As I alluded to in my last post, I have now dived into Genesis, which of course begins with creation. I don’t know if there is a more controversial subject. In discussion after discussion and debate after debate atheists and Christians come at the beginning of . . . everything, from differing perspectives.
The bad news, or maybe the good news, is that I don’t take a traditional view of Genesis 1, starting with the first verse. In case it may be unfamiliar, here it is:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
I’ve heard traditional Bible scholars who hold to the infallibility of Scripture explain that this verse is a sort of prelude to the more detailed account of creation that will follow. The problem, as I see it, is the next verse:
The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
Followed by this: “Then God said, . . .”
In other words, before God said the things that would initiate the “six day creation” there was already something there, a formless earth, empty, water covering it, darkness. As I read these verses, it seems to me that God created before He created, if we are to limit Him to six days. I think it has to be this way, if for no other reason than that during the “six days,” God never made water. He divided the water. He gathered the water, but He never spoke and the water came into being, as He did with light and stars and fish and animals and plants. So water, I suggest, was part of the verse 1 creation. So is that formless void and the darkness.
Then there is the issue of the “days.” Some Bible scholars adamantly hold to the fact that these were 24-hour days. Except . . . the first “day,” God did not create the sun by which we determine time. In fact on the second “day” God still had not created the sun. Nor did He create the sun on the third “day.” Not until the fourth “day” did God bring the elements of the universe into being—the sun, the moon, the stars—by which we tell time.
And of course “we” have not been created yet, so who is actually calculating these 24 hours of a “day” of creation?
As it happens, God Himself explains that in His reckoning of time, a day is like a thousand years.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. (2 Peter 3:8)
In fact, the Hebrew word for day, transliterated as yowm, not only means “day” but also “time, period (general)” and even “year.”
In truth, God didn’t even need 24 hours to create. He spoke and out of nothing, that which He commanded, came into being. “Let there be light; and there was light.” How long did that take? Twenty-four hours?
My point is this: the interpretation of the meaning of “day” is not something to fight over. It’s not a significant part of the narrative, though I’ve heard sermons that say otherwise. I’ve heard preachers say that someone who doesn’t believe in a six 24-hour day creation, doesn’t really believe the Bible. That preacher never addressed the issue of water or the void earth and when those might have been created. Because according to the Bible, they didn’t come about in the six “days.” He also never correlated the verse in 2 Peter and God’s reckoning of time as different from ours with the Genesis account.
In other words, the people who hold staunchly to a six 24-hour day creation are, in my opinion, missing the Big Picture. What Genesis teaches is that God created. He did so in an orderly manner, bringing into being that which He made by speaking those things into existence, including stars, which we know today would include solar systems and galaxies. And finally, as an example for us, He separated the creative process into six time periods which He equated with days, before resting on the seventh day.
I’m not sure what precisely that means, either. Did God pick up and continue working at the end of the seventh 24-hour period? Did He only rest from His work of creation? Does that mean He created more afterward? Or did He work at something else? Does He continue to rest every seventh day?
Those questions are kind of silly, but I think it illustrates the point: God wanted to give us an example about how we are to construct our week. What’s especially funny, I think, is that I suspect some of the very people who cling so tightly to the idea of a six 24-hour day creation, completely ignore the idea of rest on the seventh day.
Of course, on the flip side are the atheists who scoff at the idea of God creating at all, whether in six seconds, days, thousands of years, or any other time period.
The thing they miss is that the universe coming into existence is not something that science can speak to, apart from saying that yes, the universe had a beginning. But this one time, unrepeatable event is beyond the purview of science that depends on observation and repetition.
The idea that evolution is somehow part of the equation is erroneous. Evolution has nothing to say about the origin of the universe. Honest scientists agree: when it comes to how the universe started, they have no clue, though they have theories and hope that one day we’ll figure it out. Below is a short video that gives the basics in the first 1:15:
The conclusion of this scientist that something sprang into existence from nothing, is exactly what Christians have been saying since Genesis was written. But what the scientist has apparently missed is God who spoke.
The real issues of Genesis, then—the narrative that matters—is that God created and that He revealed to us what He wanted us to know about the process. How long was a “day”? God didn’t say. Where did the light come from when the sun had not yet been created? God didn’t say. Did God use evolution to bring life into existence? Well, actually, that one He did say.
For one thing, He stated that the animals were all made after their own kind. That rules out Mankind evolving from lower forms of animals or other animals doing likewise. In addition, He created in an orderly manner, which rules out the element of chance. Thirdly, in chapter three of Genesis we also learn that death came about as a consequence for sin, so the idea that various animals went through a mutation from a previous form and that they did so in order to survive, is not possible because death was not yet a factor.
In truth, Genesis gives us the only reliable account of the origins of the universe because the only person who was there, who knows how it all went down, is God. And He says very clearly, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.