Gungor Controversy Continues as Singer States Jesus Could Have Been Wrong About Adam, NoahControversy continues to stir over statements made by a professing Christian singer/songwriter who denies Genesis as being literal after the musician recently asserted on an online podcast that Jesus could have been wrong about the existence of Adam and Noah.
As previously reported, Michael Gungor and his wife Lisa, who in 2006 formed a congregation called “Bloom” in Denver, are known for their the Dove Award-winning and Grammy nominated worship music, such as Beautiful Things, Say So and Dry Bones. In 2013, they won an award from the Independent Music Awards for their live performance album A Creation Liturgy.
But in 2012, Michael Gungor, the son of pastor and author Ed Gungor, revealed in a blog post entitled A Worshiping Evolutionist? that he had concluded that the Genesis account is only figurative.
“I guess I’ll have to come out of the closet and admit… I don’t believe in a literal six-day creation,” he wrote. “Genesis is a poem if I’ve ever seen one.”
Earlier this year, Gungor revealed his thoughts even further, explaining in a blog post entitled What Do We Believe? that he “has no more ability to believe” in Genesis as being literal.
“I have no more ability to believe, for example, that the first people on earth were a couple named Adam and Eve that lived 6,000 years ago,” he wrote. “I have no ability to believe that there was a flood that covered all the highest mountains of the world only 4,000 years ago and that all of the animal species that exist today are here because they were carried on an ark and then somehow walked or flew all around the world from a mountain in the middle east after the water dried up.”
The matter recently went viral online after reports emerged about Gungor’s position, and at least one church canceled an upcoming concert with the artist. A radio station in Wisconsin also opted not to have any participation in an upcoming event that featured Gungor, stating that they “cannot be a party to introducing more doubt into the hearts and minds of young Christians already being fed doubt and lies by the world.”
Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis likewise expressed his disagreement with the singer/songwriter’s views, stating, “If we can’t trust God’s word in Genesis, then why are we to trust His word in the gospels, particularly when Jesus affirmed Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood?”
Ham is again speaking out after Gungor took his remarks even further on a recent podcast to assert that Jesus could have been wrong about the existence of Adam and Noah.
“To just see a few words that somebody said—that Jesus said—about Noah, and to assume that you can get into Jesus’s mind and know exactly how he thought about the whole situation, and how He considered history versus myth versus whatever—how do you know?” Gungor stated on the Liturgists Podcast with co-host Mike McHargue.
“And even if He was wrong, even if He did believe that Noah was a historical person, or Adam was a historical person, and ended up being wrong, I don’t understand how that even would deny the divinity of Christ,” he continued. “The point is it wouldn’t freak me out if He was wrong about it, in His human side.”
“If Noah and Adam were mythical ideas, the point of what Jesus was saying still applies to me,” Gungor added. “It has very little do, in my perspective, with Jesus trying to lay out a history of world to a historical-minded people. . . . Even if Jesus knew that Noah and Adam were mythical, but knew He was talking to people who thought they were real, that’s another possibility.”
“So not only does Michael Gungor deny the historical accuracy of the creation and Flood accounts, but he believes Jesus Christ was probably wrong, too! Or worse yet, that Christ might have just lied to the Jews about it,” Ham lamented in a blog post on Monday. “This is a sad place for a professing Christian to be in.”
He noted that Gungor had also recently written on social media that “[t]here is a trend in modern society, no more than a trend . . . a religion, an idolatry that elevates Scripture above Jesus.”
Ham asked Christians to pray for Gungor, and noted that he has extended an offer for the singer/songwriter to visit the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
“[Pray that] he’ll come to accept the authority of God’s word in every area—including the history in Genesis!” He said.
http://christiannews.net/2014/09/02/gungor-controversy-continues-as-singer-states-jesus-could-have-been-wrong-about-adam-noah/
