Hi, Quetzal.
Tax season kept me away. I have seven children, too, so while I can post in bursts, there will always be long breaks. Summer makes up for tax season, though, because I help teach our church's group home school (mostly math), and I have some free time while we're out in June and July.
To address the issue of not losing my faith, I want to say this...I will keep it short.
The real crisis of faith for me wasn't evolution, it was the combination of reading Gene Edwards and Watchman Nee followed by the apostolic fathers. Translated into secular language, that means that Edwards and Nee pointed out to me the incredible New Testament emphasis on love, unity, and the church as a united people. I fell in love with the story in Acts (one heart, one mind, shared possessions), but I could find it reproduced nowhere.
Since Jesus staked his credibility on the unity of his disciples (Jn 17:20-23), and I couldn't find that unity, I was struggling. Then I actually read the 2nd century "fathers." I read everything written by traditional Christianity between the apostolic writings and about AD 250, which is quite a lot. Most of it I read two or three times. I saw that neither the Catholics nor any of the Protestants were much like the early church at all, and they certainly didn't interpet the New Testament writings the same way.
Now that was a crisis! Finding out Genesis wasn't literal and that evolution was true was difficult, but not as difficult as finding out that 2nd century Christianity no longer existed, with all the ramifications that carried.
Origen (a 3rd century Christian) once said that you'd have to be stupid to believe there were days before there was a sun or that mankind fell because of a literal tree and piece of fruit. On the other hand, Theophilus, a 2nd century bishop, believed it was all literal.
In fact, this was always amazing to me. Theophilus added up all the dates from Adam to his day, using the Septuagint, which was the "Authorized version" of his day, and he added up 5698 years, give or take a few for loose months in each king's reign or son's birth. What's funny about that is that he wrote in AD 168, which puts his 6000 year figure at AD 470. It appears that the church of his day (certainly some, but it may have been common or even pretty universal) believed that the Roman Empire would fall at 6000 years (and it certainly seemed universal that they believed the antichrist would replace the Roman empire). That's an awful accurate prediction, or a pretty amazing coincidence, although I have no idea what one does with it even if it was a "prophecy." What's the point? Still, it's so amazing to me I can't ever forget it.
Sorry for rambling. I hope something was interesting. Better tell me if none of it was, so I don't do this in the future.
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