The question of the origins of our earth and the people, creatures, and plants populating it remains as relevant today as ever. What are we, as Christians, to think about all of this? Can we stomach a 4.5 billion year old earth and 16 billion year old cosmos? Does Biblical fidelity require that we take the Bible literally (or literalistically) in its seven day account and withstand the mockery of modern scientists? Can we stake out some middle ground between the two? A sort of god-in-the-gaps theistic evolution or Old Earth cosmology combined with a special creation of Adam and Eve in the garden?
For years I have been noncommittal on this issue. I went to a church in college where the pastor had majored in the physical sciences as an undergrad and was well-known locally as a defender of the Young Earth movement. His enthusiasm never quite wore off on me, but he conveyed the issue as monumentally important and indeed elemental to our Christian faith. He often used Jesus' words in the Gospel of John--"If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe me, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things" (3.12)--as a sort of prooftext for this idea that the physical claims of the Bible bear great weight concerning the truth of the metaphysical claims.
So this was my major input for a significant developmental period of my life, one in which I furthermore did everything within my power to escape science altogether. Holla at a business major. But I could never quite escape the feeling that maybe the Bible didn't need to be read that way, and as much as I respected and still do respect my college pastor I could never quite believe that the world's scientists (even a good number of the Christian ones!) were in a secret cabal dedicated to defeating a literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1. So I did what any lazy person does: kicked the can down the road.
But lately that tactic has been unsatisfying. It might have something to do with having kids now and the prospect of having these questions addressed to me, not in some abstract way, but by an adorable little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who is deeply inquisitive about this world and looks to me as the Explainer. And I don't want to be a liar to my son and daughter.
I was talking about this recently with a friend who is in a similar position. Neither of us wants to teach our kids comfortable, well-intentioned lies, but neither do we want to be needlessly unfaithful to Scripture. If Young Earth is true, in the face of the overwhelming testimony of the scientific community, I don't want to be too cowardly to teach that to my kids. On the other hand, I don't want to teach them Young Earth Creationism because I am too cowardly to square with scientific truth. He and I both sort of feel as if we will never be fully settled on this issue. And so his question to me was how, practically, do we teach it to our kids. And we settled, unsatisfyingly but probably prudently, on teaching the confusion. Teaching our kids that it is OK to not know everything for sure, and that Scripture was not given to us as a universal compendium of knowledge.
But I still wanted to know more, and I wanted to know where to turn for answers to this question. I remember an old episode of the Simpsons where there is some debate between Creationists and evolutionists and the evolutionist is a Harvard PhD and the Christian debater has a degree in Truthology from Christian University. It might be a caricature, but that is how this debate feels too often. I don't believe that anyone--secular or religious--comes to science without preconceived notions of what they might find or what they wish to believe, but it often seems as if Christians start with Genesis as if it were a science textbook and proceed accordingly. As admirable as dedication to Scripture is, it can lead down some wrong roads and end in needless reductionistic/antagonistic thinking when it is read incorrectly.
And you can buy a book that will tell you just about anything. I remember being in a lecture once with my Renaissance lit professor and a student spouted out some nonsense, I forget even what it was now. The professor asked him where he had come up with such a ludicrous notion. He said with confidence that he had read it in a book. My professor lifted his thespian's brow and said, "Well, you need to read better books."
Which is to say, I am hopeful that I have found a better book on this subject. I am reading Seven Days that Divide the World by the Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science John C. Lennox. It is a popular level book intended for an audience such as myself and hopefully like you: a Christian who is inquisitive about these issues and wonders how it might be possible to reconcile the claims of science with the doctrine of Creation. And I therefore intend to do something that I haven't done in quite some time: read a book slowly and blog my way through it. I hope to learn something by slowing down and hopefully this can be beneficial for you all as well. So join me, if you so desire. We may not lay these questions to rest (what, after all, would be the fun in that?), but I hope our understanding is increased as well as our charity for the "other side," whomever that might be for you in this debate.
On that note, as I close I want to say that while it is easy and common for our broader culture to mock the views of Young Earth Creationists, I find it abhorrent when other believers do so. As I have moved away personally from Young Earth views I have often asked myself what I might be losing out on by heeding the scientific discoveries of the past two centuries (and longer), and it has made me understand the tight-fistedness with which Young Earth believers hold on to their beliefs and sympathize with them (the loss feels real). And I want to profess humility on this issue: I am not a scientist nor will I ever be mistaken for one. I have never even watched The Big Bang Theory. Do I believe that God could have created the world in six literal days, resting on the seventh? 100%, absolutely yes. Do I believe that is what science tells us? Increasingly no. Do I believe that is the mandatory interpretation of the beginning of Genesis? Again, increasingly no. There. Cards. Table. Meet.
More to come.
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