Why I don’t try to convert Young Earth Creationists
1 Corinthians 1:21
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
I do not consider YECs fools personally, but (as a group) they are wonderfully faithful. Now, I know Paul is not referring in this verse specifically to Creationism, but he is referring to philosophy and man’s infantile understanding of the universe in comparison to God’s; and I also believe that the foolishness he speaks of was intended to refer to actual truths that man cannot believe apart from faith in God. So, from that perspective, Young Earth Creationism does not fall into the meaning that Paul probably meant when he wrote this. However, aside from what Paul meant, I believe that God breathed into this an expression of the profound grace that He shows mankind, when we believe things that turn out not to be true, but we believe them only because they are the only way we know to reconcile our observations of the world with our heart’s true understanding of God. Sometimes, this results in believing falsehoods about the world, if only because we don’t know what God really did… but the important result is our expression of priority: it says that God is more important than this world. It says that understanding God is more important than understanding this world. So, it is okay if our understanding of the world is false, as long as our understanding of God is not.  So, for purposes of interpreting this verse, one could view the wisdom of the world as those truths that separate people from God, and Christian foolishness as including those falsehoods that require faith to proceed into God’s grace. And so I do not try and convert YECs, unless their faith is at risk.