Monday, September 3, 2012

Christians Caviler on Creation?

According to Mary Fairchild, the purpose of the Creation story “is for moral and spiritual revelation.”  She points to three main revelations of the narrative: 1) God created you He is pleased by you and you are of great worth to Him; 2) God first references the Trinity; 3) We should not feel guilty when we take time each week to rest.
Seriously, those are, claims Mary Fairchild, the main reasons God saw fit to include the account of Creation in His Word.  It was certainly not, according to Fairchild, to tell us how long it took or how it happened, exactly.
Mary Fairchild is the Christianity Guide on About.com.  She seems legitimate and all the other posts on the site also seem on the mark.  So, I ask myself, why the fade to gray when it comes to the Creation account in Genesis Chapter 1?  If this were an isolated case, I would not be too concerned.  Unfortunately this caviler attitude toward the Creation is the norm with those calling themselves Christian.
A lot, and I mean most, Christians I have talked to don’t have the stomach to take on evolution.  They don’t really understand the claim but for some reason they buy the premise and so, they are forced to water down the Creation account.  I suspect that Fairchild’s summary of the Creation story is at least an attempt to avoid butting heads with evolution.
I am wondering, how do you process Genesis 1: 1 – 2: 3?  Do you dismiss the secular evolutionary tail altogether and accept a young earth?  Do you contort your beliefs in an attempt to reconcile evolution with the Biblical account of Creation?  Do you release Genesis 1 from any historical responsibility as does Mary Fairchild?  Or, do you have some other take on the subject?
This is important because many of the lost do take Genesis 1 very seriously from a historical perspective.  What is more, they become very confused when Christians don’t but do take other sections of the Bible very seriously historically.  They look at Genesis 1 at face value and say to themselves:  “Sounds like a historical account to me.  It does not jive at all with what I have been told about evolution and the history of the universe.  So, it can’t be a historical account.  So, anything else in the Bible that sounds like a historical account is not necessarily so.  Jesus could just be a literary figure used to show how much God cares for us and not an actual person, who lived and breathed, suffered and died for sin.  He just represents the lengths God is willing to go for us.”  This is a logical progression and reasonable given the number of Christians who will not defend Genesis 1 as historical.
I believe that God created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is.  I believe He did it in seven literal days.  I believe He did it less than 10,000 years ago.  I believe He accomplished it by super natural power.  I know that nobody has shown me any discovery of man that contradicts these beliefs and stand, as Elijah did before the prophets of Baal, to mock their efforts to do so.  The efforts of science thus far have only worked to bolster my beliefs in the historical accuracy of Genesis 1.  I look forward to the next scientific discovery with respect to origins and how it will further confirm the account.