As He is...

The Church of England will make an official apology to naturalist Charles Darwin for criticising his famous theory of evolution.
Coming 126 years after his death, the church's apology will focus on how wrong it was for senior bishops in the past to misunderstand and attack Darwin's theory about man being descended from apes.
Senior church officials will post the apology in the form of an article written by the Reverend Dr Malcolm Brown on the church's website.
"Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth (in 1809), the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still," the article says, according to extracts printed by The Mail on Sunday newspaper.
"But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests."
But the apology by Dr Brown, who is the director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops' Council, has been dismissed as "pointless" by Darwin's great great grandson Andrew Darwin.
"Why bother? he said.
"When an apology is made after 200 years, it's not so much to right a wrong, but to make the person or organisation making the apology feel better."
But Dr Brown says everyone makes mistakes, the church included.
"When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it's easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights," he writes.
"The church made that mistake with Galileo's astronomy and has since realized its error.
"Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.
"So it is important to think again about Darwin's impact on religious thinking, then and now."
Dr Brown said there was nothing incompatible between Darwin's scientific theories and Christian teaching.

What you have just read is indicative of what I see in mainline churches. It matters not if you are a creationist as I am, or one who believes that God made it all occur in a slow evolutionistic way. The point that matters is that over and over again we see the watering down of the God of the universe. By apologising they are saying God has done nothing, we have all come from the “goo via the zoo to you”, and that being the fact it leaves out the hand of the loving creator. But not only that, it leaves out or at least nudges aside the thought that is made so clearly in Romans:

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, for Him to be the First-born among many brothers.” (Romans 8:29)

Because by aligning the church with this doctrine it is declaring that it is all by chance, so therefore we have no hope of becoming like Him.. Some may argue that Evolution has its way of bringing out the best. But without getting into the arguments for and against the theory let me stick to the heart of what I see as the crux of this matter. That God cannot be contained to a thought or theory. The whole of creation pulsates with the hand of God, from the most simple to the mind blowingly complex; from the minutest to the indescribable. It cannot be just by random selection, everything has a purpose including you and I. I cannot ascribe to the thought of God hoping it will all work out. It’s time the Church boldly began to claim who it rightly is and walk in the heritage that we have been given. I love this verse in 1 John

“In this is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that as He is, so also we are in this world.” (1 John 4:17)

We are meant to be like Him in this world, not as he was as he walked the pavements of Jerusalem but scripture is very clear "as He now is". What a mind blowing thought that the goal for me and you in this world is to be like Jesus IS, not was. But if it’s all a matter of chance and good luck, what hope is there for any of us, we may as well eat drink and be merry for tomorrow, we may be an aardvark.