July 9, 2006

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The Creation Debate

Genesis 1:1-5, 31; 2:1-4

            In a 2005 poll conducted by Newsweek and Beliefnet, people were asked the question: “Do you believe that God created the universe?”  80 percent of those responding said the universe was created by God.  It is interesting that after all the money and effort our universities and educational systems have spent on instructing people about evolution that 80 percent of people still believe that there is a God, and that he created the world.  Only ten percent taking the poll said the universe was not created by God.  One percent said they did not believe in God.  Nine percent said they didn’t know.  That’s all very interesting, but in the end, it doesn’t matter what people believe.  If God actually created the world, it does not matter if 100% of the human race does not believe it, it is still true.  God does not live and work by the results of polls.  For instance, you are perfectly free to believe that the pulpit I am standing behind simply evolved over a period of time.  Now, we all know that is not true since it has a definite design, but you can believe that if you want.  Someone with a name created this piece of furniture and it definitely exists.  It would not matter if everyone in this room, or everyone in the world for that matter, did not believe this pulpit had a creator who existed, it would not alter the reality of the pulpit or its creator in any way.  Something deep inside all of us knows this, and that is why I am not bothered by the theory of evolution, and why 80 percent of people in this country still believe that the world was created by God. 

            Some sincere Christians believe that God created the world by using the evolutionary process.  They don’t believe the world is the result of random chance or an accident, they believe it was created, but that God used evolution in creating the world.  Some Christians believe that God created the world in seven literal 24 hour days, others believe it was more like seven million years.  It could have been seven seconds for all I know, but the fact is that however he did it, using whatever method and time period he chose, God created the world.  This is ground zero for our faith.  Everything we believe hinges on and grows out of this fact.  Everything we understand about the world and life stems from whether we believe that God started all this, or that it is all an accident.  The whole scheme of redemption — God coming to the world in the person of Jesus to live before us and die for us — is ridiculous unless we are the creation of a God who tremendously loves us and will do anything to bring us back to himself. 

            This basic understanding that God created the world helps us in many ways.  The first way is: It saves us from living in ignorance.  If you understand that there is a God who created all that exists, you understand that there is a design and purpose to life, and your life in particular.  You have the understanding that there is Someone who is holding all this together and is watching out for us.  God, in his love, has made the world a livable, good place and supplied us with everything we need and much more.  The Psalmist expressed this poetically when he wrote:

How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number —
living things both large and small. . .
These all look to you
to give them their food at the proper time” (Psalm 104:24-27).   

            One of the novels from C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series is titled The Magician’s Nephew.  In symbolic language it tells the story of the creation of the world by telling how Aslan — the lion who represents Jesus — created Narnia by singing it into existence.  However, there is one character who refuses to hear the song.  Listen as Lewis tells the story: “When the great moment came and the beast spoke, he [Uncle Andrew] missed the whole point for a rather interesting reason.  When the lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song.  And he had disliked the song very much.  It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.  Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing — only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.  ‘Of course it can’t really have been singing,’ he thought, ‘I must have imagined it.  I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order.  Who ever heard of a lion singing?’  And the longer and more beautifully the lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.  Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.  Uncle Andrew did.  He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song.  Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to.  And when at last the lion spoke and said, ‘Narnia awake,’ he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl.” 

            I recently read of a similar character in our own day.  Comedian Julia Sweeney, from Saturday Night Live, was interviewed by David Ian Miller about her book which was released last year entitled Letting Go of God, in which she detailed her loss of faith in God and her journey into atheism (Read the entire interview at: www.sfgate.com/

cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/08/15/findrelig.DTL).  Miller asked her: “How do you relate to people who strongly believe in God?”  Sweeney answered, “If somebody has credible evidence that there is a supernatural power that knows what I think and cares about me and offers me life after death, I would look at that evidence with an open mind.  On the other hand, I can’t imagine there would be that evidence.”  Miller probed further with a question pertaining to Sweeney’s daughter: “What do you tell her about God?”  Sweeney responded, “I said God is this idea of a big man who lives up in the clouds and he created everything.  And she goes, ‘Well, I believe that!’  And I go, ‘Well, yeah, because it sounds like a cartoon character.  But the truth isn’t that, and I’ll tell you the truth.’  And then I actually teach her about evolution, and she asks me about it all the time as a bedtime story.  She’ll say, ‘Tell me about how the dinosaurs weren’t here when people were here.’  And then I’ll go over it again.  I don’t know how much of it she really gets, but she likes the story.  And then, she’s kind of over it now, but she would go, ‘I believe in God at school, but when I come home I don’t.’” She responded to her daughter saying, “First of all, you can believe whatever you want, but I'm going to tell you what I think, and then you can figure it out for yourself.”  Miller concluded the interview by quizzing her on her daughter’s future religious choices: “And whatever she decides will be okay with you?”  “Yeah,” Sweeney replied. “I can’t say I would be thrilled if she joined a church.  I mean, unless she was so messed up that the church actually helped her out.”  And she said it with a good laugh.  Like Uncle Edward and his intentional ignorance, she now only hears a growl even though God is singing a song.  Again, it does not matter if Julia Sweeney and everyone else in the world refuses to believe in a living, loving God, the truth and reality that God not only exists, but made us and the world we live in, remains.  To think otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the world. 

            The second way understanding that God created the world helps us is: It helps us to understand that we are accountable.  Ah, here is the crucial point with many people who want to wish away God’s existence.  The problem with believing there is a God is that it means there is someone who is above you.  It means that there is a God, and you can no longer be your own God.  You are answerable to someone.  You are accountable for the way you live and the things you do.  If there is a God, then the moral laws he has laid down apply to you.  Right and wrong are no longer determined by what you think is okay.  If there is a God, then your life does not belong to you.  If there is a God, then the world is bigger than you, and you have to discover God’s purpose for your life and live out that purpose. 

            Last year, the London Zoo posted a sign in front of their newest exhibit, reading, “Warning: Humans in Their Natural Environment.”  The so-called “exhibit” featured eight Homo sapiens, clad in bathing suits and pinned-on fig leaves, in a sealed enclosure adjacent to another sealed enclosure of various primates. The human “captives” were chosen from an online contest, and spent their time sunning on a rock ledge, playing board games, and waving to spectators.  A signboard informed visitors about the species’ diet, habitat, worldwide distribution, and threats to their existence.  The goal of the exhibit, according to Zoo spokesperson Polly Wills, was to downplay the uniqueness of human beings as a species. “Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals,” said Wills, “teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate.”  Tom Mahoney, one of the participants in the exhibit, agreed. “A lot of people think that humans are above other animals,” he said. “When they see humans as animals, here, it kind of reminds them that we’re not that special.” 

            Many people are happy to think that they are not that special — that they are only another animal.  It gives them a good excuse to behave like an animal.  They want no moral boundaries, and no one to whom they are accountable.  Evolution is simply the attempt to explain the existence of the world given the presupposition that there is no God.  It is a very convenient theory for those who do not want to answer to God.  It is the best explanation available given the assumption that the world exists because of some great cosmic collision.  Many people actually prefer the thought that there is no God to whom we are accountable.  They do not want anyone restricting their freedom, even if it is God.  Atheism is not the result of an intellectual problem, it is the result of a moral problem. 

            The spirit of our age is reflected in the familiar poem by William Ernest Henley called “Invictus”:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the year
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.  

            For these people, the most disturbing scripture of all is Hebrews 4:13, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” 

            The third way understanding that God created the world helps us is: It helps us to understand that God is in charge of history.  This is God’s world.  There is a plan.  We are not going around in circles.  There is not only a design, there is a direction.  The Bible declares, “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6).  Against the overweening pride of mankind come the questions which God posed to Job:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone —
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?” (Job 38:4-11).   

            The Bible says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).  The evidence for the design, and therefore a Designer, of creation is overwhelming. 

            Marvin Olasky, in an article in World magazine (4-14-01) entitled “Things Unseen,” wrote: “A chance of 1 out of 1,000,000,000,000,000 (quadrillion, 10 with 14 zeros) is considered a virtual impossibility.  But when DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick calculated the possibility of a simple protein sequence of 200 amino-acids (much simpler than a DNA molecule) originating spontaneously, his figure was 10 with 26 zeroes after it.  Those who remember one fad of the past will appreciate British scientist Fred Hoyle’s view of the odds against evolved life.  ‘Anyone acquainted with the Rubi’s cube,’ he wrote, ‘will concede the impossibility of a solution being obtained by a blind person moving the cube faces at random.’  Mr. Hoyle’s best-known analogy, however, has a tornado in a junkyard taking all the pieces of metal lying there and turning them into a Boeing 747.  It might be possible for two pieces to be naturally welded together, and then two pieces more in a later whirlwind, but production of even a simple organic molecule would require all of the pieces to come together at one time.”  An intelligent designer would be necessary. 

            This Intelligent Designer is none other than the God who created the universe in love.  You are not an accident, you are the result of a God who has loved you into existence.  Jesus spoke about you when he said, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24). 

Rodney J. Buchanan

July 9, 2006

Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon , OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org