The BBC replied 2 weeks ago to my follow-up complaint about the phrase “An instant of pure chance”, as follows:

Dear Mr Buttenshaw,

Thank you for returning to us with your concerns. We’re sorry for the delay in coming back to you – it’s a bit longer than expected and we apologise for the wait.

We are sorry our first response misunderstood your concern. You refer to the following line in the script:

“So much of how life began is still a mystery. It’s not known exactly when, where or how it happened. But we do know that, one day on Earth, a living thing came into existence. The first microscopic organism. And in that instant of pure chance, everything changed.”

While this section acknowledges that much of how life began remains a mystery, we appreciate you feel it should have reflected the possibility that “the process was somehow directed by God, or a higher power” rather than being a moment of chance.

We value your feedback on this matter which has been included in our nightly report. These reports are among the BBC’s most widely read sources of feedback and ensure that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future content.

Thanks again for getting in touch.
 
BBC Complaints Team 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints  

Well, at least they finally logged my actual concerns. And apologised for their first response.

Why is this Important?

It illustrates how hard it is to get a fair hearing in the media, and perhaps in the public domain generally. Before we even start to make a case, we may face a ‘pre-judgement’ (i.e. prejudice) that what we are going to say about God or creation is already known and rejected. Of course, this pre-judgement is not exclusive to matters of faith. We live in a time when listening is rare, and shouting down, denouncing and no-platforming is all too common.

What can we do?

Two suggestions, looking to ourselves first:

1. Acknowledge that we have often been the problem and may still be! Our faith is everything to us – the way we see life and find meaning. But is it sometimes so precious that we resist anything which challenges it? Faith (like love) can be unhelpfully blind. And if we can’t seriously engage with science, how can we expect science to listen to us?

Sometimes I think we are too cosy, hiding or protecting our faith from reality like a comfortable sitting room we can retreat to, with a warming fire in the grate. Often that is the comfort God blesses us with, but God is not just a comforting fire in the sitting room but also the all-consuming fire of the volcanic eruption.

In the New Testament, the word translated ‘Faith’ is the Greek ‘pistis’. It’s more an attitude of heart than intellectual assent. It could equally be translated ‘TRUST’ and includes the concepts of loyalty and commitment. It expresses the personal nature of our relationship with God. This trust and commitment is often the only thing that keeps us going when there is so much that is painful or that we don’t understand. But we don’t have to understand. We do have to trust. We don’t have to understand how God created the world. We simply affirm it. Science reminds us how magnificent and beyond understanding our creator is. As the hymn goes: ‘O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hand has made… ‘

• We evangelicals have been deeply committed to a simple and clear outline of the Gospel: Creation – Fall – Redemption. I continue to hear this Big Story very often – a summary of the Gospel which implies or states that God created the world/universe perfect. Then human sin entered this perfect world and separated us from God. Our broken relationship with God, and the broken-ness of Creation is (and can only be) redeemed by Christ and his atoning death on the cross.

I absolutely believe in the redemption that Christ has brought and is bringing to us and all creation. But I do not believe in a perfect creation or an historic Fall. Science, of course (as in the BBC’s EARTH series) offers us a history of our planet that is not compatible either with an originally perfect creation or the Fall.

So I cringe every time the Gospel is presented as if an historic Fall happened. And yet we must retain, and regain confidence in, the accounts of the Creation and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-3. They are absolutely foundational to our understanding of Life, God, Creation and Humanity. And, like the rest of the Bible, they offer a vision of the good purposes of God to redeem all of creation and bring in his kingdom.

Maranatha!