In The Beginning

So just a bit more on this Genesis/Creation Story sermon series that my pastor has been going through. I just want to share what, for me, is a new perspective on the first chapter of a book that’s very important to me.

He’s preaching what I believe is called the Framework interpretation. It doesn’t put any emphasis on the length of actual elapsed time that occured during the “Creation Week”, so it avoids that bit of controversy. However I can say with certainty that both our lead pastor and at least one associate pastor are both old Earth creationists (Earth is billions of years old, or thereabouts).

The gist of it is this. The first three days are laid out as the period of time that the earth was formed. In the beginning everything was swirling chaos and gradually God brought order. The second set of days the earth was filled. God created some life (Gen. 1:21) and other life formed out of the ground (Gen. 1:24). I find that partiucularly interesting.

The seventh day, found in Genesis 2, is all about the day of rest. He preached on that this past Sunday. It was to be a time of celebration, where all preparations were to be made the previous day so that time could be spent glorying in God and in his creation. One thing Hunter (our pastor) pointed out was that day seven is never said to have ended. There was no “and there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day”. So in a sense we are still in that cosmological seventh day.

The other thing he stressed about this part of Genesis was that Moses wrote it for the Hebrew slaves that were coming out of Egypt. This, he said, is why the sun and the moon and everything else are painted as being of secondary importance. They were created only for marking the passage of time. After hundred of years of exposure to Egyptian religion this was important for them to “get” since some of them might have come to see the celestial bodies as gods. That’s also what makes the concept of a day of rest vital, since as slaves they weren’t likely given such a luxury.

This is one of those areas of the Bible where I suppose non-believers could accuse us of “cherry picking” our beliefs. I’ve seen both believers and non-believers come down hard on those of us that don’t take it literally for that very reason. I think the approach of looking at it in the light of why it might have been written as it was and what the ultimate purpose of it was is more important than whether or not everything contained in the first chapter happened in 144 hours. If you had to nail me down to one spot I’d say that no, it didn’t, but my real answer is in the form of a question.

Does it really matter?

  • sidfaiwu

    All believers cherry pick their beliefs to conform to current social mores – whether they admit it or not. Heck, the whole reason there are different denominations is because some pick different parts of their beliefs to emphasize (or take as literal vs metaphorical). Well that and, probably, different interpretations of the same bits. And history. Okay, so I oversimplified already! Sheesh. But what believer follows Leviticus 20:13? Almost none. Why? As it's been explained to me it's because of another Biblical passage which is cherry picked over the one in Leviticus.

    Does it really matter? It matters when the literalists insist on having their mythology treated as science and taught in public schools. Yeah it matters.

  • jesusgeek

    Got worms on my shoes.

  • http://twitter.com/spiritualtramp Scott Roche

    Sorry to hear that?

  • http://twitter.com/spiritualtramp Scott Roche

    I think that a view of the Bible as a building up of revelation often gets confused for cherry picking. And I'm not sayin cherry picking doesn't happen, it does, but that's not always what it is.

    And I'm really thinking that it's just a really vocal minority that wants that, but yeah I have a problem with that too. As I think you know.

  • JadedDAVe

    Does not matter. I believe it happened and we are here and now that I am here. What am I gonna do with my life and how can I make your life better?

  • http://twitter.com/spiritualtramp Scott Roche

    deleted

  • decipheryourself

    I think that line of thinking is what opens a person up to the realization: “What ELSE in the Bible is a metaphor?” Which is an important step towards accepting it as myth and growing beyond Christianity as a hard and fast set of specifics for one's life.

    From another point of view, some fearful Christian leaders wanting to maintain their flock might call this a dangerous first step down a path of heresy. Because that kind of understanding gradually leads people away from a church that was founded on such specifics.

  • spiritualtramp

    Oh there's plenty of metaphor in the Bible. As big and diverse of a body of work as it is and as great a love as the people involved in writing it had for language that's hardly avoidable. It also hardly requires viewing all of the rest of the Bible as myth. Plenty of facts/truth in there as well.

    As far as the other point of view is concerned this has been debated in Christian circles for at least 1700 years, well before evolution, so any pastor/leader or anyone else for that matter who presents embracing this belief as a first step away from Christianity is ignorant of the facts. The church wasn't founded on the doctrine of a literal six day creation.

  • spiritualtramp

    Those are good questions and ones our fellow believers would do well to focus on.

  • sidfaiwu

    Those are good questions for anyone to ask themselves.

  • sidfaiwu

    How can we delete things when we've never leted them in the first place. Why don't we ever relete things?

  • decipheryourself

    Is the Bible truly that diverse? It all sort of circles around a few key subjects, and despite the many quills involved, it is theoretically inspired by one source… it's current shape was also determined by elders seeking a unified source for the future of their faith… so I think it's safe to go ahead and say that yes, it's meant to be treated as an overall work.

    You doubt one part, where does the doubt end?

    As for the literal creation not being a doctrine… the church wasn't founded on Noah's ark or a Garden of Eden and the like either. But other than the parable, pretty much all of the Bible is spoken of as factual.

    When a Christian says “that's how it reads, but that's not what God meant”… then isn't he in the infant stages of forming a (four letter word alert!) cult? The Bible offers parables when it aims at metaphor.

    This line of debate sounds like a growing kid saying “Of course Santa can't make it to every house in one night. That's impossible! No… he uses FedEx.”

  • jasonfaylen

    I'm a young earth creationist- perhaps because I have not a scientific bone in my body, or perhaps because I'm too lazy to find reason not to be. Nevertheless, believing as I do that God inspired the whole Bible through various human “authors”, I do believe that the reason WHY the Creation account was included is likely just as important to consider as whether or not it is literal or metaphor. Furthermore, I think that both of those aspects apply all throughout the Bible- what is literal/metaphor, and what's the point?
    I do believe in micro-evolution as an undeniable fact. Sadly, as a result of that, I see a future possibility that the children of some believers might actually be born with their head up their ass…

  • jasonfaylen

    I'm a young earth creationist- perhaps because I have not a scientific bone in my body, or perhaps because I'm too lazy to find reason not to be. Nevertheless, believing as I do that God inspired the whole Bible through various human “authors”, I do believe that the reason WHY the Creation account was included is likely just as important to consider as whether or not it is literal or metaphor. Furthermore, I think that both of those aspects apply all throughout the Bible- what is literal/metaphor, and what's the point?
    I do believe in micro-evolution as an undeniable fact. Sadly, as a result of that, I see a future possibility that the children of some believers might actually be born with their head up their ass…

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