In the beginning...

Since I'll be addressing each of my doubts and questions along my faith journey, I figured I might as well start at the beginning: the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2.

I'm a student at a Christian college, so this video just got me thinking about what it is I really believe. Some guy apparently interviewed some students at a Christian college, trying to find out what they believed about evolution. It's a really cool thing everyone is in a different part of their faith journey, and that everyone has a different perspective on the topic. The idea that what you believe partly depends on where you came from and how you were raised really caught my attention as I watched this video. I'll attempt to answer most of the questions from this video throughout this post.

 

Do I believe in Evolution? 

I didn't used to believe in it growing up. Mostly because, as this video hints, I was raised to believe that it was totally ridiculous. People come from monkeys? Yeah right. However, as I actually learned about it in my Bio class my sophomore year of high school, I found that the theory of evolution makes a lot of sense.

The central idea of the theory of evolution is that all life on earth came from a common ancestor millions of years ago. It's sort of like a family tree; each generation changes and further diversifies. New species are formed because they adapt to their surroundings, and the species that don't adapt die off. This process just happened over and over again until things got to the way they are today. No, humans did not come from monkeys; rather, humans and monkeys both branched off from a common ancestor. Fossil evidence shows stages in bone structure as species adapted. It explains why whales have little feet bones when they don't have any need for them. It explains why those finches that Darwin found all have different beaks.

I like the idea of the theory of evolution, but it's important to keep in mind that it is just that: a theory.

Is the creation story metaphorical or factual?

For years, this is how creation always made sense in my head:

The Bible says the earth was created in seven days. The Bible also says, "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day" (2 Peter 3:8). I figured this is just an expression, that it doesn't necessarily mean literally a thousand years. I applied that to creation, thinking that rather than the Earth being created in seven literal days, it was seven periods of time. During the first period of time, which could have been over the course of millions of years, God created the heavens and the Earth and the light and the darkness. Then, in the second period of time, he created the atmosphere, separating the waters 'n' junk. In the third period of time, He separated land and sea, and then so on and so forth all the way to day seven. During all that time, he totally could have used a Big Bang to create the earth. He totally could have used evolution to create animals in the fifth and sixth periods of time. See, it just makes sense. 

If there's one thing I've learned for sure in all my years of church, Sunday school, youth groups, and Bible camps, it's that each time you read the Bible, you pick up something new that you didn't see the first two or fifty times you read that passage.

My theory fell apart one day in Bible class because I picked up on this recurring little phrase: "And there was evening and there was morning." Dang it. If there was an evening and a morning every day of creation, then they couldn't be periods of time; they would have to be actual, literal days. So which would I believe? Scientific evidence of the earth being created over millions of years, or the Bible?

Being raised in the faith, I have the tendency to take the Bible as absolute truth. I decided, alright, the the earth had to have been created in seven literal days and God just used his power to do millions of years of work, just fast forwarding the process so it all fit in seven days. That, to me, also makes sense. He still could have used the Big Bang and Evolution. It all still fits! I was set. 

It's not that easy. 

It seems like just when I've got it all figured out, something always sends me straight back to where I started. I forgot about a detail in Genesis 2:7. "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Dang it. How can evolution be true if God created Adam from dust, not from some other species? Unlike my conclusion about creation, I couldn't make science make sense with this one. Honestly, I'm still not sure what to believe. 

I do, however, still have that tendency to side with the Bible. My reasoning for it this time is a little different. I enjoy the poetic idea of man being created from dust. In the next chapter of the Bible, God says "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return" (Genesis 3:19). Something about that is beautiful to me, that when we die we just decay and turn back into dust, right back to where we came from. I haven't reached a verdict on any of this stuff, but that just sounds appealing. 

Also, I wonder if maybe all the evidence of evolution doesn't point to a common ancestor, but rather a common creator. Being an artist, I've found that a lot of my artwork looks similar to my other artwork in the soft way my brush strokes flow and in the gentle form of my shapes. It's easy to tell apart a Picasso and a Monet because both artists have their own individual style. If we were created in God's image, maybe it's possible that God has his own artistic style as well; that is why so many beings have so much in common.

Why does it matter? 

If you think about it, creation doesn't really have anything to do with the essential parts of faith. Jesus died for my sins, and that's what is important. We will never, at least not in this lifetime, really know for sure all the details of how our universe came to be, but that doesn't effect our belief in Christianity as a whole.

Or does it? The whole reason I'm writing about this is because it has taken a shot at my faith. Where it gets me is the uncertainty of whether or not it is true. There are areas where Science does contradict the Bible. When we start doubting if something in the Bible is true, we begin to wonder what else in the Bible could potentially be false, and that is my main struggle. For me, the entire bible has to either be completely true or I won't know what else out of it I can't take as truth. If the earth wasn't created the way the Bible says it was, then how do I know Jesus really died the way the Bible says he did?

Looking back at that moment around the campfire that I described to you in my first post, I can say that I believe in God because I have felt him tugging at me in some of the most precious moments of my life. Therefore, I think that because God exists, everything the Bible says simply must be true. Right?