Once again, Creationism vs Evolution wends its way into the spotlight and the mad scramble to pick sides begins. The debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has drawn some serious attention. Generally speaking, I’d leave this topic alone because it deals with subjects way out of my educational league, however, I used to go to church with Ken Ham, so I watched a few highlights from the discussion and intend to watch more later, but I thought I’d pose an alternative opinion.
When it comes to which side of the fence I’m on, I’m not choosing one, because they’re both wrong.
“How could you possibly say that?” All my evolution-supporting friends with far more scientific understanding than me question.
“What do you mean Creationism is wrong?” Comes the cry of my literal 6-day creation account friends, “Are you sure you’re even a Christian?” Maybe. Let’s let Jesus decide.
Before you begin pelting your rocks, hear me out. And grab a cuppa and put your feet up, this will take a few minutes.
I can only explain this from a Biblical point of view, because that is my training and from the point of view of a Christian, because that’s who I am. I don’t pretend to offer something comprehensive, just some more thoughts. I expect this will raise more objections and questions than it addresses.
Old Testament literature is hardly a strong point of mine, but I can recommend a really helpful book, “Them, Us and Me” by Dr Jacqui Grey. The basic thrust of the book, stripped of its elegance and research, is that the way to approach Old Testament books is to consider this: What did the writing mean to them (the original recipients of the writings)? What does it mean to us and a Christian community? What does that mean to me as an individual?
It’s far more natural to think the other way around: me, us, them (heck, I think some well meaning Sunday School volunteers who taught me only knew that way), but that leaves you with the problem of reading your own situation into the Biblical text, rather than deriving meaning out of it. That’s not a very consistent or helpful way to read the Bible, because your situation is temporal and once it changes, you may read an opposite situation into the same Biblical text. That seems a bit unstable, and might lead you to believe the Bible is unreliable, when in actual fact, your mood is unreliable.
So, what answers can we expect to find in Genesis?
If we’re going to take Dr Grey’s approach (which we are going to), first we need to ask what Genesis meant to its original audience.
My facts now rely heavily on memory, so forgive me for my mistakes. We recognise Moses as the author of Genesis (if we recognise an author), and he lived in a region known as the Ancient Near East (ANE). These nations surrounding Israel had a temperamental pantheon of gods that could cause calamity at a moment’s notice. Their creation accounts were most imaginative. Generally they involved jealous lovers slaughtering spouses, spouses destroying illegitimate children, brutal battles and the blood, guts and terror by happenstance becoming the foundation of earth as we know it. Traditional Christian account isn’t looking so bogus now is it?
So as Israel attempts to separate itself from its pagan neighbours, the creation account Christians hold actually begins to hold a little more weight. Here is a creation account that stands in direct contrast to those of the ANE. Earth was planned, not random or by chance. God created humanity out of a place of love and desire for relationship, we aren’t the result of demi-god shacking up with his second cousin and the two of them being banished from godland or wherever these celestial being reside.
That’s about all we as Christians can truly assert: earth was a plan, not an accident and God created us because he is loving.
Because here’s where it starts to hurt the proper, evangelical Genesis understanding I share with so many others: the opening chapters of Genesis are written as myth.
Again, please hold all stones for pelting at a later stage. Myth is not equated with a lie. A myth is a symbolic and figurative representation of true events. So there’s every chance that Adam and Eve were not real people, that an actual talking serpent never existed and that there were not two actual trees in the Garden of Eden. It’s likely that these are things that are symbols that carried some weight in the community that this account was first circulated in. That being said, I have no definitive way of proving that Genesis is not a historical account. There are a couple of clues though.
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are different accounts of the same event. Genesis 1 is much more poetic than Genesis 2. There’s every chance this was a literary device used by an aural society so they would not forget. Here’s an example you might relate to:
Chapter 1
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a big fall,
All the kings horses and all the kings men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Chapter 2
The kings horses and the kings men worked tirelessly with no success to piece back together remains of the fall of Humpty Dumpty. After climbing high up onto a wall, Humpty lost balance and crashed to the ground, leaving a mess that could not be cleaned up by the kings officials.
How much more are you likely to remember the second chapter, having the first chapter as a reference? If I had written: Humpty Dumpty sat up high, Humpty Dumpty fell off; everyone who knows the nursery rhyme would be swift to correct my error. So having the first chapter as a well known, indisputable a point of reference prevents the second chapter have information added and thus being blown out of proportion.
And now I could tell you that this is a symbolic representation of the fall of Rome. Rome rose to great heights, admired by all, then the kingdom split and was overcome because its borders couldn’t be maintained. Despite the best efforts of the leaders and military, Rome collapsed, never to be restored. Now for generations to come it would be simple to remember what happened to Rome: refer to Humpty Dumpty. And it’s possible this is what Genesis provides.
I hear a voice or two saying, “It can’t be about Rome, it’s about an egg!” To which I can only respond, “Where are you getting that information? It is no where in the text. You are reading that into the nursery rhyme rather than deriving that from the nursery rhyme.”
(By the way, I don’t think Humpty Dumpty relates to the fall of Rome. I’m just making an illustration).
And here lies the fatal trap for the Christian: we read our science-base values back into Genesis to come up with the answers we want, rather than realising that isn’t what the text is offering. Genesis 1 and 2 never meant a comprehensive explanation of how the physical matter of the universe came to be, just that God is loving.
So, now we’ve vaguely established what this creation account meant to “them”, what does it mean to “us”? Well, I think it means we can be sure of God’s goodness, His creativity and His planning. I think we should focus on those things for sustenance of our faith, and let science be science.
And what does that mean for me? Personally, I’m not looking for a resolution to the age of the earth or how it all came about. Is a 6 day creation history possible? I think so. Does evolutionary theory have credibility? I think so, too. I also think both are incomplete. Both will leave gaps the other can’t fill and no matter how long humans are on earth, we will never fully know for sure. So for right now, I will take on board sound research from both sides of the argument and thank God for his planning and his love.
You may now pelt your rocks at will.
It's Tiph 