Creation - sorting out the interpretations

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - SCIENCE

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Sorting it all out

"If only I could be free from the shackles of my intellectual smallness, then I could understand the universe in which I live" Albert Einstein

With so many different interpretations, how does one choose? This is up to the individual. I believe Scenario 4 is a good starting point and makes a lot of sense. Scenarios 5 and 6 have a lot to commend them, and, because I believe in the inspired nature of Scripture, I have no trouble adding in Scenario 7. I would have the greatest problem with Scenario 1. My belief in the legitimate place of modern science, my respect for its methods and the integrity of the great majority of scientists, together with the vast amount of evidence accumulated over 200 years from astronomy, physics, geology and paleontology, precludes me from accepting a recent creation scenario. In Romans 1:20, God declares very clearly that we are accountable to him for the truths we learn about him from the created world. Would he hold us thus accountable and then send us distorted messages from this source?

However, having said this, it is necessary to maintain a good deal of humility, both in our efforts to understand the Book of God's Word and the Book of Nature. Many, Christians and scientists, have been wrong in the past. Christians have often repeated Augustine's mistake, putting too much confidence in their own deductions from Scripture. The church would like to forget that it ever denied the roundness of the earth, the races of people on the other side of the planet, the moons around Jupiter, the existence of comets, the reality of fossils - all because it claimed to have a revelation that told them otherwise. Whenever Christians have tied the Bible to any particular scientific theory they have been in trouble.

However, Galileo was also wrong when he insisted that the action of the tides was the clinching argument for the movement of the earth - mistaken in his science and premature in his dogmatism. Science has been correcting its views ever since it began. That is what it is all about. Some of the greatest scientists have been the most humble of people. Newton declared when an old man:

I am as a child on the seashore picking up a pebble here and a shell there, but the great ocean of truth still lies before me.

Einstein said shortly before he died:

I feel like a man chained. I get a glimpse of reality and then it flees. If only I could be free from the shackles of my intellectual smallness, then I could understand the universe in which I live.

There is an ancient prayer:

From cowardice that shrinks from new truth,
From laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth -
O God of truth, deliver us!

The remarkable nature of Genesis 1 is ample testimony to its divine origin. If, when I get to heaven, I discover that my interpretation of it was misled at some points I will not be put out. My faith in Christ as my personal Saviour and Lord is not dependent on my ability to rightly interpret one chapter of the Bible!