Dove Award-winning artist Michael Gungor recently made headlines when he said he doesn’t believe the whole Bible, specifically, the story of creation. Now, he is stirring the pot again with shocking questions about the book of Genesis’ historic significance in the Liturgists Podcast.
“In college, I came up against some of the science, you know, showing the age of the Earth, showing evolutionary principles, and it really kind of rocked me a little bit … I was raised in Christian school and I learned in my Christian school textbooks how carbon dating was flawed and the scientists of the world—the more mainstream scientists—were all very biased and were trying to sway the science toward atheism because they didn’t want to believe the Bible,” Gungor said. “And then when I got into college and had to cite my work for my papers, and I was trying to argue that against my professors, I kept seeing that my sources were the biased ones … and that created a lot of tension for me.”
According to creationist Ken Ham, when Mike McHargue, co-host of the podcast, asked Gungor about his thoughts concerning Jesus speaking of Moses’ writings as historical fact, implying that to relegate the prophet’s words to allegory is akin to rejecting Christ’s divinity, Gungor’s response is “alarming.”
“I think you’re making a lot of assumptions based in a perspective that was handed to you from our culture, and the way we think in the modern world is very different than how people thought in the pre-modern world. To just see a few words that somebody said, that Jesus said, about Noah, and to assume that you can get into Jesus’ mind and know exactly how He thought about the whole situation, and how He considered history versus myth versus whatever—how do you know?” Gungor asked.
“And even if He was wrong, even if He did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don’t understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ. … The point is it wouldn’t freak me out if He was wrong about it, in His human side. But I still don’t see the issue. If Noah and Adam were mythical ideas, the point of what Jesus was saying still applies to me. … It has very little to do, in my perspective, with Jesus trying to lay out a history of the world to a historical-minded people … Even if Jesus knew that Noah and Adam were mythical, but knew He was talking to people who thought they were real, that’s another possibility.”
Creationist Ken Ham is alarmed. As he sees it, after being repeatedly indoctrinated into evolutionary ideas and millions of years, Gungor eventually gave up on biblical creation. Ham called Gungor a sad example of how young people are walking away from the church before or soon after they enter college.
“So not only does Michael Gungor deny the historical accuracy of the creation and Flood accounts—but he believes Jesus Christ was probably wrong, too! Or worse yet, that Christ might have just lied to the Jews about it. This is a sad place for a professing Christian to be in (see the article Was Jesus Wrong? Peter Enns Says, “Yes”),” Ham wrote in a blog post.
“Michael Gungor has an influence on the youth of this generation and will lead them astray with such views. I urge you to pray for him, that he’ll accept our offer to visit the Creation Museum and that he’ll come to accept the authority of God’s Word in every area—including the history in Genesis!”
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