(…continued) When in John chapter 10 Jesus says to his disciples, “I am the gate,” Peter doesn’t jump up and say, ‘Don’t try to fool us, Jesus, we don’t see any hinges or latches on you.” No, they knew, and we know, Jesus was using a gate as an image of the way to salvation; as Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever enters through me will be saved.”
But how about Genesis one and its seven 24-hour days; morning and evening of the first day, second day, third day, and so on? It does seem simple and clear enough. Morning is when the sun rises in the East, and evening is when the sun sets in the West. Sun up, sun down, seven days– and not 14.5 billion years.
But when we look closer at the text, we see that there are three days of mornings and evenings before the sun is even created on the fourth day. How did that work? No matter what your view of the Bible is, you are going to have to do some interpreting there. Some will stick with the seven 24-hour days, saying that is what is implied in the rest of the text. Others will say, no, it looks as if the seven day format is more like poetic imagery. And this is not disrespecting the text, or undermining the authority of the Scripture. It is still seeing the same solid Biblical truth of God’s Word, but simply seeing this as a different type of literary device to portray that truth. And Bible believing Christians can come to different conclusions on this question. All Christians agree that sometimes the Bible speaks literally. For example, Jesus DID rise from the dead. That is what the Bible says and that is what it means. And, all Christians agree that sometimes the Bible speaks figuratively, with images; and no one insists that Jesus had hinges and a latch. And sometimes, like in Genesis, good Christians will disagree; and this seems to me to be an area where there is a great need for good will, mutual respect, and understanding. We are all on the same side, you know, and we face fierce opposition from those who don’t believe anything at all.
My faith in the truth of the Bible is not threatened if Jesus isn’t really a gate with hinges and a latch, nor is my faith challenged if scientists come up a different timetable than the poetic imagery of Genesis chapter one. That doesn’t mean Genesis is wrong in any way. God created the heavens and the earth, He created it all good, and He created mankind in His image. Period. But there is room here for Christians to disagree and come to different conclusions on precisely how that was done and what kind of literature this is in the Bible’s first chapter. We must not say, “Well, I think I’ll believe this part of the Bible, but not that part;” and there is far too much of that today. But we can disagree on how some parts should be read, and there is certainly room for differences of opinion on the creation account. On the religious side of this question, as Christians we must not insist too much on our own particular interpretations, and thus forcing the Bible to say more than it means to say.
On the other hand, those in the scientific world also do their share of interpreting the facts, they often disagree, and, they often-times make claims that go far beyond any facts they have discovered.
Much of this depends, of course, on our starting point. How did everything get here in the first place? Well, I start with the opening verse of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” With that fact firmly in mind, I don’t care what the scientists discover about how old the earth is, where the dinosaurs fit in, or how life developed. In whatever way that all worked out over time, it all got here in the first place because God created everything out of nothing, and has either directed or set in motion everything that has gone on since. Bill Bryson tells a fascinating story of what has been discovered about that whole process, and I don’t feel the need to argue with him on every page. But it seems incredible to me that he does not, in 478 pages, even mention the possibility of a Creator.
Now of course, many scientists do believe in God, and I am certainly not opposed to science. What I object to is the impression that is so often given that science deals only in facts, and religion deals only in blind faith. Not true! Several years ago, the popular science television series “Cosmos” began with Carl Sagan (1934-1996) saying the complete opposite of Genesis. He spoke of “the cosmos” as, “all that is or ever was or ever will be.” That was a deliberate, unnecessary, and unscientific put-down of religious faith. But how did Carl Sagan know that? How did he determine, scientifically, that nowhere in or beyond this vast universe is there a greater power? Did Sagan, somehow, in his 62 years, get the entire cosmos completely looked over, so he could state that as a scientific fact? No. There is no way anyone can know that the universe is “all there ever was or will be.” What arrogant nonsense! That was a statement of 100% pure blind faith, masquerading as science. And that is not only how that program began, that is also how the entire scientific method begins; not with a fact, but with a HUGE statement of faith. There are only two possibilities, you know; either the universe got here all by itself, or, someone put it here; and there is no way to test or prove either belief. The Bible begins with a statement of faith, and so does the scientific method. Don’t let anyone ever convince you otherwise. It might be hard to believe that God made everything out of nothing. But it takes a lot more faith to believe that NOTHING turned itself into EVERYTHING. Science itself will tell you that is not how it works. No observable, empirical, scientific experiment has ever been devised in any laboratory anywhere that has been able to create something out of nothing, nor has that ever been observed in all the universe. (continued…)
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