Janet Kellogg Ray | Woven and Rooted

Ray: 

We’re all in this together. We’re all woven together. And so my understanding of evolution actually deepens my understanding of the vocation of being an image bearer.

I’m Janet Ray and I am a many years biology adjunct at the University of North Texas and I’m a science writer.

Stump:

Welcome to Language of God. I’m Jim Stump. 

Janet Ray has come out with her third book in a line of books that are not only wonderfully titled but also well written, informative, funny…and very relevant to the work of faith and science. Fish with Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God is the subject of our conversation today. 

While evolution has long been a subject of some controversy with a portion of religious people, Janet has found that often the subject doesn’t really start getting too touchy until it turns specifically to human evolution. She has also found that the resistance isn’t so much about the evidence, though it sometimes is presented that way, but more often about the implications to what it means to be humans, made in the image of God. 

That’s where we spend much of our conversation, discussing what the image of God means, how to understand it in the context of the long history of human evolutionary development, and what it means to live into image bearing today. 

There’s something about Janet and her approach to communicating the science that can speak bold truths but also understands an audience that is skeptical to her claims and invites them into a new way of understanding. We hope this conversation can do the same, both for those who accept the science of evolution and for those who are worried about the theological implications.

Let’s get to the conversation.

Stump:

Well, Janet Ray, welcome back to the podcast.

Ray:

Thank you. It’s so nice to be back here with you guys.

Stump:

Yeah. We had you on back in, I think it was 2023, for your book The God of Monkey Science. And then last summer a little bit for our 100th anniversary of The Scopes trial episode. And I don’t know that we need an excuse to talk to you again because it’s always a delight, but now you have a new book out, Fish with Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God. One of my favorite topics, so let’s talk again. I’m glad to have you here.

Maybe start with the origin story of this book on origins. Why does the world need another book on evolution and Christian faith?

Ray:

Well, great question, great question. But what I found in my writing about science and evolution, and specifically acceptance of evolution by people of faith, what I found invariably was that for many people who will accept the evolution of bacteria or viruses. They’re okay with having to get a vaccine every year because viruses mutate. Or they’re okay with plant evolution. Or they may even be okay with non-human animal evolution. But when it comes to human evolution, that’s where they get off the bus. That’s their bus stop, hard no, “Let me off right now.”

And I found this quote, actually from Glen Branch, who’s the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, who deals with education primarily in our universities and our public schools. And he made the comment that I had just noticed by my own experience, was that religious folks don’t get too bent out of shape about the Galapagos adventures of Darwin. We can talk about the beaks on the finches or the shapes of the tortoise shells on the island, but what religious people are really concerned about is not those things. But are we actually made in the image of God himself?

So I wanted to face the situation head on. I wanted to put my focus right there and look at, in depth, the fact that we evolved and that that fact has no bearing on whether we are image bearers or not. So that was a first motivation for the book.

But then, I also wanted just to focus on the bigger story. I am a teacher at heart, I have been a teacher since I taught middle school science in Galveston, Texas. So I love to talk about science to anyone who will listen to me. And so I found that the story of human evolution was actually fascinating and how deeply rooted that story is into the story of all life. And I wanted to make the point that the story of humans is not just an add-on, “And then God made humans after He made all of that.” But that our story is deeply, deeply woven into the fabric of all life and this tagged to you, Jim, but there’s a lot of theology there. Lots of theology there. The fact that we are deeply woven into the fabric of all life on Earth. Humans, to the non-scientist and to most of us, seem so different from fish or amphibians, or even those little squirrel-like early mammals. And so it’s hard to understand how we could possibly have gotten here.

I found that when I was reading that most explanations tend to focus almost entirely on the hominids, and maybe the apes, but almost entirely on the apes or the hominids. And I mentioned this in the book, my almost 90-year-old dad loves to have these deep into the night conversations with me, who likes to go to bed at 9:00. He doesn’t, though. And so when he would ask questions about human evolution, because he’s one of those that doesn’t have a big problem with the finches on birds, et cetera. But when it comes to humans, he just doesn’t get it. And so I would explain, I would back up a little bit. And invariably my dad would say, “Okay. Well, what was before that?” So I would explain it and then he would say, “Okay. Well, what was before that?” So this book, Fish with Feet, is my attempt to delineate the answer to that question, “Well, what was before that?”

Stump:

Nice. I want to get into several of the things you said there, pull on these different threads because I think this is really rich and I think super helpful.

Just a little more framing in all of this. So you know as well, you know better than most people, that this business of science and Christian faith has been around a little and there are camps that have been delineated of who’s on which side. One of the interesting things I found at the beginning of your book is that you resist these labels. You resist the label theistic evolutionist. Good, so do I. You say that you wouldn’t call yourself a theistic meteorologist, that just seems funny to have to qualify such things.

Ray:

Correct.

Stump:

But let me have you talk about the other one there, because BioLogos has tried to shift some of that terminology to evolutionary creationist. We didn’t coin that label, but thought it might be more helpful, but you don’t like that one either. Why not?

Ray:

I don’t have any particular antagonism toward the phrase at all. I just find it a bit redundant. And one thing I want my readers, my listeners to understand is that science is not something they have to be afraid of or back off from. And so personally, I just don’t feel a need to quantify my acceptance of evolution. I am definitely a God believer, I am a Christian. I’m all out on Team Jesus. But I don’t feel a need to qualify or quantify in any way my acceptance of evolution. So I don’t have a problem with that term. It’s a personal choice, I just want to not use it because I want to make that point that evolution is not something to back away from.

Stump:

Yeah, good. And it’s certainly true that culturally, creationist has an awful lot of baggage to it.

Ray:

Absolutely.

Stump:

And some of what you do in the book that’s really fascinating is spend a fair bit of time of engaging with creationists in the Young Earth Creationist or even Old Earth Creationist sense.

So maybe just locate yourself a little bit within that spectrum of people of faith, so you acknowledge that very clearly, who also accept this evidence for evolution and how those fit together, where culturally you find yourself in that regard and how you interact with such people. I’m sure in your church, in your family you already mentioned. And we’ll just get into then talking a little about some of the communication tactics or ways of trying to persuade people or what the goal is in this. So maybe even just for your book, who do you anticipate the audience is and what you’re hoping to achieve by locating yourself both as a person of faith and someone who’s trying to explain all this science?

Ray:

Well, great question. Like I said, it goes back to probably just the fabric of my life, of being a teacher and wanting to explain things. And I’ve found that if the story of evolution, particularly of humans, seems implausible, then we’ve lost the game before we even begin.

And so interestingly, I actually just thought about this this morning so I’m glad you asked this question. I’ve been following this years-long YouTube interview by a paleoanthropologist that I really like her work, her research and her work and her communication. And she is engaging with a Young Earth Creationist who actually reached out to her and said—he’s not an uneducated person by any means. In fact, he’s really on board with pushing back against the flat Earth people, but he is a Young Earth Creationist. And over the months, I’ve been listening to their ongoing conversation.

And the one that I listened to this weekend just basically floored me. The paleoanthropologist was talking about human evolution and specifically the chromosome fusion that we have found a decade or so ago in the human genome. This guy had never heard of that.

Stump:

Oh, my.

Ray:

It was new information to him. He literally was speechless. She asked, “How do you respond to that?” And he said, “I don’t know, I’ve never heard of that. I don’t know.”

So my point being. If the whole story just seems implausible, even individuals who might be open to hearing the theology behind human evolution are not going to be if the entire biological story sounds implausible to them. So what I wanted to do, again, is just to start with square one, to start in that warm little pond and trace things forward with the best evidence that we have.

And I’m sure you guys have found this to be true, also. But it seems to me that what most people who reject evolution, what they know about evolution comes from anti-evolution resources. They feel like they know what evolution says. And I’ve done this before, in good faith I’ve asked, “Who have you read before that supports evolution?” And invariably, the answer is either Darwin, to which I say, “Well, there’s been a couple of hundred years since Darwin that we’ve learned things.” Or it will be an anti-evolution resource of some sort.

Stump:

Yeah.

Ray:

Also, interesting, I mentioned this in the book also, is that if there is a topic in high school biology evolution that’s going to be skipped, it’s going to be the human part. I’ve been a public school teacher. You may just not want the pushback from parents and the community and your administration. So there is just a dearth of information out there, of education on actually what the science of human evolution says.

Stump:

Good. And I’ll say that that is perfectly consistent with my own story. Which was coming to accept the science of evolution only once I had become exposed to that actual science because I’d been shielded from it by, I think well-meaning people. But there’s another aspect to this and to your book that I think is fascinating here, too. Because from my own story, that evidence itself wasn’t enough because I didn’t necessarily know how to understand it from within my larger Christian worldview and commitment to scripture as a source of truth. And you note right up front in your book that, “Opposition to human evolution is rarely about evidence.” So talk about that aspect of this a little bit, too. That it’s not just more information that will ultimately persuade people of the truth of this.

Ray:

Absolutely. It’s not more information. But I will say it needs to be a triangulation of evidence. I think we need to have the evidence, the facts there, the science background so the story doesn’t seem completely implausible. It needs to be a triangulation of facts. Also, a triangulation of the science process, that the science can be trusted. And, oh, my, does that not apply across the board about how science works and how scientists work.

And then definitely what you said. We need to address the deeper issues of theology and identity and those fears that people have of accepting human evolution. I’m like you, I had that felt need myself. I was a biology major as an undergrad and I remember having those uncomfortable feelings. Although, at my Christian university, we weren’t overly taught evolution, but we were given a quality education and so things became apparent. I just did not have the vocabulary to express those things until I started reading people like Francis Collins and Ken Miller, and people who I felt I could trust because they were on the same spiritual team that I was.

And so I felt I could let my guard down a bit and listen to their science. And so hopefully, I can be that for my readers, someone that they can trust, they can let their guard down and they can actually listen to the science. There’s obviously more to it than just the facts and I don’t know, do we want to talk at this point about what the angst is there?

Stump:

Well, let me push in a little bit further to that human evolution aspect that you bring up. Because to continue that quote of yours I read just a little bit ago, “Opposition to human evolution is rarely about evidence.” You go on to say, “More often it’s a visceral reaction to a perceived insult.”

So about that, you give, through the book, a very nice history of life in book, showing its development and diversification. And I think one aspect of this is the classification system that we’ve inherited from Linnaeus, who worked long before Darwin and the understanding of evolution we have today. But it’s a challenge to lots of people to be lumped together with the rest of life in this one big classification system.

But you note, Linnaeus was just observing similarities and differences. And it’s always been curious that I’ve never heard objections to humans being called vertebrates. Or objections to humans being called mammals. But we certainly don’t like being called apes.

Ray:

Nope.

Stump:

Or we certainly don’t even like being called animals sometimes. So why do you think that is? Why are we so uncomfortable with that middle range of the classification system, mammals and vertebrates, but on either end it makes us, as you say, it feels like there’s a perceived insult there?

Ray:

I think there’s actually a couple of things going on here. First of all, there is the feeling that if we tell people, especially people will bring in the children, if we tell people, if we tell children that they are just animals or they’re just simply apes, then the next thing you know they’re going to be acting like animals. If you tell them they’re animals, they’ll act like animals. So the implication there is that being an animal, especially an ape, removes all motivation for morality. We have no more moral obligations in our behavior if we are nothing but an ape.

I didn’t include this quote in the book, I think it’s one of my previous books. But a couple of decades ago, the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives Tom DeLay said on the House floor that, “The blame for the Columbine school shootings were the fact that our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized,” that was a new word on me, “out of primordial mud.”

And even the current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, not as speaker, but in a sermon that he gave before he was speaker, talks about how we’ve taught whole generations of Americans that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest and you evolve from primordial slime.

And so what we have are decades of these authority figures, politicians, our pastors, our Bible school teachers, who are telling us that being an animal or being an ape is equivalent to removing all moral responsibility from humans. We can just do what we want to do if we’re an ape. So I think that’s one thing that’s going on.

But I also think there’s the aspect of it being an insult, an insult to our dignity as humans, and connected to that, being an insult to God. Because if we are God’s image bearers, to say that we are nothing more than animals and are apes, it’s insulting us, it’s insulting God.

And I know you’ve done a lot of research on Galileo and the trials of Galileo and all that went on there, and definitely Galileo got in trouble for the physics of his fight against a geocentric solar system. But Galileo also was in trouble with the church for theology reasons in addition. Because the thought was if the Earth is not the center of the solar system, then mankind is not the center of God’s eye, and humans are no longer the apple of God’s eye, and then all of Christianity just falls to the ground. Heliocentric system wounded human pride.

And I feel that the same thing is going on here with these visceral reactions to being classified as an ape or even a fish, and worse than that, arising from the mud and muck somehow. It’s as if, when we take away special creation, that artistic view of God reaching out and specially creating humans, then we take away all dignity from humanity and humanity’s dignity falls to the ground. And how could the image of God reside in a mere ape?

Stump:

Well, what’s your answer to that then? These people who have been conditioned to respond with that sort of feeling of being insulted by saying, “You’re an animal,” which really means you’re nothing but an animal? Or you’re an ape, you act like an ape. What’s the response to that then? How do we say, “No, we share ancestry with these creatures, but we are somehow different, we are somehow called to something more than that?” How do you engage with people who find this so troubling?

Ray:

Well, it’s that image of God aspect of theology, which when push comes to shove, that seems to be the sticking point. And so for the book, I did a deep dive into some of the theology behind image bearing and what scripture means when scripture talks about, particularly in Genesis, what scripture is referring to when it talks about being the image of God.

And what I found the scholarship to say almost universally across the board was that image bearing had nothing to do with a physical trait, a mental trait, any kind of ethereal trait of any kind that humans have. And so as such, image bearers are not solely those who have necessarily the intelligence to do so. So image bearing belongs to all humanity, the geniuses, those with intellectual disabilities. Image bearing is not related to something that we are physically or mentally, or some other ethereal aspect like our soul.

But what I found was that the language was more of a vocational language. It was more something that you do. Because kingly, royal language was used in referencing what humans are to be doing on the planet and priestly language was used as to what humans are to be doing on the planet as God’s representatives. And I know John Walton has done this, this is his area, about the theology of creation as the temple. Which totally makes sense, because all of this language for image bearing seems to indicate that humans have a job to do within the creation temple. And that job that we are to do is a royal job, that job we are to do is a spiritual and priestly job.

So I approach the aspect of being classified as an animal or an ape, it has nothing to do with image bearing. It has nothing to do with our physical make-up, how we got here at all. God named us as image bearers and when God named us as image bearers, that became what we are. And we were given those priestly responsibilities in creation, those royal responsibilities within creation. It doesn’t matter how we got here. We got a job to do and we need to get to it.

[musical interlude]

Stump:

That’s really helpful to hear that bearing God’s image is not the function of some capacity that I individually have. It does raise some questions, though. To say, okay, God chose humanity to be image bearers. Could God have chosen a different species to be image bearers instead? Was there something about us that we still want to say was necessary? Maybe not at the individual level because I think as you very helpfully note, that it’s not the case at all that a member of humanity, say that doesn’t have full capacities for speech or for reason, it’s not that they’re any lesser of an image bearer. We collectively are image bearers in that regard. But could God have chosen cucumbers to be the image bearers to the rest? There’s some relationship between what we’re capable of doing and why God chose us, or is that even going too far?

Ray:

Well, whether God intended Homo sapiens specifically-

Stump:

That’s the question. [laughs]

Ray:

Yeah. Whether God intended our species specifically or whether God seeks creatures who are capable of knowing God, here’s my big answer—I don’t know. I don’t know.

Jim, this may be a whole other episode. But I grew up in a religious tradition that prided itself on certainty. And I’ve been accused by my own family of having the condition of got-to-be-right-us. And so wanting to know and wanting to be right runs deep within me, deep within me. And what I have done in the last multiple decades is to learn that I’m going to have to give that up. I’m going to have to give up my need for absolutes when it comes to religion and theology. And I’ve come to a point where I’m pretty okay with not having all the answers to my big theology questions.

But here’s my best explanation that may address the question you ask. Okay. So parents want a child, parents desire a family, they want a child. So a child, a pregnancy may be planned for. It’s intended, so the parents plan for, they do everything they can to increase their chances of having a child. The child is born, the child was planned, the child is deeply loved as a member of that family. Okay. What about parents who have a pregnancy that wasn’t planned, they have an oops pregnancy and then you’ve got a child that comes into a family that wasn’t carefully planned? The child is still deeply loved. What about children who come into families by adoption? Again, the child is deeply loved and the parent-child relationship, the child is no less loved because the child wasn’t planned or the child wasn’t made specifically by those parents.

The New Testament uses theology of adoption as a descriptor of relationships between humans and God. So while I don’t see God as a micromanager who necessarily saw the end result, I think by faith, I think that God saw the result, saw that there were creatures in the creation that could seek God and know God, and God chose those creatures to bear His image into the rest of creation. That’s the Janet Ray explanation of how I see it. Now, obviously I could be convinced or proved wrong. But I don’t see Homo sapiens having to be the ultimate goal. I see God loving creatures with the capability of loving God back.

Stump:

Good. I think it’s very wise counsel to say there’s some uncertainty here that we don’t need necessarily to solve to everybody’s satisfaction without being able to claim that God has chosen humans to bear His image. 

And I’ve been pushed a lot on this question myself in various times and wonder sometimes whether we’re mixing up different vocabularies, different ways. But one of those questions that sometimes gets put in that regard is does God guide evolution? So you’ve been clear that God’s not a micromanager. From the perspective of the science itself, we might say that evolution does not have goals. But God has goals, God has purposes for creation and somehow, this evolutionary process is allowed to be the means toward that end.

I wonder if, in the process of working on this, you reflected at all or dug into some of the other newer understandings of evolution? Whether that’s the convergences that happen, or ways that we might say that evolution is not just a completely random process. Could God have used this? So when I ask could God have chosen cucumbers to bear his image, that’s kind of a joke, but there’s something there that it seems like we needed to have the ability to speak, to have language, to have reason, to have moral responsibility. But are those things just accidents? Or is there some way of understanding the science that God could foresee that creatures like us would come out of the process at the end? Does any of that have any traction with you and your?

Ray:

Could God have foreseen it? Yes. I don’t feel like I need to camp down on that particular campground because my picture of God, my vision of God is not a being. It’s not a God that is bound by time or our universe. In our Christian theology, and most theologies, I should say it’s not just bound with Christianity, is God is so much bigger than what we can comprehend. And if multiverses and oscillating universes exist, God exists through those. And so it’s not like God had one chance at it and boy, did God get lucky. Here we are, God got lucky on his one and only chance at a universe and a creation.

So that’s why I’m a bit hesitant to say that we were the intention. This is an analogy I like to use. God desires a relationship. If scripture tells us that God desires that humans will seek God and come to God, come to know God. But most of us understand that we are not robots, that God does not force that relationship. That true love, which God is the essence of. Whatever God is … Again, pass the ball to my scientist philosopher friend here. At the very essence, God is love, whatever that means. Whatever love is, that’s what God is. And love does not control.

So if God does not control us and our choosing of God, does God likewise not control the creation? Does creation likewise have free will? And that’s why we see things in nature that often seem disastrous or bad or not good. But these things are the result of a creation that is not micromanaged. A creation made by a loving creator that doesn’t control. And so in a creation that is not micromanaged, in the world of a being that is beyond any universe or any conception of the universe that we can articulate as humans … I told you, Jim, I don’t have any big answers to this. This is how I see this and I’ve come to be okay with that. That this is what we’ve got, this is the revelation of God we have, this is the creation that we have.

Let me quote Darwin here. “I see a grandeur in this view of life. I see a bigger God.” Because this is not a God I could put in a vacation Bible school box and teach the seven days of creation and go home and feel like I know it all, I’ve got it figured out. Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, done, rest, get on with it. It’s a grander view, it’s a bigger view. It fills me honestly with more awe and wonder even though I don’t have nice, neat answers any longer.

Stump:

Same. And I love that paragraph from Darwin on grandeur in this view of life because it has for me too, opened up to seeing God as a bigger and more encompassing and more loving kind of being in the ways you just described there.

Let me get back to some of the other parts of your book here that I found really fascinating and engaging. One of those parts was the chapter called, I’m looking up, Meet the Fam, Meet the Fam. So talk a little bit about the other creatures that perhaps are not mentioned in the Bible anywhere because we didn’t know anything about them then. That now, science has uncovered that are much closer to us, these other hominids somewhere between the last common ancestors we had with chimpanzees six or seven million years ago and now. And what does the existence of these other kind of creatures that were there, many of them overlapping in time with Homo sapiens? What does that do to your understanding of who we are? And maybe throw a little theology in there again, and the image of God and how we might sort out the family tree in that picture of humanity that we have now.

Ray:

Well, it definitely brings up a lot of questions because most people who were raised religious have this concept of there being a definitive moment when humans appeared on Earth. And as you know, I delved into some of this in the book, of the need, the felt need by many religious folks, to try to put it all together. To put the human evolution and the evidence, the overwhelming evidence from genetics particularly that humans evolved out of a large population, to try to concord that with a Genesis story of an original pair.

And so I spent some time in the book talking about that disconnect and that many people feel they’ve got to have this original pair somehow within the context of all of the overwhelming evidence that we have for human evolution. And so that is something, if we’re going to be people of faith who accept science evidence, and that’s a whole other lots of conversations about why people of faith need to be people who accept science evidence. And if we are, we have to understand that humans evolved from a population. That there was no definitive time when we can say, “This was the first human.”

Someone said once that “humans evolved from the muddle in the middle.” That there wasn’t any particular time. That we could probably point to a time where this wasn’t a modern human, definitely back to the Australopithecines and some of those early members of the group Homo. They were not modern humans like we have today. But all of those individuals contributed to our genome, what eventually became modern humans. Even Homo sapiens, our genus has been around, our genus and our species has been around about 300,000 years. But recognizable, that recognizable modern human physique really didn’t stabilize until about 100,000 years ago, even though our genus and species has been around about 300,000 years.

And so it’s this process, this gradual process that comes in. And so I’ve been asked the question, “Well, what about the Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo habilis?” All of these individuals that are in our ancestry, maybe they’re in our family tree, maybe they are direct ancestors. We really have no way of knowing who is a direct ancestor, but we can talk about our family tree. And by talking about our family tree, we can get a really good idea about our direct ancestors. Are they image bearers? I don’t know. You don’t know. We don’t know their capabilities of knowing God. And maybe they reacted and interacted with God in a way very different from the way modern Homo sapiens know, are capable of knowing and interacting with a god.

I don’t know and I don’t want to opine on that. I want to say they were creatures in creation and scripture tells us that God loves all the cosmos, that God loves all of creation. So they were loved members of creation. I don’t know about their image bearing status. I will leave that to God.

Stump:

Fair enough. As we’re winding down here a little bit, but curious if understanding, coming to understand the science of evolution as you have, has that challenged your faith in any way? Has it caused you to see things differently in any way?

Ray:

Yes, it has. But maybe not from the aspect of the science part of it because like I said, I think we just discussed this. It’s that as far as the theology and my science coming together, it’s made my view of God bigger, it’s expanded my theology. It’s opened up lots of questions I never had before that I actually enjoy having those questions. I actually enjoy going down those roads. But my understanding that image bearing is not related to my physical origins, but that image bearing is a task has had a great deal of impact on how I approach things in our modern world.

For example, I think about your trip that you just got back from, from the beautiful High Arctic. And the comments that you made about the responsibilities that humans have to maintain this beautiful environment and how much the animals that live there depend on us being responsible image bearers in creation. And so I think this understanding of being created a creature that is deeply, deeply rooted in all life, that means I’m responsible. I can’t just say, “Well, I’m a special creation, I don’t need to worry about the welfare of my planet. I don’t need to worry about the welfare of the other creatures that are on my planet.” That just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. We’re all in this together. We’re all woven together.

And so my understanding of evolution actually deepens my understanding of the vocation of being an image bearer. I think I mentioned this a bit in the book. Evolution science doesn’t just tell us about the past. Principles of evolution guide modern conservation principles. Evolution science that deal with population genetics help us to understand evolution, but population genetics are not unique just to the study of evolution. Population genetics helps us to understand how well or not so well modern species are doing. So an understanding of evolution, the science behind it, helps humans as image bearers do that spiritual responsibility, do that royal responsibility of caring for creation.

Stump:

I really loved the passage where you were addressing this in the book, of acknowledging that understanding our physical origins doesn’t somehow get us off the hook from being image bearers. Evolution doesn’t let us off the hook. We have a job to do, we’re image bearers. Let’s get to it. That’s a lovely way of turning the tables on people who think that a physical origin or a common ancestry with other creatures means that we’re just no different and we don’t have to act any different than these.

Ray:

Right, right.

Stump:

So we do need to hold up our calling in that regard.

Well, just in closing then, you’ve spent a good deal of time in your career of pushing back against creationist claims, but also saying you’re not prepared to give up on these people of faith who hold to those. How do you see your work through three books of yours that I’m familiar with as being able to criticize bad ideas, and sometimes forcefully and sometimes with a lot of humor that you inject in those? And yet, you don’t turn the people who believe them into caricatures or your own straw men. How do you continue to love people that have ideas that go counter to what’s true, to what’s helpful? And how do you see your own work as contributing to that and what you hope for it?

Ray:

Well, one reason, I have patience and I’m motivated to talk to my audience, anyone that will give me a listen, is that I was there myself. That is the understanding I was raised with, although I don’t think I ever could buy the Young Earth bit. Even as a child, I was fascinated with the fossil record and was just trying to figure out how I could make that all fit together and I probably came up with just bizarre scenarios in my mind. But I was there. I was one of those people that thought that evolution meant we were just, air quotes, “monkeys,” and not special to God. And what an insult to God’s image bearers, what an insult to God. So I’ve been there, I understand it. I’m not ready to give up on those that I see as my people.

I teach at a large public university and so I am limited as to what I can say about my theological beliefs. But I do feel motivated to tell my students when I talk about evolution, because I talk about it throughout the semester and then I hit it hard at the end. And I tell my students that I am a person of faith. I tell them that and I tell them that I have no problem accepting the evidence and I give them names of other people, like Dr. Collins, like Dr. Miller, like the BioLogos website. I give them examples of people who have no problem being people of faith and accepting evolution.

And so I’ve, over the years, gotten a little bit of pushback, but I’ll tell you what. Because I always ask them to respond to me on the last day of class about their thoughts about what we’ve talked about with evolution, I’ve had a bit of pushback. But when I opened it up for them to ask me anything they want to ask me, invariably there will be someone that says, “I’m so glad to hear this. I’ve always thought that the science was true, but my family says I can’t,” or, “I wasn’t raised to think it was true. And you’ve given me so much to think about.” And so that motivates me. That motivates me that, even on a state school campus, I can break through a little bit and free people to not box themselves off. That they can be people of faith and live in a modern scientific world.

Stump:

Well, thanks so much for doing that. That work is so important. And we’re grateful to have this relationship with you, and to hear of your work and how it’s been going. And it feels like we’re on the same team here in that regard. So Fish with Feet, I hold the book up to the microphone here for everybody. It’s really engaging, really fun and really helpful, so thanks for writing that.

I’ll note that writing can be addicting. Do you already have the next book in mind along with another of your very catchy titles?

Ray:

Well, see, here’s the problem is I’ve got an idea, but I don’t have a catchy title and I have to start with the title. That drives everything.

Stump:

You’re very good at that.

Ray:

I actually have a subtitle, but I can’t think of a title yet. It’s down the line, it’s down the line.

Stump:

All right. Well, we look forward to talking to you again when the next one comes out. But for now, I highly recommend to everybody Fish with Feet. Thank you, Janet Ray, for writing the book and for talking to us here today.

Ray:

It was a pleasure, as always. Thanks for having me.

Hoogerwerf:

Language of God is produced by BioLogos. BioLogos is supported by individual donors and listeners like you. If you’d like to help keep this conversation going on the podcast and elsewhere, you can find ways to contribute at BioLogos.org. You’ll find lots of other great resources on science and faith there as well.

Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf. That’s me. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. BioLogos’ offices are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the Grand River Watershed. Thanks for listening.