Our Ever-Expanding Awareness of God’s Greatness
The youth group from the English Ministry has been reading C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe together. It’s been very interesting to see some of the group actually read the book rather than relying on their knowledge of the movies. You see, whenever a book is made into a movie, material has to be left out. And, sometimes, having a story presented visually to you removes the desire to think about what the story means. So, it’s been good for some of us to read this book which uses imagination to share the gospel for the first time and some of us to re-read this classic for the next of many times.
It’s been interesting to hear the perspective on the book from children to college graduates. We even added some interest to the experience by trying out Turkish Delight (an intriguing candy) because it is mentioned so often in the book (as a symbol of how our enemy, Satan, uses our desires and appetites to tempt us). For me, it also has caused me to not only re-read the books, but to read some of the books about Lewis and his work of trying to share God with those who haven’t experienced God’s salvation and received God’s goodness. I’ve been blessed by re-reading a book written by one of my professors, C. S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith, a book by a philosopher named Richard Purtill called Lord of the Elves and Eldil , and a book I had only skimmed before, A Field Guide to Narnia. Each one has stimulated my thinking about God and having a relationship with God.
For example, there is a scene at the end of Prince Caspian where Lucy, the youngest of the heroes in the story, encounters the lion named Aslan, a symbol of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and as the One who dies to save others. Lucy observes that Aslan is “bigger” than when she had last seen him, but Aslan denies getting bigger. He says the change is in Lucy: “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” What an amazing statement! The more we are able to grow in knowledge, in experience, and in grace, the “bigger” God will become in our lives.
This concept really speaks to me and reminds me of an experience when I was younger (maybe middle school age?). I found a book on my Dad’s bookshelf and thought I’d caught him doing something bad. I thought he had a heretical book on his shelf. The book was entitled, Your God is Too Small. Not only was the book a long way from being heretical, but it became an important book in my life. It essentially taught me not to put God into the box of my ideas, submit God to the limit of my understanding. That helped me in high school when kids or teachers would question my faith. I always remembered that I had more to learn about God.
When I was in college, this idea of not limiting God to my understanding was really important. Now, I know a lot of pastors, including the current president of the school where I was granted my Ph.D., don’t agree with what I’m going to share, but it’s my honest experience and it might help someone else. I was in a Physical Anthropology class at the University of Southern California. In that class, I was faced with two things that didn’t fit the 24-hour days of creation perspective. First, although I had heard Christian apologists rail against the problems of Carbon-14 dating so that they could argue that the earth is younger than most scientists believe, I discovered that Potassium-Argon dating was significantly more accurate and placed the earth’s age as even older than previously assumed. Second, I read about fruit fly experiments and realized that they were a means of studying genetic development in a significantly shorter cycle than observing humans or other creatures with more longevity. Taken together, they both seemed like pretty solid evidence in favor of evolution.
So, I had to ask myself, “What difference does this information make regarding my relationship with God?” And, I quickly realized that the only difference it made to me was positive. I realized that I still had my experience with God, and I realized that, for me, God’s possible use of evolution impressed me more than traditional interpretations of Genesis. To me, it made God’s creation even more precious. But what was I to do with the traditional interpretations, the 24-hour day of creation? I believe the entire Bible is the inspired Word of God. So, if creation might have been longer (much, much longer) than seven 24-hour days, how could I understand Genesis 1-2, as well as 3.
As a college student, the verse that gave me a breakthrough was Peter’s admonition in 2 Peter 3:8: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (New International Version) The text here is talking about scoffers who keep making snarky comments about the promise of Jesus’ coming and claiming it isn’t going to happen because it’s taken so long to happen. So, 2 Peter reminds us that God’s creative word created the heavens and the earth “long ago” (v. 5). Do you notice the indefinite period? “Long ago?” Even though the King James Version read “of old,” the idea of time in that creation is indefinite. Clearly, the meaning in v. 8 is that God’s “time” is not our time. When I read 2 Peter 3:8, I let go of any potential doubt and began to have a larger idea of God as an eternal being. I could look at the seven days of creation in a new light.
Of course, there are those who will immediately ask, “Ah, but what about the verses that say, ‘There was evening and there was morning, Day One’? Doesn’t that require seven 24-hour days?” Well, not exactly. You see, according to a rabbi from about 1,000 years ago (long before there was any controversy over earth’s age or any theory of evolution), the root idea of these two words means “chaos” (evening) and “order” (morning). Not only does this formula express the idea of God creating something of light out of something dark, but it suggests that no matter what we discover about earth’s and humanity’s origins, it is a carefully planned process originating in God. I didn’t discover this until after college, though.
Resulting from 1 Peter 3:8, I was very excited to be able to look at the fossil record and geological dates without fear that I was denying God. But it got better. I came across an old commentary by three scholars named Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown in the college library. When I read what they had to say about Genesis, I realized that the “Big Bang” theory would fit quite well into the Genesis account. What happens when there is an explosion? There is a tremendous release of light. What happens when God starts creating? God says, “Let there be light.” I even noticed that it wasn’t the idea of God drawing or sculpting light as God allowing light to come forth? Without God’s willingness, nothing can happen.
So, what does Genesis 1 tell us happened on the second day? God made a firmament, a canopy, a dome separating the waters from the waters (Genesis 1:6-7). And what would we call that separation? We call it the atmosphere. And how does it separate the waters from the waters? Check this out! After the Big Bang, a lot of gaseous bodies were dispersed throughout the universe. One of these bodies had a core of molten metal which, as it cooled, released vapors and gases filled with hydrogen (H2), water vapor, methane (CH4), and a combination of oxides. This newborn earth, still being nurtured by Creator God, had just the right gravitational attraction to hold those gases and form the atmosphere—eventually becoming the breathable mix we have today. So, it’s the second day of creation and we haven’t disagreed with the Bible at all.
And what happens on the third day? The dry land is separated from the seas (Genesis 1:9-10). Now, as the earth is cooling, there would have been two phenomena occurring: atmospheric precipitation and volcanic thrust/tectonic formation. The former provides for moisture other than the viscous magma at the planetary core and the latter suggests land (or what would become land) thrusting out of a flowing mass, the proto-oceans if you will. Genesis describes a separation where the land rises out of the sea. Does that not fit the geological record of island and continental formation?
But, that’s not all that happens on Day 3. Plant life and vegetation begins to emerge. It might have been plant life closer to lichen than the green pastures God eventually placed on the earth, but we see the beginnings of vegetation as the earth cools and the land forms. Yet, your skeptic friends will smirk and ask how there was vegetation if the sun, on which plants as well as creatures and humans depend for life, wasn’t created till Day 4. Well, if God was surveying the earth from the perspective of earth, the atmosphere would have been too dense to see the sun from the earth’s surface. Yet, as we know today, a lot of the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, even when we can’t see the sun (Why do you think you have to wear sun-screen on a cloudy day?). So, it’s clear that, as early as things were, the basics of vegetation had begun—even before the sun and stars would have been visible from the surface of the earth.
Now, even though God had created light, atmosphere, and the beginning of continents and oceans, the work of creation was on-going. On Day 4, a hypothetical viewer would have been able to see the sun, stars, and reflected light of the moon from the earth’s surface. Notice that even though God expressed the intention of declaring day from night at the start of creation, it isn’t until Day 4 that God proclaims days and seasons determined by the heavenly bodies. That is yet another reason I feel better reading, “There was chaos and there was order, Day 1.”
At this point, notice that God is more than halfway through the creative week, and we still don’t have life as we know it. This is where it gets interesting to me. Notice the phrasing in Genesis 1:20—the waters would bring forth living creatures. Biologists believe that prokaryotic cells began colliding and forming cells like fungi which were able to filter the sun’s energy and protect the life-giving algae. As oxygen levels began to increase in the atmosphere, life could now move to the surface layers of the waters. Oxygen-fed combustion began to create a fermentation process that developed life whose fossils build our oxidized iron deposits in the modern world.
Scientists believe this eventually created an environment where Crustacea (water fleas, barnacles, shrimp, crayfish, lobsters and crabs breathing through gills) would form. Similarly, Chelicerata (six pairs of appendages, as a general rule, and including spiders, horseshoe crabs, mites, ticks, and scorpions) would have had their beginnings. And, eventually, we have the lungfish coming out of the water and fins having their bone-like structure solidifying into bone so that fins become feet).
We have a reference to great sea monsters, birds that fly, and everything that “swarms” in the seas. The bird reference may surprise you, but biologists see plenty of similarity between amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Indeed, even dinosaurs share many biological similarities with birds. When we reach the end of Day 5, we find that the order of God-directed creation is still compatible with that of biologists, once they get rid of their bias against God’s involvement.
If the general order of life development is still compatible with the Bible, we should see lower creatures followed by humanity on Day Six. Sure enough, in Genesis 1:24-25, we have the appearance of all the life-forms except the human. And then, in verses 26-31, we see God’s intent to develop a creature that would, like God, have a sense of personhood (within two sexual genders), an ability to think, the capacity to use tools, and a faculty of language. When God’s intent is expressed in the remainder of the chapter, we see that humanity is the apex of God’s creation.
But some people would ask, “But if God took as long to create as evolutionists suggest, doesn’t that imply that God simply designed a system and set it running like a watchmaker who winds her creation?” I contend that even if you don’t believe God used evolution, you have the same problem if you just read the creation account and quit. We need to see Genesis 2 and 3 to be certain that God is involved.
Where Genesis 1 records six days of creation and one of rest, Genesis 2 uses the definite article, the, to express that it is all done in one day. Why? I believe it is because Genesis 1 demonstrates that God built creation step-by-step. Just as God spoke light into existence, God could have spoken everything into existence in a blink. But God didn’t do it that way. Truthfully, if we only had Genesis 1, God would be so far above us and so separated from us that we wouldn’t know God was still involved.
The beauty of Genesis 2 is that God “gets His hands dirty.” Where he created as only God can do in Genesis 1, he now makes humanity as a craftsperson or sculptor in the same way humanity would (and does) make things. See? God is directly involved with our creation. But doesn’t the idea of sculpting humanity from the dirt invalidate the idea of evolution? Well, consider this. One of the important ferrous minerals found in our biochemical make-up is iron. But the fossil records show no iron deposits before the existence of oxygenizing cyanobacteria. When God gets everything ready, then God makes (maybe by evolving, maybe not) humanity from the metal-bearing ground. We are made of the same elements as the soil.
And if you don’t think the Bible’s writing has a real beauty to it, think of the fact that the Hebrew word for humanity is ‘adham and the Hebrew word for ground is ‘adhamah. Get it? Humanity comes from the ground. Also notice that the word for humanity (as in Psalm 8’s question of “What is humanity that You are mindful of him?” and the prophet’s term “son of humanity” (which became one of Jesus’ regular terms for Himself) uses ‘adham spelled just like it is here and as it is when Adam is mentioned.)
Of course, the biggest problem with evolution, even God-controlled evolution, is what to do about Adam. As we just noted, Adam means humanity just as Eve means “living.” So, what happens to the fall of humanity account in Genesis 3 if Adam is about humanity instead one individual. After all, doesn’t Romans 5:12 suggest that sin came into the world through “one man?” Well, I wouldn’t be writing about it if it didn’t. This is important because the chapter goes on to say that sin is going to be removed by the grace of “one man, Jesus Christ.”
Does the idea of evolving humankind and Adam as symbolic of all humanity destroy the gospel message in Romans 5? This has been a sticking point for many people. And how did sin come through that “one man?” It came through disobedience to God because of temptation—just as it does to you and me when we ignore God’s commands. The New England Primer in the early days of the U.S. read, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” I was never comfortable with that. I’ve heard people say, “If it wasn’t for Adam, we’d live forever.” That seems to get rid of our personal responsibility as much as just saying, “The devil made me do it.”
Let’s pair up verse 12 with verse 15. It says, “if” the sins entered through one man, we will experience the grace of one individual, Jesus Christ. Let’s assume Adam is one man. We’re covered. But what if every human being has that tendency to disobey God? What if I personally am accountable for my sin? What if I am the only sinner? I’m still covered by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ. Whether Adam is one individual or represents us all as individuals, there is only one individual that can rescue us from eternal death—Jesus Christ.
I believe the Genesis 1 account keeps us from being so familiar with God that we take God for granted. God is above and beyond the natural process, even as it follows God’s plan, God’s blueprint. The Genesis 2 account keeps God from being so far beyond us that we don’t think God is relevant to our earthly lives. But God IS involved; God didn’t wind up the universe like a watch and let it go. And the Genesis 3 account shows how even human beings in the perfect circumstances would still disobey God.
I share this not because I am convinced that this is the only way God could have created the earth, but because God Who creates step-by-step according to an intricate plan seems more powerful to me than God Who creates the “easy way,” without being invested in creation long-term. I hope the suggestion that God might have used evolution does not cause anyone to doubt the Bible. I believe God created just as the Bible says God did. I just see the biblical language as pointing to much more than I ever dreamed. And I share this in specific hope that college students will never feel like they are confronted with an EITHER science or God choice. God is the God of all—no matter how old the earth or slow the development of life might be. As I said earlier, God became more powerful in my mind in considering this interpretation.
But, if you haven’t already written me off as a heretic, I want to share something else. At a later time in my life, I had read a lot of existentialist works and was asking myself the question, “Would it really matter if there were no heaven? Wouldn’t it still be worth it to live one’s life as Jesus taught?” Remember, I was just asking the question. I wanted to be able to respond to people who made such a suggestion. As I prayed for God to show me, God indeed showed me. A lady in my church was dying, eaten up by cancer. I was at her bedside during her last hours. As she was just a few hours away from death, she suddenly quit groaning and spoke aloud, “It’s so beautiful, Frank (her husband’s name). It’s so beautiful. I’m going to be there, Frank! Oh, Frank, are you going to be there?”
I knew that she could be hallucinating because of the painkillers, and I knew the Freudians could claim that this was the ultimate “wish-fulfilment,” but I sensed the reality, I was there as she slipped back and forth between the dimensions. And then, I suddenly knew what my answer was supposed to be. I remembered 1 John 3:2 and the promise that we shall be like Him. I thought back to the post-resurrection appearances where He could enter closed rooms and teleport all over to challenge the disciples. I began to think of heaven as another dimension. And then, as I began to read about mathematical theories of multiple dimensions, I realized that I had no trouble conceiving of heaven when I perceived it not as “somewhere up there,” but in an alternate dimension where God is fully present, accessible, and tangible in more ways than in our dimension. It may sound like science-fiction, but it helped me to get a grasp on the concept of a reality I can’t see, and it’s stopped a lot of skeptics in their tracks.
At another time, I was having problems with the so-called “longer ending of Mark.” Some modern translations put the last section as a footnote rather than in the main text because this longer ending isn’t found in the older texts. A lot of scholars wanted to get rid of these verses for another reason. This has the verse used by snake handlers to justify using poisonous snakes in their worship to demonstrate their faith. But it was a problem for me because I believe the whole Bible is the word of God, wholly inspired, with interpretation based on believing it all. I even taught my seminary students that I didn’t like the term “textual errors” regarding different readings, but I believe the interpreter’s responsibility is to consider all the readings and try to discern what the Holy Spirit might be telling us by allowing these differences to exist. So, I believe both the shorter ending and the longer ending of Mark are scripture.
So, I went to God in prayer with my problem and here is what I understand. Jesus says that some of the folks hearing Him will do greater things, and He cites these amazing things. But those things happened for the people He was speaking to. Defying poisonous serpents? Ever read the book of Acts when a shipwrecked believer picks up a pile of wood, is bitten by a viper, and everyone watches him, expecting him to die? The verse came true. It’s already happened, so we don’t have anything to prove with those poisonous snakes.
I believe my understanding of God is continually growing. I keep studying the Bible, listening to good sermons, reading good books, and praying for Spirit-led understanding. I don’t want to settle for a God who is too small. I don’t want my understanding of God to stay the same size. God is ever more powerful and more amazing to me than even when I was a young, confident (too confident) pastor, author, and teacher. I figure if Jesus could grow in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), I can at least grow in wisdom—even if I’ll always be short in stature. But with God, through the Holy Spirit, as my constant companion, I never have to be afraid of being exposed to any scientific theory, any philosophical speculation, any archaeological evidence, or any skeptical observation. My God is…therefore, I am and I must grow.
It’s been interesting to hear the perspective on the book from children to college graduates. We even added some interest to the experience by trying out Turkish Delight (an intriguing candy) because it is mentioned so often in the book (as a symbol of how our enemy, Satan, uses our desires and appetites to tempt us). For me, it also has caused me to not only re-read the books, but to read some of the books about Lewis and his work of trying to share God with those who haven’t experienced God’s salvation and received God’s goodness. I’ve been blessed by re-reading a book written by one of my professors, C. S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith, a book by a philosopher named Richard Purtill called Lord of the Elves and Eldil , and a book I had only skimmed before, A Field Guide to Narnia. Each one has stimulated my thinking about God and having a relationship with God.
For example, there is a scene at the end of Prince Caspian where Lucy, the youngest of the heroes in the story, encounters the lion named Aslan, a symbol of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and as the One who dies to save others. Lucy observes that Aslan is “bigger” than when she had last seen him, but Aslan denies getting bigger. He says the change is in Lucy: “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” What an amazing statement! The more we are able to grow in knowledge, in experience, and in grace, the “bigger” God will become in our lives.
This concept really speaks to me and reminds me of an experience when I was younger (maybe middle school age?). I found a book on my Dad’s bookshelf and thought I’d caught him doing something bad. I thought he had a heretical book on his shelf. The book was entitled, Your God is Too Small. Not only was the book a long way from being heretical, but it became an important book in my life. It essentially taught me not to put God into the box of my ideas, submit God to the limit of my understanding. That helped me in high school when kids or teachers would question my faith. I always remembered that I had more to learn about God.
When I was in college, this idea of not limiting God to my understanding was really important. Now, I know a lot of pastors, including the current president of the school where I was granted my Ph.D., don’t agree with what I’m going to share, but it’s my honest experience and it might help someone else. I was in a Physical Anthropology class at the University of Southern California. In that class, I was faced with two things that didn’t fit the 24-hour days of creation perspective. First, although I had heard Christian apologists rail against the problems of Carbon-14 dating so that they could argue that the earth is younger than most scientists believe, I discovered that Potassium-Argon dating was significantly more accurate and placed the earth’s age as even older than previously assumed. Second, I read about fruit fly experiments and realized that they were a means of studying genetic development in a significantly shorter cycle than observing humans or other creatures with more longevity. Taken together, they both seemed like pretty solid evidence in favor of evolution.
So, I had to ask myself, “What difference does this information make regarding my relationship with God?” And, I quickly realized that the only difference it made to me was positive. I realized that I still had my experience with God, and I realized that, for me, God’s possible use of evolution impressed me more than traditional interpretations of Genesis. To me, it made God’s creation even more precious. But what was I to do with the traditional interpretations, the 24-hour day of creation? I believe the entire Bible is the inspired Word of God. So, if creation might have been longer (much, much longer) than seven 24-hour days, how could I understand Genesis 1-2, as well as 3.
As a college student, the verse that gave me a breakthrough was Peter’s admonition in 2 Peter 3:8: “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (New International Version) The text here is talking about scoffers who keep making snarky comments about the promise of Jesus’ coming and claiming it isn’t going to happen because it’s taken so long to happen. So, 2 Peter reminds us that God’s creative word created the heavens and the earth “long ago” (v. 5). Do you notice the indefinite period? “Long ago?” Even though the King James Version read “of old,” the idea of time in that creation is indefinite. Clearly, the meaning in v. 8 is that God’s “time” is not our time. When I read 2 Peter 3:8, I let go of any potential doubt and began to have a larger idea of God as an eternal being. I could look at the seven days of creation in a new light.
Of course, there are those who will immediately ask, “Ah, but what about the verses that say, ‘There was evening and there was morning, Day One’? Doesn’t that require seven 24-hour days?” Well, not exactly. You see, according to a rabbi from about 1,000 years ago (long before there was any controversy over earth’s age or any theory of evolution), the root idea of these two words means “chaos” (evening) and “order” (morning). Not only does this formula express the idea of God creating something of light out of something dark, but it suggests that no matter what we discover about earth’s and humanity’s origins, it is a carefully planned process originating in God. I didn’t discover this until after college, though.
Resulting from 1 Peter 3:8, I was very excited to be able to look at the fossil record and geological dates without fear that I was denying God. But it got better. I came across an old commentary by three scholars named Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown in the college library. When I read what they had to say about Genesis, I realized that the “Big Bang” theory would fit quite well into the Genesis account. What happens when there is an explosion? There is a tremendous release of light. What happens when God starts creating? God says, “Let there be light.” I even noticed that it wasn’t the idea of God drawing or sculpting light as God allowing light to come forth? Without God’s willingness, nothing can happen.
So, what does Genesis 1 tell us happened on the second day? God made a firmament, a canopy, a dome separating the waters from the waters (Genesis 1:6-7). And what would we call that separation? We call it the atmosphere. And how does it separate the waters from the waters? Check this out! After the Big Bang, a lot of gaseous bodies were dispersed throughout the universe. One of these bodies had a core of molten metal which, as it cooled, released vapors and gases filled with hydrogen (H2), water vapor, methane (CH4), and a combination of oxides. This newborn earth, still being nurtured by Creator God, had just the right gravitational attraction to hold those gases and form the atmosphere—eventually becoming the breathable mix we have today. So, it’s the second day of creation and we haven’t disagreed with the Bible at all.
And what happens on the third day? The dry land is separated from the seas (Genesis 1:9-10). Now, as the earth is cooling, there would have been two phenomena occurring: atmospheric precipitation and volcanic thrust/tectonic formation. The former provides for moisture other than the viscous magma at the planetary core and the latter suggests land (or what would become land) thrusting out of a flowing mass, the proto-oceans if you will. Genesis describes a separation where the land rises out of the sea. Does that not fit the geological record of island and continental formation?
But, that’s not all that happens on Day 3. Plant life and vegetation begins to emerge. It might have been plant life closer to lichen than the green pastures God eventually placed on the earth, but we see the beginnings of vegetation as the earth cools and the land forms. Yet, your skeptic friends will smirk and ask how there was vegetation if the sun, on which plants as well as creatures and humans depend for life, wasn’t created till Day 4. Well, if God was surveying the earth from the perspective of earth, the atmosphere would have been too dense to see the sun from the earth’s surface. Yet, as we know today, a lot of the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, even when we can’t see the sun (Why do you think you have to wear sun-screen on a cloudy day?). So, it’s clear that, as early as things were, the basics of vegetation had begun—even before the sun and stars would have been visible from the surface of the earth.
Now, even though God had created light, atmosphere, and the beginning of continents and oceans, the work of creation was on-going. On Day 4, a hypothetical viewer would have been able to see the sun, stars, and reflected light of the moon from the earth’s surface. Notice that even though God expressed the intention of declaring day from night at the start of creation, it isn’t until Day 4 that God proclaims days and seasons determined by the heavenly bodies. That is yet another reason I feel better reading, “There was chaos and there was order, Day 1.”
At this point, notice that God is more than halfway through the creative week, and we still don’t have life as we know it. This is where it gets interesting to me. Notice the phrasing in Genesis 1:20—the waters would bring forth living creatures. Biologists believe that prokaryotic cells began colliding and forming cells like fungi which were able to filter the sun’s energy and protect the life-giving algae. As oxygen levels began to increase in the atmosphere, life could now move to the surface layers of the waters. Oxygen-fed combustion began to create a fermentation process that developed life whose fossils build our oxidized iron deposits in the modern world.
Scientists believe this eventually created an environment where Crustacea (water fleas, barnacles, shrimp, crayfish, lobsters and crabs breathing through gills) would form. Similarly, Chelicerata (six pairs of appendages, as a general rule, and including spiders, horseshoe crabs, mites, ticks, and scorpions) would have had their beginnings. And, eventually, we have the lungfish coming out of the water and fins having their bone-like structure solidifying into bone so that fins become feet).
We have a reference to great sea monsters, birds that fly, and everything that “swarms” in the seas. The bird reference may surprise you, but biologists see plenty of similarity between amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Indeed, even dinosaurs share many biological similarities with birds. When we reach the end of Day 5, we find that the order of God-directed creation is still compatible with that of biologists, once they get rid of their bias against God’s involvement.
If the general order of life development is still compatible with the Bible, we should see lower creatures followed by humanity on Day Six. Sure enough, in Genesis 1:24-25, we have the appearance of all the life-forms except the human. And then, in verses 26-31, we see God’s intent to develop a creature that would, like God, have a sense of personhood (within two sexual genders), an ability to think, the capacity to use tools, and a faculty of language. When God’s intent is expressed in the remainder of the chapter, we see that humanity is the apex of God’s creation.
But some people would ask, “But if God took as long to create as evolutionists suggest, doesn’t that imply that God simply designed a system and set it running like a watchmaker who winds her creation?” I contend that even if you don’t believe God used evolution, you have the same problem if you just read the creation account and quit. We need to see Genesis 2 and 3 to be certain that God is involved.
Where Genesis 1 records six days of creation and one of rest, Genesis 2 uses the definite article, the, to express that it is all done in one day. Why? I believe it is because Genesis 1 demonstrates that God built creation step-by-step. Just as God spoke light into existence, God could have spoken everything into existence in a blink. But God didn’t do it that way. Truthfully, if we only had Genesis 1, God would be so far above us and so separated from us that we wouldn’t know God was still involved.
The beauty of Genesis 2 is that God “gets His hands dirty.” Where he created as only God can do in Genesis 1, he now makes humanity as a craftsperson or sculptor in the same way humanity would (and does) make things. See? God is directly involved with our creation. But doesn’t the idea of sculpting humanity from the dirt invalidate the idea of evolution? Well, consider this. One of the important ferrous minerals found in our biochemical make-up is iron. But the fossil records show no iron deposits before the existence of oxygenizing cyanobacteria. When God gets everything ready, then God makes (maybe by evolving, maybe not) humanity from the metal-bearing ground. We are made of the same elements as the soil.
And if you don’t think the Bible’s writing has a real beauty to it, think of the fact that the Hebrew word for humanity is ‘adham and the Hebrew word for ground is ‘adhamah. Get it? Humanity comes from the ground. Also notice that the word for humanity (as in Psalm 8’s question of “What is humanity that You are mindful of him?” and the prophet’s term “son of humanity” (which became one of Jesus’ regular terms for Himself) uses ‘adham spelled just like it is here and as it is when Adam is mentioned.)
Of course, the biggest problem with evolution, even God-controlled evolution, is what to do about Adam. As we just noted, Adam means humanity just as Eve means “living.” So, what happens to the fall of humanity account in Genesis 3 if Adam is about humanity instead one individual. After all, doesn’t Romans 5:12 suggest that sin came into the world through “one man?” Well, I wouldn’t be writing about it if it didn’t. This is important because the chapter goes on to say that sin is going to be removed by the grace of “one man, Jesus Christ.”
Does the idea of evolving humankind and Adam as symbolic of all humanity destroy the gospel message in Romans 5? This has been a sticking point for many people. And how did sin come through that “one man?” It came through disobedience to God because of temptation—just as it does to you and me when we ignore God’s commands. The New England Primer in the early days of the U.S. read, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” I was never comfortable with that. I’ve heard people say, “If it wasn’t for Adam, we’d live forever.” That seems to get rid of our personal responsibility as much as just saying, “The devil made me do it.”
Let’s pair up verse 12 with verse 15. It says, “if” the sins entered through one man, we will experience the grace of one individual, Jesus Christ. Let’s assume Adam is one man. We’re covered. But what if every human being has that tendency to disobey God? What if I personally am accountable for my sin? What if I am the only sinner? I’m still covered by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ. Whether Adam is one individual or represents us all as individuals, there is only one individual that can rescue us from eternal death—Jesus Christ.
I believe the Genesis 1 account keeps us from being so familiar with God that we take God for granted. God is above and beyond the natural process, even as it follows God’s plan, God’s blueprint. The Genesis 2 account keeps God from being so far beyond us that we don’t think God is relevant to our earthly lives. But God IS involved; God didn’t wind up the universe like a watch and let it go. And the Genesis 3 account shows how even human beings in the perfect circumstances would still disobey God.
I share this not because I am convinced that this is the only way God could have created the earth, but because God Who creates step-by-step according to an intricate plan seems more powerful to me than God Who creates the “easy way,” without being invested in creation long-term. I hope the suggestion that God might have used evolution does not cause anyone to doubt the Bible. I believe God created just as the Bible says God did. I just see the biblical language as pointing to much more than I ever dreamed. And I share this in specific hope that college students will never feel like they are confronted with an EITHER science or God choice. God is the God of all—no matter how old the earth or slow the development of life might be. As I said earlier, God became more powerful in my mind in considering this interpretation.
But, if you haven’t already written me off as a heretic, I want to share something else. At a later time in my life, I had read a lot of existentialist works and was asking myself the question, “Would it really matter if there were no heaven? Wouldn’t it still be worth it to live one’s life as Jesus taught?” Remember, I was just asking the question. I wanted to be able to respond to people who made such a suggestion. As I prayed for God to show me, God indeed showed me. A lady in my church was dying, eaten up by cancer. I was at her bedside during her last hours. As she was just a few hours away from death, she suddenly quit groaning and spoke aloud, “It’s so beautiful, Frank (her husband’s name). It’s so beautiful. I’m going to be there, Frank! Oh, Frank, are you going to be there?”
I knew that she could be hallucinating because of the painkillers, and I knew the Freudians could claim that this was the ultimate “wish-fulfilment,” but I sensed the reality, I was there as she slipped back and forth between the dimensions. And then, I suddenly knew what my answer was supposed to be. I remembered 1 John 3:2 and the promise that we shall be like Him. I thought back to the post-resurrection appearances where He could enter closed rooms and teleport all over to challenge the disciples. I began to think of heaven as another dimension. And then, as I began to read about mathematical theories of multiple dimensions, I realized that I had no trouble conceiving of heaven when I perceived it not as “somewhere up there,” but in an alternate dimension where God is fully present, accessible, and tangible in more ways than in our dimension. It may sound like science-fiction, but it helped me to get a grasp on the concept of a reality I can’t see, and it’s stopped a lot of skeptics in their tracks.
At another time, I was having problems with the so-called “longer ending of Mark.” Some modern translations put the last section as a footnote rather than in the main text because this longer ending isn’t found in the older texts. A lot of scholars wanted to get rid of these verses for another reason. This has the verse used by snake handlers to justify using poisonous snakes in their worship to demonstrate their faith. But it was a problem for me because I believe the whole Bible is the word of God, wholly inspired, with interpretation based on believing it all. I even taught my seminary students that I didn’t like the term “textual errors” regarding different readings, but I believe the interpreter’s responsibility is to consider all the readings and try to discern what the Holy Spirit might be telling us by allowing these differences to exist. So, I believe both the shorter ending and the longer ending of Mark are scripture.
So, I went to God in prayer with my problem and here is what I understand. Jesus says that some of the folks hearing Him will do greater things, and He cites these amazing things. But those things happened for the people He was speaking to. Defying poisonous serpents? Ever read the book of Acts when a shipwrecked believer picks up a pile of wood, is bitten by a viper, and everyone watches him, expecting him to die? The verse came true. It’s already happened, so we don’t have anything to prove with those poisonous snakes.
I believe my understanding of God is continually growing. I keep studying the Bible, listening to good sermons, reading good books, and praying for Spirit-led understanding. I don’t want to settle for a God who is too small. I don’t want my understanding of God to stay the same size. God is ever more powerful and more amazing to me than even when I was a young, confident (too confident) pastor, author, and teacher. I figure if Jesus could grow in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), I can at least grow in wisdom—even if I’ll always be short in stature. But with God, through the Holy Spirit, as my constant companion, I never have to be afraid of being exposed to any scientific theory, any philosophical speculation, any archaeological evidence, or any skeptical observation. My God is…therefore, I am and I must grow.