By Dr. Kaia Kloster, FaithSearch presenter
Sometimes the inmates call me the science lady… or the dinosaur lady. I’m sure they’ve never been to a Bible study quite like mine! Many times I question whether it is really important to bring evidence-based teaching to the women in the jail. Perhaps I should just bring love and grace! They are in such great need of both. I constantly need to remind myself of the call God placed on my life to help restore the authority of His Word, to help dispel the myth-like qualities attributed to the Christian faith—the “Santa Claus effect,” as I call it—and to replace them with solid truth and a firm foundation.
One time I was addressing the reliability of the New Testament: the fact that there are nearly 25,000 manuscripts, found as early as the eyewitnesses themselves, and copied with 99.8% accuracy all the way up to the time of the printing press. This is the best manuscript and archaeological evidence for any writing of antiquity… BY FAR! In the aftermath of my bar graphs and a cold-case style investigation of the evidence for the historicity of the Gospel records of Jesus, I posed a simple question, “If we could trust the Bible and God’s promises, how would your life be different?” I heard a nearly inaudible whisper from a woman who had sat quietly to my left the whole time. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she said, “It would mean everything—I would need to start living my life for Him; I would need to be sure my kiddos knew about God.” It was one of the most honest confessions of faith—and its implications—I had ever heard.
She went on to share that her grandmother had taken her to church. When she lost her grandma at the age of nine, she started to question God and slide away from the faith. It was an inexorable descent to the place she now found herself—incarcerated, separated from her own children, unwittingly filling the shoes of a mother she had not intended to emulate. On that day, she inadvertently discovered what I had desired to bring in the first place: love and grace! She discovered she could believe in God and she could trust His Word. She discovered that the promises found there were for her… and for her children; that they themselves could become children of God, and heirs to His kingdom. That day, I was A-OK with being “the dinosaur lady”!
