of how the universe and humanity came into being. I remember one of my college professors who told us to read both accounts and make up our own minds, and that's what I did, although I looked at much more than just the debate between creation and evolution. One of the things I observed was the way I've seen individual lives completely altered, like what happened with Uncle David. The theory of evolution teaches that we evolved into who we are today over long periods of time, while Christians believe we were created in one day. With that in mind, I consider Uncle David's transformation. It wasn't gradual; it was abrupt. As strongly as I believe in my uncle, I don't have enough faith in mankind to believe anyone could, on his own, change so drastically in one day. It had to be a "God thing." Therefore, feel free to call me a believer! Preston