AT THE END of her first quarter at the university, Lenora came home and announced: “I am not going to church anymore…!”
Her parents were shocked. “Lenora, what happened?” wailed Mom. “You have all those awards for perfect attendance! And you’ve always seemed glad to worship God.”
“I no longer believe in God; he is a myth,” she replied bluntly. “Dr. Phillips has taught me the truth.”
“How did Dr. Phillips teach you that God is a myth?” asked her dad.
“It really wasn’t hard. He pointed out that apples do not grow in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.”
“Well?” Lenora’s father was inquisitive.
“Dad.” Lenora was impatient. “That being true, the first story in the Bible, the creation story, is a myth. The Garden of Eden was in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, so Eve could not have eaten an apple as the Bible says. And if that story is a myth, what not all the others?”
“Hold on a minute, Lenora. Let’s answer three questions. First, do we know the location of the Garden of Eden? No. Second, do we know the nature of the climate in the Garden? No. And third, what kind of fruit was forbidden? The Bible does not say. The myth here is the apple. Did Dr. Phillips read the Scriptures?”
Lenora shrugged her shoulders and walked away. To Lenora, her dad was a good, old-fashioned man. Dr. Phillips was her authority. Facts no longer mattered to her. She had decided that all truth is relative, and what she had come to believe was right for her. Nothing else mattered. (Robert L. Waggoner)
“Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (Heb. 3:13).
— Mike Benson