Chicago Pastor Blames Crime on Evolution
Why is Chicago the murder capitol of America? Factors are complex, but one pastor fingers the devaluing of human life because of evolutionary ideology.
In Chicago last weekend, 75 were shot and a dozen died. Breitbart News says that at least 40 were shot before noon on Sunday, despite the city’s heavy gun control laws. Dr. Eric Wallace, a Chicago-area black pastor and director of the Freedom’s Journal Institute, was interviewed on Washington Watch on Monday August 6th. He was responding to the outburst of shootings and murders in Chicago the previous day. Host Russ Jones asked him to comment on the reasons for the lawlessness in his home city.
Russ Jones: From your perspective, you know, a lot of times we see politicians try to fix things from a legal perspective, a law perspective. Give us your take.
Eric Wallace: One of the things they’re not looking at is the whole spiritual aspect. [Dr Wallace mentions some political initiatives], but you also have the spiritual and moral issues that are going on in the city that nobody is talking about. A number of the pastors want to march [he mentions some recent marches]. But marching to change laws isn’t going to change anything. We need to change the hearts and minds of those folks who are committing these crimes. And they want to talk about gun violence as if the guns are running around and shooting people. It’s people shooting people, and we need to be able to minister to them and get them to have a heart transplant, if you will, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Russ Jones: Well how do you see taking back these neighborhoods? Just give us an update. I know you are connected with people who are trying to address this.
Eric Wallace: Well there are a number of things going on, actually right now as we speak. There are a number of churches that have been coming together and praying for the city of Chicago, and trying to do things in the community [examples of activities trying to bring about change in the city, and how churches have allowed politicians to enact bad policies.]
Russ Jones: Dr Wallace, maybe you can say a little about this. The gangs create a family environment, so to speak – a very dysfunctional family – but the fatherlessness in our culture today is very strong. And abortion: the genocide of black Americans, the black babies across the country, is huge. Doesn’t that cast a spirit of disparage over people, and causing them to look for something in all the wrong places?
Eric Wallace: Absolutely. Human life is not valued at all, and we’ve kind of lost a moral compass. We don’t have that any more. I mean, we’ve thrown out the whole idea that we’ve been created in the image of God, and so we’re just here by chance. Evolution is the ideology of the day, and we’re just here by chance. And if we can throw away life through abortion, and if we can say that human life doesn’t count for anything, it’s not created in the image of God, it’s here by chance – why should we care? Why should we care about human life, then, if it’s not created by God? There’s no moral authority; we’ve thrown that out as well. Like I said, there’s no moral compass, and so you can pretty much expect some of the things going on.
Dr Wallace did not point out in this interview any particular setting where black gang members are learning about Darwinian evolution; presumably any of them who stay in public school long enough will hear it taught eventually. He speaks, though, as if evolution is just in the air. It’s a well-known, generally-accepted idea that contributes to a worldview that devalues human life. He says that a “perfect storm” of factors, including political policies, church ineffectiveness, fatherlessness (due to abortion and welfare policy) are also involved in the rash of gun violence and murder. But he concentrated on this one factor – the evolutionary worldview, which demolished the idea that we are created in the image of God – as the most significant factor.
Pastors and teachers, are you listening? Are you focusing your congregation’s attention on Genesis 1:27? Are you teaching your people that they are eternal beings created in God’s image, who have precious worth and dignity? When you ignore that doctrine, and allow evolutionary ideology to sweep in, bad ideas have terrible consequences. Ask the weeping mothers of those murdered in Chicago last week.
Yesterday we reported on the confused, mixed-up story of human evolution, and showed how implausible, irrational, and anti-science it is. Don’t think for a minute that you need to bow before the Darwinians. They are clueless! Everything they think they know is wrong. You can trust the Bible. Look how often it points to human exceptionalism. The image of God in man was corrupted by sin, but can be regained in Christ. Preach the Word!
Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 5:1
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 9:6
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” [How pertinent to Chicago!]
Psalm 8:3-6
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet….
Acts 17:24-31 [Note that even the pagan Athenians knew that humans were exceptional.]
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Romans 8:3-10
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
I Corinthians 11:7-12
7 For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.
Ephesians 4:23
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Hebrews 2:5-12
5 For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. 6 It has been testified somewhere, [Psalm 8]
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
8 putting everything in subjection under his feet.”Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, 12 saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”
James 3:7-10
7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind,8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.