August 26, 2009

by Jed

So, I was just on a website that I completely disagreed with about their stance on "you can be a Christian and believe the earth is millions of years old"...

Now, I realize that plenty of people reading this will be thinking... "and?", but it really got me thinking for those who are Christians about our view of the Bible. I think it's really easy to find a theory or modern thought... evolution, sexuality... and maneuver the text to suit your convictions...or lack thereof. That way everyone can feel good about what they believe even if they're conflicting schools of thought. At any rate, enjoy this or get mad at this, but this is what I wrote this website (not that they'll read it or care) in response to what I thought purely on the exegesis of certain texts, was not so scholarly:

________

I'm a missionary working with English speaking foreigners in Peru and one of our focuses as we deal with all kinds of spiritualism, pantheism, etc. is the reliability of the Word of God and its timeless relevance in every issue. Without getting into scientific discussion on either side, as I've read good ones for both, I would turn my attention to the Bible creation account. I've heard the debate back and forth on the 6 days of creation... are they literal? If a day is as a thousand years to God, could it really be a cryptic way of giving us liberty to insert any billions of years based on that argument?

Two things strike me with this: First is that this text was specifically written to and for mankind, so to assert that God was using some other galaxy's form of a day is... well, kind of ridiculous from a scholarly point of view. I think that it's interesting that repetition was used based on "and morning and evening were the second day...", etc., almost like, "hey, just in case you're having trouble deciphering what a day is, it's morning and evening."

The second thing that strikes me in a liberal interpretation of any text, is that although I agree with you that no one's going to hell for a belief either in old earth or new earth, is that your assertion that it doesn't really matter leaves us with a big problem: If we can question what God really meant from the beginning, (and any science aside, you'd have to agree that a straight forward reading of the Bible doesn't give you an old earth), then why not question the critical things... like salvation for instance. Was the Bible really historically correct when it recorded how Jesus died and that he died for our sins? I'm playing devil's advocate here, but you see my point. I'm just saying that if I weren't a Christian and you were trying to convince me of the complete inerrancy of the Bible and it's relevance today while saying "well, this text doesn't really mean...", I might not be listening to the end of the story--i.e. the awesome story of salvation.