{"id":489,"date":"2010-06-28T16:54:35","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T22:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raincitypastor.wordpress.com\/?p=489"},"modified":"2010-06-28T16:54:35","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T22:54:35","slug":"the-symphony-of-creation-or-debates-about-the-manuscript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/richarddahlstrom\/2010\/06\/28\/the-symphony-of-creation-or-debates-about-the-manuscript\/","title":{"rendered":"The Symphony of Creation, or debates about the manuscript?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve been approached for two weeks in the past three after speaking in my church, with specific questions from people about the age of the earth. \u00a0They want to pin me down on whether the earth is 6000 years old, or six billion years old, and the ones doing the pinning are convinced they know the right answer. \u00a0I\u2019ve studied young and old earth theories, and the gap theory, and have come to the conclusion that God wasn\u2019t trying to tell us how old the earth is in Genesis one and two. \u00a0Because God isn\u2019t telling, I\u2019m not either.<\/p>\n

I have \u201cyoung earth\u201d friends. \u00a0I also have friends who believe the earth is billions of years old, and love Christ deeply. \u00a0 \u00a0The debate goes on and on, endlessly. \u00a0There are the \u201cAnswers in Genesis\u201d <\/a>people, lobbing grenades at the \u201cAnswers in Creation\u201d<\/a> people, who pull the pins<\/a> and lob them right back. \u00a0It\u2019s embarrassing and wrong on at least three counts<\/p>\n

1. It utterly bypasses sound principles of Bible study and interpretation<\/strong>. \u00a0The student of the Bible always has, as a primary goal, to discover the best answer to this question: \u201cHow would these words have been received by the original readers?\u201d \u00a0In other words, when studying Romans, I\u2019d do well to try and read it through the lens of a 1st century Christian living in Rome because that\u2019s who the letter was written to. \u00a0In the same way, I need to try and read Genesis through the lens of its original audience. \u00a0While there\u2019s great debate about who that audience was, one thing is for certain: those first readers weren\u2019t having any debates about the age of the earth. \u00a0It simply wasn\u2019t on their radar, and for this reason, I\u2019m unclear that it should be on ours.<\/p>\n

2. It turns a non-essential into an essential.<\/strong> With Job<\/a>, I\u2019ll ask, \u201cwhere were you when God laid the foundation of the earth?\u201d \u00a0You weren\u2019t there taking notes to share with all of us in powerpoint\/seminar form? \u00a0Neither was I. \u00a0When people are told that they can\u2019t be genuine Christians because they don\u2019t believe that the earth is young, they\u2019re being told that they can\u2019t believe in Christ\u2019s death for them, receive Christ, follow Him, and seek His kingdom, unless they\u2019re willing to subscribe to a certain view of science or a certain interpretation of Genesis that goes far, far, beyond the scope of the what the text actually says. \u00a0Adding unnecessary burdens to the gospel is tragic, because some will miss out on Christ because they can\u2019t or won\u2019t march to the nuanced drum we\u2019re beating about the age of the earth. \u00a0It\u2019s all so reminiscent of Galatians and their insistence on circumcision as a condition of salvation.<\/p>\n

3. It becomes a major distraction,<\/strong> sort of like going to the symphony and failing to hear the music because you get in an argument with your spouse about whether the Classicism of Mozart is better than the Romanticism of Brahms. \u00a0There you are, whispering your arguments back forth, until someone finally whacks you with their opera glasses and says, \u201cshut up \u2013 or at least go out in the lobby. \u00a0I\u2019m trying to listen the music\u201d<\/p>\n

The music of Genesis is this: God made the heavens and the earth<\/strong><\/em>. \u00a0God made humanity, endowing us with body, soul, and spirit so that we have the capacity to display God\u2019s character and function as His image bearers. \u00a0The setting, prior to sin, was perfect, with a beauty, ecology, intimacy, and grandeur that exceeds the imagination. \u00a0We\u2019re broken though because of our sin. \u00a0Because of that our world is broken too. \u00a0God, though, has made provision for restoring humanity, and the rest of the cosmos, and the final condition will exceed even the spectacular beginning.<\/p>\n

All are invited to join with God in the work God is doing, and invitation rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ, and His offer to live with us, and in us, and through us, making us whole in ways we could never be without Him.<\/p>\n

This is the symphony of history, but to hear the music requires that we stop obsessing about how long it took to write it. \u00a0It\u2019s an interesting conversation, but the moment it diminishes my capacity to hear the symphony, it\u2019s become a barrier. \u00a0For many, sadly, that\u2019s the state of it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been approached for two weeks in the past three after speaking in my church, with specific questions from people about the age of the earth. \u00a0They want to pin me down on whether the earth is 6000 years old, or six billion years old, and the ones doing the pinning are convinced they know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creation"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Symphony of Creation, or debates about the manuscript?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been approached for two weeks in the past three after speaking in my church, with specific questions from people about the age of the earth. \u00a0They\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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