Elephants, Rhinos, and Fathers

Fathers, don't stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4 CSB17)

The Bible tells fathers to raise children in the training and instruction of the Lord. What happens when fathers fail to do this? Some years ago I heard a true story that illustrates the importance of fathers by showing what happens when fathers are not around to carry out their God given role. This story is about elephant fathers, but I think you’ll see how it can apply to humans.

In the 1990’s, game rangers in South Africa's Pilanesberg Park began finding rhinos which had been killed. When poachers kill rhinos they usually take their horns to sell, but these rhinos still had their horns. The location and nature of the severe injuries were not consistent with rhinos killing rhinos, nor with lions killing them (not that it is easy for lions to kill a rhinoceros). There is only one creature in the world that has the strength to kill these rhinos in the fashion in which they were being killed: elephants.

If you find that strange, so did the park rangers. While elephants have great strength, they are generally gentle and have no reason nor motivation to attack and kill rhinos. Additionally, the rhinos are not stupid enough to provoke elephants, and have no reason to do so. Why were the elephants killing the rhinos? The answer to that question lay in the background of the guilty elephants.

The elephant population in a certain area of Africa was becoming too high. Rather than kill the elephants to thin the heard, a decision was made to try to move some of the elephants to another area in Africa. However, it was too difficult to move the large adult bull elephants at that time. The distance they were to be moved required loading the elephants onto trucks and the trucks that were available could not carry adult bull elephants. So, they moved only young elephants and some adult females.

Those young elephants grew up without their fathers or father figures. As these fatherless elephants entered adolescence they began acting out. They attacked and killed the rhinos without any real reason. Trucks were specially equipped to allow adult bull elephants to be brought in. As soon at the adult bull elephants arrived the killing of the rhinos stopped instantly.

(You may read this story, with a few more details, in this CBS news article:  The Delinquents. The BBC included this story in a broadcast that you can listen to starting at about the 13 minute point here. I am far from the first to see this story as an analogy for the importance of human fathers and the damage done when human fathers are not present. Among others, James Dobson mentioned this story in his book, Bringing Up Boys.)

Humans

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:6 CSB17)

Does the story about angry, violent elephants who grew up without their fathers apply to people? I think it does. I believe that part of the reason (certainly not the whole reason or the only reason) we are seeing so much anger and hate in our culture at this time, as well as a breakdown of common civility and courtesy, is rooted in the breakdown of the family as God designed it.

When I was in Bible seminary back in 1993-1995 I was blessed with the opportunity to be involved with ministry to youth in a juvenile detention center. Actually, there were two types of ministry I was involved in there. One was a program where we gave presentations to groups of youth, and in the other I was a mentor for one young man. While there were exceptions, I quickly learned that the vast majority of these youths did not have their father in their home. Statistics and the observations of others verify that what I observed personally is in fact a broad and deep trend. Fatherless homes tend to greatly increase the likelihood of children facing all types of difficulties and falling into many kinds of traps, sins, and harmful behaviors.

If you google “fatherless homes” or something similar, you will quickly find piles of sites and statistics showing the dire effects of growing up in homes where the father is not fulfilling His God given role. One such site states that children who grow up in homes without fathers are:

* At 4x greater risk of poverty

* 7x more likely to become pregnant as a teen

* More likely to experience abuse and neglect

* More likely to have behavioral problems

* More likely to abuse drugs and alcohol

* More likely to go to prison

* 2x more likely to drop out of high school

* . . . and more.

Dads matter! And tragically, there have been more and more children growing up without their fathers.

In addition to my experience with ministry in juvenile detention centers, back in 2013 I worked as a substitute teacher in between church positions. I worked in a county with a high percentage of broken homes. All that hurt and brokenness was carried into the schools and classrooms. The courageous teachers who work in such schools face an extremely difficult environment. One teacher is in a room with twenty or more precious children. Not just one or two, but many of these children are dealing with heartbreaking home situations and as a result the children are depressed, angry, and often lack respect for the teachers. They are hurting and often hurt each other and themselves. Do we really expect these children to grow up to be godly, productive, wise members of our society?

Solutions

But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14 NIV)

Is there hope? Yes! Our hope, our only hope, is in God.

Throughout God’s Word He commands that we provide special care for the fatherless (for example: Exodus 22:22, Deuteronomy 14:19, Isaiah 1:17, Jeremiah 22:3, James 1:27, and many others). And He promises to do so Himself.

At the deepest level what we need is a widespread revival. Only as many people turn to God in faith and repentance and as many wounded hearts find healing and grace can we hope to see a reversal of the breakdown of the family and all the ills that follow.

As we pray and work for revival, we must continue to do what we can in the meantime. God works through us. There are many ways in which godly men can serve as fathers to the fatherless. Some of these ways involve organized ministries, but there are also many opportunities among our own extended families, neighbors, and in our churches. Investing deeply in our youth, and providing extra care and ministry for those in more difficult situations, is a valuable and worthwhile use of our time, energy, and money. It is not easy, but valuable, life-changing ministry rarely is.

My wife and I were blessed with the opportunity to serve the Lord in Indonesia for 14 years. I constantly shared the gospel with my neighbors (most of whom were Muslims) and I had many opportunities to teach God’s Word in a number of settings, including in an Indonesian Bible College. Yet, when I think back on that time, while I thank God for all the different types of ministry opportunities, I have always felt that our most valuable and important and fruitful ministry was one we didn’t expect: Hope and I ended up being spiritual parents to several young Indonesians who needed godly parenting. Some of them lived in our home for years. Today they have families of their own and are bearing good fruit for God’s Kingdom.

So, let us . . .

* Give thanks for good, faithful fathers

* Go out of our way to support single parents

* Seek ways in which we can help, support, encourage, and show love to children from fatherless (or motherless) homes or other difficult homes (homes where the father is present, but abusive, can be even worse than fatherless homes)

* Be ready to show forgiveness and mercy

* Pray and work for a revival that will lead to many being saved, many repenting, many finding healing, and many more fathers being faithful, godly leaders of their homes

* Constantly point people to our Heavenly Father, who remains faithful when all others fail

Fathers, don't stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4 CSB17)

If you liked this, you might want to read this blog post about another spiritual lesson from elephants:

Spiritual Lessons from Elephants and Water Buffalo




Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .

My Review of “The Stairway to Life: An Origin of Life Reality Check” by Change Laura Tan and Rob Stadler

I thank God for The Stairway to Life by Change Laura Tan and Rob Stadler. At a time when some people tragically cite science (by which they usually mean molecules-to-man evolution) as a reason for rejecting Christianity, this book demonstrates that without the intervention of a supernatural Creator, natural forces could never have created the first life. Far from working against belief in God, recent scientific advances continue to pile up more and more evidence pointing in the direction of a great, super-intelligent Creator as the best explanation for the origin of life.

Tan and Stadler focus on the minimum requirements to produce the first living, replicating cell. When it comes to what is required to make a living cell, they don’t have to guess. They base their book on scientific research. Their book is well researched and includes references to many scientific publications. Tan and Stadler especially draw on the work of Craig Venter and his team in creating a synthetic cell in 2010 and then further modifying the cell to produce a cell with approximately the smallest possible genome in 2016 (calling it a “synthetic cell” is in some ways misleading and an exaggeration, you’ll have to read the book to see why). Venter’s work helps identify the minimum requirements for a cell to work at all.

The central portion of The Stairway to Life is an examination of twelve requirements that are needed to produce even the simplest living, reproducing cells. The twelve requirements are:

1. Formation and concentration of building blocks

2. Homochirality of building blocks

3. A solution for the water paradox

4. Consistent linkage of building blocks

5. Biopolymer reproduction

6. Nucleotide sequences forming useful code

7. Means of gene regulation

8. Means for repairing biopolymers

9. Selectively permeable membranes

10. Means of harnessing energy

11. Interdependency of DNA, RNA, and proteins,

12. Coordinated cellular purpose

The book is organized like a stairway with twelve steps where each step is one of the above requirements. The authors evaluate the various proposed natural methods that origin of life researchers have suggested to account for each step. For the sake of argument and explanation, the authors assume that completely natural processes have been able to accomplish all the preceding steps when examining each new step. For each step, they convincingly argue that no realistic natural solution has been found and for many of the steps there is very strong evidence that a natural solution without supernatural aide is for all practical purposes impossible. Tan and Stadler emphasize that treating the production of life like a stairway is only a useful way of organizing the book because in the case of producing a real living cell all the steps have to be available at once. In all actual living cells, many of the earlier “steps” (perhaps all of them) are dependent on the later steps already existing and working. Thus, in addition to the unique challenges of each step, the entire combination of steps works like a super-massive chicken and the egg problem.

Although their tone is respectful and academic, from an intellectual viewpoint by the end of the second step in the stairway the authors have shattered any hope that chemical evolution could have produced the first living cell without aid from an intelligent Creator. Although godless explanations for life lie on the floor like so much shattered pottery, Tan and Stadler keep up the evidential pounding for ten more steps, turning the shattered pieces into dust and then blowing the dust away. In other words, their arguments, are strong, effective, and overwhelming. When they reach the end of the final chapter their conclusion, while strong and clear, actually sounds like an understatement:

Living organisms and the Stairway to Life are powerful evidence of God – an inescapable conclusion when one is free to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

I’ve read extensively on this topic and even written a few blog posts on it myself. In 2016, I even wrote a blog post specifically explaining how Craig Venter’s research provides strong evidence for God (my blog post was far more limited in scope and detail compared to Tan and Stadler’s excellent book). So, this topic is not new to me. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from reading The Stairway to Life. Arguments I already knew were reinforced and there were new (at least to me) arguments as well. I’ll give one example.

Throughout the book, Tan and Stadler engage with the theories and research of origin of life scientists who have different views from their own (basically, these origin of life scientists believe an entirely natural explanation for the origin of life exists through some form of chemical evolution). One of the major theories of chemical evolution is that there were self-replicating RNA molecules before there were cells. Sometimes this is called “the RNA world.” Tan and Stadler point out numerous reasons that an RNA world is not realistic. But one big problem they point out was new to me (or else, if I’ve read it elsewhere, I had forgotten about it). In living cells RNA is best known as being an intermediate information carrier in between the long term storage of information in DNA and the expression of that information as proteins. But RNA also sometimes works more like a protein, carrying out some of the many complex functions in a cell. RNA’s ability to work like a protein is limited (in other words, proteins are generally much better at their jobs than RNA would be). However, in the hypothetical RNA world (it’s important to remember there is no evidence that an RNA world ever really existed), RNA carries out many of the functions needed for replication and biochemical evolution until eventually DNA and proteins coded for by DNA appear. Once DNA appears, since it is much better suited for long term information storage and passing information on to future generations, evolution selects DNA to take over the information storage role from RNA. The DNA then starts coding for proteins that can take over roles from RNA that proteins are better at. But there’s a huge problem with this abiogenesis story. In an RNA world, specific nucleotide sequences of RNA are arranged to directly perform specific functions. These sequences, however, are not a code for proteins. They are not a code at all. The sequence of RNA nucleotides that might catalyze a needed reaction for life are in no way related to the code for a string of amino acids that form a protein that could perform that same function. So, some of the functional information stored up in RNA in the RNA world (even if such a world existed) would be useless when DNA finally showed up. In terms of the really important issue of information (which is a really huge, central feature of all life that any origin of life theory must account for), there would be a massive disconnect between the RNA in the RNA world and the DNA. When I read Tay and Stadler’s explanation of this (which is better than my attempt at a summary in this paragraph), I thought, “wow, that really ruins the RNA world as being a helpful precursor to cells even if the RNA world existed, which it didn’t.”

A Strength and Weakness of the Book

One aspect of The Stairway to Life that is both a strength and a weakness is that the language and content will be a bit too technical for some readers. This is a strength, because it allows Tay and Stadler to really get into some of the important details of scientific issues related to the origin of life. It is a weakness because it somewhat limits the audience. A good test to see if the book is too technical for you is your response to the paragraph I wrote above this one discussing RNA. If you could follow that, then you should have no problem with their book. If my paragraph was a bit difficult to follow but you generally understand how DNA, RNA, and proteins are related in all living cells, then the only problem may be that my paragraph is not that well written compared to their book (which includes some helpful analogies to explain some of the technical stuff). Also, by no means is the entire book as technical as the paragraph above. However, if you’re struggling to remember the different roles of DNA, RNA, and proteins, then Tay and Stadler’s book might not be a good fit for you (unless you want to go slow and do a little review of high school level biology as you read, in which case you will learn a lot of really interesting stuff).

Related Material

Tay and Stadler do a good job interacting with the top proponents of abiogenesis. This is not a book full of strawmen. They reference the top scientific  research and arguments of those who disagree with them. A slight weakness of their book is that they do not, from what I saw, equally reference some of the top work of those who agree with them. They are far from the first authors to argue on scientific grounds that natural forces alone cannot account for the origin of life and that the evidence points to an Intelligent Designer. For example, Stephen Meyer wrote an excellent book on this same topic, Signature in the Cell. However, from what I can tell (and I searched) neither Meyer nor his book are mentioned or referenced at all. Likewise, while Michael Behe has focused mostly on biological evolution as opposed to chemical evolution, Behe’s brilliant explanation of the concept of irreducible complexity is very relevant to Tay and Stadler’s topic. Yet, Behe (who, like Meyer, has been hugely influential in this field of inquiry) is not mentioned at all. This is not a major flaw, but I do count it as a minor flaw in an overall excellent book.

Why this topic is important

I want to close this blog post with a few thoughts about why a topic that might seem to be a bit esoteric and is certainly technical has wide and deep relevance to people today. What is at stake is nothing less than the glory of God.

When we glorify God, we are not making God any more glorious (good, beautiful, wise, holy, powerful, loving, intelligent) than He already is. Rather, when we glorify God, we are helping ourselves and other people to see and understand a little more clearly how wonderful God is. Nature, including living things, should glorify God. In other words, looking at the created world we live in should help us to see more clearly how powerful and intelligent our Creator must be. Nature does tend to have this effect on people. However, the molecules-to-man evolution myth robs God of glory He would otherwise receive by deceiving some people into thinking that a great, powerful, super-intelligent Creator really isn’t needed to account for humming birds, dolphins, and flowers after all. Evolution claims to explain all that without any need for God. But evolution, even if it works (which it doesn’t, except at the microevolution level, which is totally different from the molecules-to-man level), cannot get started at all until the first living cell existed and was reproducing. Where did that first cell come from? Many scientists believe and convince others that it came from chemical evolution (also called abiogenesis). Tay and Stadler show convincingly that chemical evolution cannot account for even the simplest life forms. Only God can. Tay and Stadler are continuing the good work of an ancient psalmist who wrote:

For you have made me rejoice, LORD, by what you have done;

I will shout for joy because of the works of your hands.

How magnificent are your works,

LORD, how profound your thoughts!

(Ps. 92:4-5 CSB17)

For further reading:

I love thinking about God’s glory as seen in creation and also about the scientific evidence for God. I’ve read extensively on this topic. It reinforces for my mind and intellect what my heart feels when I’m walking early in the morning and listening the birds sing, looking at flowers in bloom, and watching the sun rise. It leads to worship of my God and Savior. I’ve written on this topic a fair bit. Here are some of my blog posts on this topic:

The smallest cells give big evidence for God

How viruses strengthen the scientific case for a Creator

God Created the Earth to be Inhabited

How the Sun glorifies the Son

Seeing God in Creation Gives Me Courage to Keep Serving Him

Nuclear Submarines and Living Cells

Theistic Evolution Demagnifies God's Glory

Octopi from Outer Space

Behe’s Three Mighty Blows Against Darwinism

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .