The six literal days of creation

The six literal days of creation

When it comes to Genesis 1, I admit that I am a literalist. I wasn’t always a literalist, but after thirty years of being a Christian, that’s where I’ve ended up. This article is not an attempt to persuade others to become literalists. It is aimed at those who want to believe the literal view, but somehow feel brow-beaten into becoming more “sophisticated” or “mature” in their Christian faith.

You see, I often listen or attend sermons where the speaker goes to great lengths to explain that it doesn’t matter how we interpret Genesis one, because the root of our salvation rests on faith in Jesus. They then go to some lengths to explain that the literal view is somehow lacking in maturity or sophistication because it either doesn’t align with modern scientific thinking or otherwise doesn’t take into account the people or the context that Genesis was written for.

At the end I am always left slightly empty and unfulfilled; How can I, an average individual, ever understand the intricacies of modern scientific thought on the one hand, or understand how the ancients saw the world on the other? Wasn’t the Bible written for people like me also? Surely the Sovereign, timeless God, who counts the (ever diminishing number) of hairs on my head and knows when a sparrow falls, thought of me when He caused the scriptures to be written?

Science and Religion

I once worked with someone who prided himself on being a scientist, and he had the credentials to prove it; He had a PHD in theoretical physics from a good university and a decade or so of research under his belt.

He never tired of telling the story of a time when he worked as a researcher in a nuclear power facility. One day the radiation alarms went off. “All us scientists ran for the exit, but the soldiers guarding the facility ran the other way, towards the danger” he said. At this point he would snigger, lean back in his chair and say “That’s the difference between intelligence and stupidity”.

I guess he felt that logical self-preservation was a more intelligent response that putting your duty before personal safety.

But as Christians we know differently, or at least I hope we do. We know that often we have to deny our own survival needs in order to serve God.  It might not be the intelligent thing to do but it is the honourable thing.

And this is where I feel science and religion often depart from each other. Religion tells us what we ought to do, not matter how stupid it may seem, whereas science tells us how to survive, how to get one up on the other guy, on the environment, or even on God.

Some will no doubt argue that science has improved our quality of life, and indeed they are right. Who doesn’t enjoy the modern benefits of the cell-phone, toilet paper and toothpaste. But the cost of scientific progress is not negligible. Future generations are paying now and will pay ever more dearly for the progress we enjoy today. Already the environment is showing serious symptoms of abuse, the ocean is fast becoming a soup of plastic. But it doesn’t stop there, the fabric of society is unravelling fast as “scientific” thought takes root and expresses itself in moral relativism. Gone are the days when we could talk meaningfully about moral laws and duties. Everyone decides their own truth, and too bad if it affects someone else, it is survival of the fittest at the end of the day!

But on a more serious note; The reason I don’t “believe” in science is because it often gets stuff wrong. Scientists themselves point out that their theories are merely attempts to explain the available evidence, but as new evidence or better explanations come to light they will abandon the old theories and adopt new ones. The Big Bang theory is a case in point, scientist didn’t always have this theory. Before the Big Bang theory, they had other explanations for how the universe came to exist. Now they have the Big Bang theory. In a decade it will be something different.

Furthermore, what is called modern scientific thought suggests a unity of opinion that simply doesn’t exist. Scientists disagree amongst themselves as much as in any other discipline.

I am simply not qualified to keep up with the latest scientific research, or to judge which theory is better than all the others. Obviously I can’t base my faith on something as speculative as science! I might as well base my retirement planning on winning the Lotto!

But whereas science changes as facts are surfaced and new theories are adopted and old ones discarded, the word of God stays the same. Like a rock in a stormy, tossing ocean of speculation, the Bible stands proud and unyielding.

I’d like to build my house on this rock. You might say it doesn’t exist or it isn’t really the rock I think it is, but I have touched it and handled it. It has been with me in good times and bad. Jesus used it when He faced temptation in the desert and throughout His lifetime. What is good enough for the Lord is good enough for me.

Speculative hermeneutics

One often hears something along these lines; “The ancients [for whom the book of Genesis were written] believed that something didn’t exist unless it existed functionally”. This premise would then be used as the basis for an argument that concludes that therefore the Genesis text should not be interpreted literally.

I question this approach. Firstly, how do we really know what the ancient people thought. Can we really deduce what the average man in the street, the millions who didn’t write down their thoughts, felt and  thought like every day?

We must be careful not to import our own prejudices into the very culture we are trying to penetrate. All people at all times are subject to numerous biases, some held consciously and some unconsciously.

I remember reading a commentary on the book of Acts once where the commentator concluded that Mary’s household must have been rich because the door was answered by a the servant girl. This conclusion sounds logical, until you talk to someone who had actually grown up in a third world country like Africa or India. These people will tell you that even poor people have servants. Because labour is so cheap and jobs so scarce, it would be really unusual for someone not to have a servant!

What happened is that the commentator imported his modern first world bias into his interpretation of the scripture. According to first world modern thinking, only the very rich can afford servants.

Wallace Stevens seems to express something of this phenomenon in his poem “Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird”:

“I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.”

Before we use these speculations as the basis for scriptural re-interpretation, let’s take a step back and see exactly how many centuries separate us from the ancients! I grew up in an age when there were no computers, electricity, television or running water. My son knows of no reality where these things aren’t available one hundred per cent of the time. A mere 40 years separate the two of us.  How will he ever understand my childhood without importing into it something of his own reference framework?

Wisdom

The Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. To me that means that anything that doesn’t have as its point of commencement a healthy respect for God cannot be wise.

A good example is Jesus’ sermon on the mount.  “Blessed are the poor” doesn’t sound wise to my friend with the PHD in theoretical physics, but it is wisdom to us Christians. We understand it as wisdom because of the Holy Spirit inside us. We treasure it and base our lives on it.

The Bible also says we can find wisdom where she cries out to us in the marketplace. We don’t have to go to those sterile labs with their chemical jars and supercomputers to find wisdom. Wisdom is there for all of us, crying in the marketplace, inviting us to share in her wares.

What does that tell me? It tells me that I don’t have to be a scientist or a theologian to be wise. God has made His wisdom available to everyone who put their faith in Him. But He also warned that the world would find this wisdom foolish and mock us for it.

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great”

This is why I believe Genesis one literally; It is foolishness to the world that God would create the universe in six days (Although everyone would willingly admit that He could if he wanted to). Genesis seems to say that He wanted to and that he did!

My wife suggested a good test that we could apply to any position of faith that we hold; What happens if we are wrong?

Well, if I am a literalist and I turn out to be wrong, I would look very foolish to the world. No doubt some would mock me for being such a fool to hold this belief for so long.

What would happen if I adopted a different interpretation of the Bible to fall into line with more
“modern” opinion and I turn out to be wrong? Well, I know that the world would not mock me… What God would say about it probably depends on how far I have allowed desire for “modernity” and “sophistication” to take a foothold in my heart, and to what extent I have allowed “friendship with the world” to become the driving force behind my faith rather than “love of God”.

I personally am too timid in my faith to take the chance.  I fear God too much. Not that I think He will ever punish me, but I have lived without him and I know what it is like. I fear that I might stray out from under his wing, back to that old life without Him. Nothing is worth losing God over. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?“.

The narrow and the wide road

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  Jesus said. I believe that when  you come to a fork in the road, a Christian should always choose the narrow path. In this particular case, it is the literal interpretation that seems to be the hardest path to follow.

Not only does it fly in the face of “Modern Scientific Thought”, it also marks you as someone who is somehow foolish or deficient in your logic. It is true that our salvation is based on faith in Christ alone. Yet how can we have faith in Jesus without also believing in the Bible as the word of God?

But if our faith is to count for something, it should count most when it is hardest to hold onto. I am sure that the early Christian martyrs were told that by merely lighting incense to Caesar it doesn’t mean they are worshipping him. Surely it made sense to just do this little thing and so save their lives and their livelihoods. Afterwards they can still go on worshipping Jesus in their hearts and lives, so why the big deal?

They didn’t think it worthwhile to yield to [such a reasonable!] worldly persuasion. I don’t think it is worthwhile to surrender my literal interpretation of Genesis one. I have nothing to gain by it, and quite a lot to lose.

Mystery and Truth

To me, at least, is seems that I would lose a certain sense of the mystery of God if I give up my belief in the six days of creation. It will be replaced by a humdrum sense of thousands of trials and errors,  half-evolved monsters stumbling about in the dark with poorly developed eyesight and limbs flailing around uselessly awaiting a purpose which will only arrive millennia into the future. Screaming with meaningless and desperate voices into the darkness of imperfection and half-created chaos.

Sometimes logic and reason administers truth ruthlessly, to the extent that it will rob reality of its real meaning.  There are dimensions to truth that are opaque to the critical eye of science;  Humour, glad laughter and playfulness, the joy of love and the sadness of loss. These are all truths that colour in an otherwise grey world with bright and golden hues.

I once listened to a debate between an atheist and a theist where the atheist stated that after much research, we can now show that the greatest determinant of happiness is if one’s parents were happy.

What does this mean for the thousands of us who had unhappy parents? Do we reconcile ourselves to a life of low happiness probability? Where is the hope for us and our children?

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted“, Jesus said….beyond reason….comfort for the unhappy.

The Bible is our hope. Science only deals despair, but in the Bible we find hope. It is not a hope I am willing to sell easily.

Unreasonable faith

Many people go to great lengths to show that the Christian faith is a reasonable faith. They mean to show that it is logically consistent, and that no serious defeaters exist. A defeater, as far as I know, is a statement which will render your previously held views inconsistent if you continue to hold them.

For example; If I believe my friend was born in Africa, a defeater would be his mother telling me he was born in America. I can still continue to believe that he was born in Africa, but that would be inconsistent with other facts I know to be true.

Personally, I think this issue is somewhat overblown. As humans, we hold any number of contrary beliefs at the same time. Nor do we, like computers, have some sort of algorithm that ensures all our beliefs are internally consistent as new facts present themselves.

Many of the things we believe and think are not superficial or one-dimensional. They do not render themselves very well into logical presuppositions .

How logical was Abraham’s faith that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars? Sarah was childless and beyond childbearing age. Yet he continued to believe and have faith in God’s word.

We are often called to believe and have faith despite all evidence to the contrary.

Puddleglum, one of the characters in the Narnia Chronicles, puts it well when the Witch almost succeeded in persuading him that Narnia didn’t exist:

“…there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one….We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

Faith like Puddleglum’s might seem like madness in the cold, penetrating light of pure logic. But madness is sometimes the very thing that saves us and preserves our humanity from the deathgrip of reason.

Nikos Kazantzakis recognised this truth in his book Zorba the Greek when he said “A man needs a little madness, or else…he never dares cut the rope and be free“.

And again we encounter this concept illustrated in Plato’s Phaedrus, where  Socrates draws a distinction between the [sane] non-lover and the [mad] lover; ”

“I told a lie when I said” that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad.

It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness,……. And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve……. But he who, having no touch of the Muses’ madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art-he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.”

Plato’s divine madnesses of poetry, prophecy and love… Can reason or logic even come close to touching their shadow, let alone their essence? Sometimes our faith seems like madness to the rest of the world. But it is a divine madness, a godly foolishness without which life itself loses its meaning and crumbles into the lifeless grey ash of empty logical syllogisms.

Was Peter exercising reason when he asked Jesus if he could also walk on the water? Not at all. Was he using his reason when his fear took over and he started sinking? Very likely; His reason told him to look at and fear the power of the created world rather than the creator Himself.

Happily for him, he called out to Jesus as he started sinking and he was saved. May God give that we also have the divine madness of faith to call out to Christ as we sink into this stormy ocean of scientism and post-modernism.