There Had to Be a Father

Pastor William Carter said that on his Christmas vacation on his first
year in college, he had become an expert on the birds and the bees.
Biology was his major, and after a semester in the freshman class, he was
certain that he knew more biology than most adults did in his hometown ...
including his minister. A few days before Christmas, he stopped in to see
him. He received him warmly and asked how he had fared in his first
semester. “Okay,” he replied, avoiding the subject of his mediocre grades.
But then he told his pastor, "I’ve come home with some questions.”

“Really?” the pastor replied. “Like what?”

“Like the virgin birth. I’ve taken a lot of biology, as you know,” which
meant one semester in which he received a B-, “and I think this whole
business of a virgin birth doesn’t make much sense to me. It doesn’t fit
with what I have learned in biology class.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“There had to be a father,” he announced. “Either it was Joseph or
somebody else.”

His pastor looked at him with a coy smile and said, “How can you be so sure?”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s not the way it works. There had to be a
father.”

His pastor didn’t back down. Instead he said something that Carter said
he’ll never forget: “So — why not God?”

Why not, indeed? The more we learn, the harder it is to swallow a lot of
things that once seemed so palatable. Advent is a season of wonder and
mystery. We tell our children stories at this time of year that we would
never dare tell when it is warmer and there is more sunlight. The really
wise child is the kid who knows how to shut his mouth even when he has a
few doubts. But sometimes it is hard to do, especially when you have a
whole four months of college behind you.

William G. Carter, Praying for a Whole New World, CSS Publishing Company.