Genesis

To my 3 faithful blog followers out there, my apologies for taking the past month off. I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but I’ll try and be less streaky with my blogging…

I’ve always had an interest in the BIG questions in life, that are, for the most part, not answerable. What happens to the guy in the African jungle who never hears about Jesus? Do aliens exist somewhere in the universe? How can Christianity be the only “right” religion? How can eternity just keep going and going and going? Evolution, and specifically how it pertains to Genesis, is a prime example of a question that intrigues me.

Side note:
What I’ve come to realize about big questions like these is that analyzing them is fine and healthy, but in the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter. In fact, questions with seemingly no right answer can kind of be a trap, because there is a fine line between examining, and becoming consumed. Once consumed with a question that has no firm solution, doubt can creep in, and we lose sight of the big picture. For myself, I rely on my faith that these questions have answers, even if they aren’t tangible. I think it’s a good idea to have an opinion on subjects like this, but don’t make the mistake of complicating Christianity. Rather, my advice is to examine deep questions like I’m about to, in order to draw closer to God.

All that to say, here’s my take on Genesis-

The theory of evolution has changed a lot, and will most likely continue to change. Nowadays, evolution and atheism often go hand in hand, and the thought of mixing Darwin’s theory with Christianity is a bit taboo. But to me, evolution is not incompatible with scripture at all.

Genesis says God formed a man with the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. So if God used the process of evolution to create the human body out of the stuff of the earth, just as Genesis says, and then at some point God came to a small group of hominids, and breathed His spirit into them, and they became human, that would still line up with scripture. It would also line up with archeology, which shows that anatomically modern humans emerged thousands of years before behaviorally modern humans. That is, we had human bodies before we were acting like humans. But then suddenly just out of nowhere we started doing things like language, art, religion, and the things that make us human. Archeologists call this "the great leap forward" but none of them can explain why it happened so suddenly. Well maybe that was the point which God breathed His spirit into us and we started acting like humans. And then maybe that’s when we became selfish and we rejected Him, and so now we experience death. All of that would line up with scripture.

But however God made us, it doesn't matter. Here's why:

Genesis is not concerned with how God made us. That's not the question it's trying to answer. We have to read the Bible for what it's saying and not for what it's not saying. There's no explanation of DNA or anything like that, and never does it explain God’s specific method of choice for creation. Instead the Bible uses very poetic language, for who created us, and why. I think there are details missing not so that humans can attempt at filling in the blanks, but so that we don’t get caught up in the details, at the expense of missing the point. The point is that even if we know how, we still have to answer who and why, because they are most important.

My issue with those who insist the Bible is incompatible with evolution is not that they are reading it too literally; it's that they are not reading the Bible literally enough. They're trying to make it say what it's not trying to say. Genesis is not trying to be a textbook on how we got here, it's trying to answer the far more important question of who created us, and why. Is evolution true? Did God physically breathe life into humanity? Did Adam and Eve literally exist? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I think I understand the point Genesis is making. It's not about how we got here, it’s about why, and furthermore, what we do now that we’re here.