I've been back in class for little more than a week, and I've already submitted close to twenty pages of written work - hence my quietness here. Things won't slow down much until probably next week, when I'm past the bulk of my assignments for the current course. I'll squeeze in posting when I get the chance, but things will probably remain light for the next week or so.

I did want to throw out some thoughts on the whole intelligent design debate, which just came to a head in my home state of Pennsylvania. Normally, I'd leave this sort of thing alone; it should be quite obvious that there are enough deeper issues surrounding cases like these that it's never really just about what happens in the classroom. I've been thinking about this, though, in light of a different concern, one that's informed by NT Wright's discussion of worldview in NTPG. Wright talks about the role that story plays in shaping our worldview and about the way in which story provides what in essence becomes the grid through which we interpret our experiences.

An example is probably helpful here. Americans have a set of stories that we tell also, stories of how we began as a nation, how we became who we are, stories of freedom and independence and triumphing over insurmountable odds. Those stories shape the basis for the way that we view reality. Others tell stories about us as well, stories that aren't so kind (but that deserve our hearing), stories about imperialism and oppression and might-makes-right. The worlds created by these two different sets of stories might, for example, determine whether one thinks of 9/11 as the work of "terrorists" or "martyrs". This is a fairly large oversimplification, but hopefully it gives some idea of what I mean when I talk about story forming the grid through which we view reality.

Back to intelligent design. This debate, really, has nothing at all to do with whether evolution happened. This is far more about the stories that we tell, stories of origins and beginnings and purpose and destiny. Both sides are fighting over the validity of their particular stories - and the validity of the stories that others tell. Neither side is really interested in a discussion of "what really happened". Unfortunately, both sides believe that's what this is about - as though we simply work with uninterpreted facts that don't adhere to a story for context and meaning.

I think what troubles me about this whole topic more than anything is that I have a nagging suspicion that there's another story that's being missed here. Is the story that we tell really all about how old this rock is that we call home, about whether our distant ancestors walked upright and dressed in this season's hottest fig leaves? Or is it more about why things are broken, why we search for transcendence, why we fail to live at peace, why we have inexplicable hope through suffering? We tell stories, not just for entertainment, but for meaning. The problem with engaging in the debate in the way in which some have chosen is that, in the argument over the facts, the meaning is ignored, all to prove a point about one particular view of scripture - about how to read the story in the first place. It's ironic, almost enough so to be painful. The story tells about brokenness, and we watch the meaning play itself out in the debate over the story itself.