September, in the traditional church calendar, is framed as a month to focus on ‘caring for creation’. As a result, attention is given to things like sustainability, caring for the environment, recycling, and climate change. Well and good. Acknowledgement is usually given to God as Creator, but ‘Creation’ is the focus. Creator God deserves full honour, of course, for this wondrous creation that we inhabit. The more you learn about it, the more you appreciate it, the more you wonder; and you wonder, how did he do it?! It’s quite beyond our knowing or comprehension.
Yet, non-Christians know. Charles Darwin unlocked the secret in the 1850s and defined the creative mechanism as ‘evolution’. The universe evolved and so in turn did galaxies, the solar system, our planet, and life. Soup created amoeba, that evolved into fish and land animals and eventually us.
We the church have embraced Darwin’s theory, although, of course, God must be behind it. He must have kicked it off.
Secularists wouldn’t accede to that, but invoked something called the Big Bang (formalised by Georges Lemaître in 1927; coined by Fred Hoyle and developed by George Gamow through the middle of the 20th century).
So, there it is. God created Creation via the Big Bang (four and a half billion years ago) and slowly fashioned Creation – including us – for us to enjoy (and care for) today.
Except, the Bible tells it very differently. There’s nothing of evolution or Big Bang or billions of years recognisable in Genesis. So Christians must decide what they’re going to believe. To embrace Darwinism, I must discount Genesis. And the recorded references to Genesis by the apostles Paul and Peter. Most Christians don’t like to go that far, so Genesis is re-framed as allegory (which it demonstrably isn’t) or an uninformed account written by someone primitive who hadn’t heard of the Big Bang (which it clearly isn’t).
If God did it at all (and popular opinion says he didn’t), did he use evolution or not? Second decision. Because the claimed evolutionary mechanism and biblical creation are so unaligned and incompatible that it’s disingenuous to combine the two. People do, of course. Christians do. The church has embraced Darwinism and Lemaître-ism. To its cost. Its embrace of evolution is arguably the biggest cause of the decline of western Christianity, especially among young people, who are deluged with media, academic and text book claims of apes becoming us. If evolution is how it happened, then who is God and who needs him? We are here by random chance and blind accidental mutations and … (words from Ecclesiastes come to mind).
If you’re of the God-triggered evolutionary persuasion, you’ll have tired of this by now, but if you’re a sincere seeker of foundational truth, linger a bit. Look into it. There are numerous evidences (scientific and theological) to expose evolution and the Big Bang, and to support the Genesis account (see here for compelling material). And, although creationists are considered whacko by some – flat-earthers, if you will – that is hardly a godly (or intellectual) position to take up without giving the evidences sober scrutiny. Don’t scorn. Don’t be hastily dismissive. It will revolutionise your faith and your Christian journey to see Creation as miraculously propelled into being a few thousand years ago. If God did it the way Genesis says he did then everything changes for the Christian. Isn’t that worth the effort of honest enquiry?
To whet your appetite, consider: dinosaurs are said to have been wiped out by a meteor impact sixty-five million years ago. So any dinosaur fossil dug up must pre-date that. Yet, to the shock and chagrin of evolutionary scientists, dinosaur fossils are regularly dug up containing soft tissue – still-elastic blood vessels, blood and bone cells, proteins such as collagen and elastin, and even DNA in its double helix formation, uncorrupted. Real science shows that this could not be, after sixty-five million years, since soft tissue, especially DNA, degrades rapidly. The only credible conclusion is that such dinosaurs didn’t die that long ago. Yet, due to the rigid long-age dogma of modern ‘science’, improbable, convoluted (and unscientific) explanations as to how such tissue might have survived are guessed at.
Pluto was believed to be 4.5 billion years old, along with the rest of the solar system, and devoid of all internal energy after so long, and being so small and so far from the sun (forty times earth’s distance). But the New Horizons spacecraft recently sent back evidence of ongoing volcanic activity. An impossibility after such long age. (See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaeeZFKyXuo.) Pluto is young.
In these and most other contexts, scientists are committed to the evolutionary narrative, despite evidence to the contrary. And they have to be, if they want their work published and not laughed at. Even so, although the grand scheme of deep time is seldom questioned, dates and theories are constantly revised or changed.
Theologically, death emerged as a consequence of sin. Ever since that moment (and if sin only emerged gradually, as humans evolved, when did the resulting death start?), death has dogged humanity, and is unavoidable, along with taxes. Jesus came to rescue us from that death, and make eternal life possible. What would be the point of his coming, his own death, and his resurrection, if evolution over billions of years were true? It doesn’t fit, theologically. Death is a fundamental part of evolution, “survival of the fittest”, Nature being “red in tooth and claw” – it was extant from the beginning, long before sin could have emerged. So, not a consequence of sin and not something to be saved from. Jesus’s mission was redundant.
And, finally, practically, when you view Creation through the lens of evolution, you only see death, decay and pointlessness; but through the lens of Scripture you see promise and hope and life – abundant life. As well as answers as to why the world is in such turmoil.
‘Caring for Creation’ deserves our attention – no one could deny that. But to focus on Creation in that way while denying the clear biblical reportage– affirmed by Jesus, by the way, and who was actually present at creation (John 1:1-3, 10) – is misguided, and unfortunate for the health of the church.
Ken F
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