The Unknown Genesis

The Hubble Telescope is getting its upgrade! I couldn’t be more delighted over anything NASA has done. I am far more enamored of the Hubble than the “Space Station”, which I find interesting but mostly an expensive and distracting waste of resources – resources that could have been better spent on real and significant science projects and space exploration.

The Hubble is a gift that just keeps on giving. There’s hardly a soul alive who hasn’t enjoyed, marveled, and been deeply encouraged by its testimony to the awesomeness of God’s whole creation. Christians are not alone in believing that the universe, with its billions of galaxies, with their billions of suns, and their billions of planets, (and tell me why not “billions of other forms of life” – which obviously delight God, if we are to take earth’s as an example) are too perfectly … well, perfectly made to not be the product and artistry of a supremely intelligent design. We Christians just have a name and a 3500 year-old description of the Designer and essentially how He went about it (read my book!).

The Hubble has probably done more to expand all our understanding and appreciation of the WHOLE creation, and more to bring scientists – especially those in physics, astronomy, and cosmology – to a believe in God, and more to open our eyes and minds to the glory of it all, and more to fuel our scientific knowledge and understanding, than any other scientific device or tool.

Much of the new vision, perspectives, and knowledge the Hubble has brought has reached straight into our common understandings of Scriptures. The description of the creation in Genesis 1 & 2 notwithstanding (read my book!), we’ve all had to revise our interpretations and understanding of many things. Who hasn’t gained a far better, and probably far “bigger” and more picturesque sense of “the heavens”? The earth? The stars? The moon? The sun? The place earth actually occupies in relationship to the sun and moon and stars? The “lights” that are for the telling of dates and times? The size and nature of the realm in which God, the angels, and our own resurrected selves might have to spend our eternity in? Time? “The light”? To point out a few.

There are some deeper things in our theology and understanding of God which Hubble has also opened to us (“since what may be known about God is plain to them, for God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made…”, Romans 1:19,20 NIV). For instance:

I wrote an article on “Like Luther”, another blog, that gives a quick explanation how the theories of Relativity and of Quantum Physics, which the Hubble has been of great benefit in developing and validating, that show us exactly how the doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty and our free will can not only coexist, but may show us just how God works.

The Hubble has also shown us that not only is the universe actually expanding, from what we can see, but gives me a clear and confident understanding of the several scriptures telling us that God, in the beginning, “stretched forth the universe”. In fact, it answers for me what the Big Bang most probably was! And, I have come to a theory of (and will soon write extensively about) just what the mysterious “dark energy” is, that so puzzles scientists, and what the so-long-debated future of the universe is.

These are just a few of the things that make me love (LOVE!) the Hubble. I am so thankful NASA put the current upgrade back in the program, and only pray that God enables and protects those astronauts who have undertaken such a risky endeavor.

For some folks, belief in the Bible, and its assertion that God created everything, is solid and unshakable. Their faith is not troubled by the rest of the world’s doubts or theories of evolution questioning the Bible’s authenticity or accuracy. They just believe, untroubled even by the lesser question of whether we live on a “young earth” or old, whether God accomplished His whole work in just a few days, as our clock would tick it off, or took a few millions or billions of years, as our sciences claim.

A recent poll by Christianity Today, counting mostly Christians we can assume, tells an interesting story. The question is, “What best describes your view of the origins of creation?”

10% Young-earth Creationism

Those who subscribe to YEC can only be very “Bible-believing” Christians. They accept the traditional Genesis creation account, uncritically and uncompromisingly. That is the only place one could possibly find that description of the origins of us and our universe, and it requires a staunch and rock-solid faith to hang on to it in this day and age.

10% Old-earth creationism

These folks are compromising a bit. They’re accepting some of what our modern sciences have to say about the age of the earth and universe and, perhaps, the evolutionary outline of life’s origins. They can be pretty staunch in their belief in Biblical authority, even inerrancy, if they decide that, (1) there is probably a big gap in time between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis1, and (2) the “days” of the six days in Genesis are not 24-hour days, but another perfectly legitimate translation of the Hebrew word yowm, such as epoch, era, or long time.

10% Theistic evolution

Theists are not necessarily even Christians, or are Christians because they respect and admire Jesus and/or many Biblical teachings and values, or are Jews and other faiths, or are persuaded by modern criticism and science that the Bible (at least Genesis 1 & 2) are only fiction, but are still convinced by science, other religions, or whatever, to believe in a god, or Intelligent Design, etc.

62% Naturalistic evolution

There’s the real headline story. Most Christians have pretty much decided the creation account is not believable or reasonable, and have been well-persuaded by the plethora of modern sciences, and the plethora of Bible criticism. This group probably includes a large proportion of folks who believe the Bible is (1) good, (2) a reliable source of values, and (3) in Jesus. In other words, they’ve lost confidence in the Old Testament, but probably not the New. And a few may have reasoned or discerned that evolution and God-as-Creator are not antithetical.

But most of those, in that 62%, have lost a certain degree of confidence in the Bible as truly “God’s own word”, or an inerrant representation of it, because what they now believe is NOT to be found in the Bible as they have ever read it. It is strictly a creation of modern minds, adapting or reconciling the Genesis assertion that God is the Creator, to modern sciences (and culture, academia, etc.) beliefs and teaching. So just like theists, they can only have a much less absolute trust and belief in the Bible.

I know all of those people (as types, of course) pretty well. I have, at some time or another, been one of a similar mind with each, as I worked out my own beliefs, having begun an atheist scientist and college teacher busy trying to cleanse young Christian minds of their beliefs, to a very Bible-believing good friend of Jesus, lover of God. And as I made my way to where I am now, I’ve seen just how tough it is to believe in the God of the Bible, and get the most out of all that the Bible holds in store for us, not to mention defend my belief and testimony against detractors and critics, with what Genesis seems to say.

I finally reached a point where I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to know what (or which) to believe. I had to reconcile my evangelical leanings, and pastors’ and friends’ faith, with Genesis. I had to decide if I was going to be able to have a full faith and confidence in the Bible, or also reach some compromise, some accommodation that omitted the creation account – and by implication – a few other passages that didn’t necessarily sit well with me and my intellect.

I thought, at first, I could find some other version, some other translation that would be less “ridiculous” in my mind. Many versions later I began to realize that those two chapters never varied, at least in no substantive manner. They simply repeated the first, and most popular translation, the KJV, which was a translation by a committee of scholars and academics in 1611! 1611!

Science hardly existed. No one knew there ever was such a thing as dinosaurs. Genes. Galaxies. Atoms. Plate tectonics. Even evolution! So whatever God might really have said about those sorts of things would go right over their heads. There weren’t even words for such, let alone ideas or concepts. I knew about all those things, but they didn’t. So I decided to go back to the Hebrew and do it all again. Re-translate.

When I started I soon discovered an even more problematic fact: that scribe was in far worse shape than even the King James scholars. Hebrew was a simple language built around some very different ways of categorizing and describing things. It had a very small lexicon. It was more a mnemonic device than written language, mostly to facilitate consistent telling, verbal transmission, of His words! I spent two years doing what I did. But the help and guidance of God’s own spirit, and all I’d learned in my eclectic academic and scientific history, served me well. And the interpretation I finished liberated me. I had started it ready to become a theist, or loose and liberal follower of Christianity. The Bible was too big, too much, too daunting, anyway. But no more.

I found that the Bible is only a brief and sparse outline. More like chapter and verse titles than textbook. But, with a careful forensic approach, the clues and evidence of every word, the time line and the descriptions of difficult pictures the Lord must have given the scribe to give him the facts, reveals an incredible record. It gives an outline of creation that not only matches well what modern scientists believe is the history of creation, but – given it was written 3500 years ago – is downright prophetic. Almost ten years after my first labors, science isn’t deviating, but moving into ever better accord with the Bible’s creation account!

So. If you are among the 62%, especially, read my book, or at least check out the finished translation of Genesis 1 & 2. You can even keep your belief in evolution!