The cellular level

Michael J. Behe's insights in the area of biology have given me help in a question I have tossed and turned over in the area of spirituality: How do churches and Christian organizations and revivals and individual Christians go bad?

Behe is, of course, the American biochemist and author of Darwin's Black Box who challenges Darwinian-style evolution.

The basic creeds of Darwinism were plausible enough back in the day when scientists only had morphology to go on. But beginning in the 1950s they were able to peer into the machinery of molecules, those building blocks of cells that are the basis of life. That never-before-seen view of plants and animals put a considerable strain on the theory. Observation of the "irreducible complexity" of bio-molecular systems became problematic for the hypothesis that their constituent components evolved gradually; sophisticated workings seem to be interdependent.

The cellular level, not morphology, is where it's at:

"… the real work of life does not happen at the level of the whole animal or organ; the most important parts of living things are too small to be seen. Life is lived in the details, and it is molecules that handle life's details." (Italics mine.)

We are forever analyzing what's wrong with the Church, or why men don't go to church, or why churches are shrinking, etc. We multiply hypotheses: the lack of programs, the wrong kind of programs, the influence of cults, the Emergent Church, the influence of materialism or other isms.

But "life is lived in the details." And it all comes down to abiding in Christ in the very mundane daily practices of prayer and reading the Word and moment-by-moment taking God at His word.