Six-day creation: What's the big deal?

In a recent column in World Magazine, Andree Seu recalled the turning point at Harvard University (I'd link the article but it costs to be a member of World's web-site unless you already get their magazine. I can e-mail you the article directly and legally if you'd like to read it. Just let me know).

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were pitted against two Boston pastors, Charles Chauncey and Jonathan Mayhew in the direction the venerable university would take. The former were concerned about the drift of secularism the university was taking. The latter felt the former were too ecstatic in their theological views and that their should "be freedom of inquiry and judgment in religious matters."

Harvard, the university founded to create missionaries for America, followed the direction of Chauncey and Mayhew and the rest is history. It's known within Christendom as "The Infidelity."

When we read Genesis one and two, why do we buck against what it says? If you ask a child unindoctrinated by evolutionary science to read Genesis chapter 1, you'll either get "six regular days" or "can I have peanut butter and jelly for lunch?" So to quote the movie Grinch, "What is the deal?!?"

Part of it, certainly, is the barrage of evolutionary science each one of us has received from the cradle to the present. We will follow the drift of Chauncey and Mayhew and side with the tides of evolutionary science.

I can hear the hue and cry now about how all science is not atheistic. I know and I agree. But many of the assumptions of science, that the universe is a closed and static system, are just that, assumptions. Has the speed of light been constant from the creation? That is not known (by science), but that is what is assumed. The Bible seems to indicate light before there were light-producers. Has the world gone on in exactly the same fashion since its birth? That is not known (by science), but that is what is assumed. The Bible seems to indicate that the world before chapter three and the world before chapter six of Genesis was vastly different than the world that came out of those two chapters.

There are scientific observations that point to a young earth that coincide quite nicely with Genesis, but those are wholly rejected by the scientific community as religiously-driven instead of "objectively-driven" science. Scientists who have observed evidence for a young earth keep to themselves in the intolerant halls of academia or are relegated to the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, or similar organizations. They are dismissed as quacks.

So when confronted with an apparent contradiction between observation or scientific theory and the Bible, what do we do? Please don't go "Gallileo" on me either, because the church was using some lousy biblical hermeneutics (science of biblical interpretation) sprinkled with the humanistic ideas of the Greek philosophers when they made him recant his teaching. Galileo showed where the Bible actually supported his position.

Could I be making the same mistake? I don't think so. The medieval church erroneously used poetic language sections of the Bible to conclude that the sun went around the earth. Genesis 1 & 2 are historic narrative just like the rest of Genesis. It is the most objective language outside mathematics you could use. There is very little in Genesis that requires deep biblical scholarship to understand.

Back to my question: how do we handle apparent contradictions? Our only options are a) conform the Bible to modern scientific theories, b) reject the historic accuracy of sections of the Bible, c) hold to the Bible and reject modern science, or d) hold to the Bible and trust that the plain truth from the general revelation (nature) will not clash with the plain truth from the special revelation (the Bible).

Many churches have followed the way of Chauncey and Mayhew and bowed to the altar of science and followed pathway b). The churches have become, like Harvard, little different than an episode of Oprah.

Many sincere believers have followed pathway a) having not challenged the assumptions of some of the measurements, observations, or theories nor have they researched the evidence from the general revelation for the truthfulness of the special revelation.

Then you have the crowd that buries their head in the sand following the ignorance-is-bliss mentality of pathway c). That doesn't go a long way in sharing the truth with your neighbor.

Science is not God. It's laws submit to the God who created the universe in an orderly and knowable fashion. It is a dangerous thing to lean away from the plain understanding of what God's word says.

Homosexual marriage has become accepted in our land. It took less than fifty years. The American family (the noun is for the most part absent outside our country) suffers erosion every day pummeled by the elements within our culture, but the real travesty is the erosion being caused by our churches because pastors and men and women refuse to preach, teach and abide by God's delineation of what it means to be a man or a woman, a husband or a wife, a father and a mother.

Six-day creation? No big thing? No, it's a huge thing. We can know nothing with absolute certainty from science before recorded history. All is in the realm of the theoretical. Hear the first temptation of Satan, ironically, shortly after the creation, "Has God indeed said..." and then he had the audacity to counter Eve's hedging with "You'll not surely die...your eyes will be opened." Civilization can abide little more decay.

As such, I will stand upon a firm, unshakable, and unchanging foundation. I will stand upon the word of God. The cost and danger of doing otherwise is too high.

Yes, God did indeed say.