In the Beginning

This morning I asked for a rather lengthy passage from the opening chapters of the book of Genesis to be read because I wanted to set our thinking on a larger framework than just the beginning.

As many of you know from the recent school board controversies in Kansas and Pennsylvania the battle over teaching Intelligent Design in public schools continues. There are various groups of people across the nation petitioning public school boards for permission to teach a form ,not a comprehensive understanding, of the “Intelligent Design” theory of creation in public school curriculums along with scientific evolutionism. I believe the current controversy is an erroneous and unnecessary controversy. I believe it needlessly and senselessly polarizes people on something we have to die to prove. Not only that, I fear that many of the recent cases that have pushed a form of Intelligent Design maybe a veiled attempt to slip in what we have come to call religious fundamentalism into public schools. History tells us that religion has often taken a seemingly moral high road or the path way of the greater good as a means to achieve power over others. Therefore, the current attempt to put religion on an equal footing with science in the public school’s curriculum I fear is not to be trusted.

Intelligent design theory in its truest form maintains that we can not limit our understanding of the physical universe to just scientific explanations. Advocates of this perspective maintain that the natural world is far to complex, well ordered, and thus, demands an intelligent cause explanation for the natural world. I agree with this and believe that it’s a very valid position for anyone to take. I however disagree with either science or religion trying to hold God hostage to their respective paradigms of understandings of creations and beyond.

Many in the scientific community—Christian and non-Christians alike--are outraged over the current ploy to slip religion into the public school system by the back door. Many in the scientific community don’t think students should be discussing the possibilities of supernatural explanations for natural phenomena in their science classes.[i] In there religion classes, maybe, but not in their science classes. This is especially true given the varied religious interpretations and opinions concerning the supernatural explanations for the origins of the universe, this planet, and life. I tend to support the science rationale unless, unless, I get to decide the understandings of God or the supernatural and the proper interpretation of the scriptures concerning creation.

We have been told that in general traditional science rejects all religious understandings of creation in favor of such theories as random chance and evolution based upon natural selection and adaptation. I live in a community (Los Alamos, NM) and have attended church with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, who are not polarized on the issue. These people are quite comfortable with the scientific model for creations along with the biblical model of creation. In fact, with the advent of quantum mechanics and quantum physics there has been opened up a completely new way of seeing the universe with a large note of mystery in it.

There is also a false generalization that the traditional, religious mindset also rejects scientific explanations of creation in favor of divine agency as outlined in various interpretations of scripture. Here again, this too is a false generalization.

Some of us hold both scientific and biblical views with intellectual and spiritual integrity. Therefore, I think the only thing these debates and so called controversies do is expose the ignorance and the arrogance of both camps as well as provide fodder for fools to justify their actions. Not to mention it sells copy, web space, and air-time.

At some time or the other, we’ve all struggled with issues of scientific explanations and religious explanations in our lives. In spite of those struggles and the lack of definitive answers, we still go on living our lives as decent, moral, and caring people based upon biblical teachings. Therefore, I have come to believe that one doesn’t have to check one’s intelligence at the church door to be a true person of faith.

This morning I would like to invite you to think with me about what all of these so called controversial explanations for creation and the origins of life have in common.

As a person of a deep and abiding faith in God, I hold science and scripture in equal appreciation but for different aspects of my life. I see no logical contradictions between good science and the best of theology as long as neither tries to claim sovereignty over God or sovereignty over how we are to be the best humans. Science addresses a part of the divine whole that it is concern with, and religion addresses another part of the divine whole that it is concerned with. The whole contains both. On this position, I stand in good company with such notables as Alexander Campbell.

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PRINTED BY A. CAMPBELL.
PUBLISHED BY Forrester & Campbell, PITTSBURG.

IV. As, then, the systems of the universe and the sciences which treat of them, run into each other and mutually lend and borrow light, illustration, and development; it is a mark of imbecility of mind, rather than of strength; of folly, rather than of wisdom; for any one to dogmatize with an air of infallibility, or to assume the attitude of perfect intelligence on any one subject of human thought, without an intimate knowledge of the whole universe. But as such knowledge is not within the grasp of feeble mortal man, whose horizon is a point of creation, and whose days are but a moment of time, it is superlatively incongruous for any son of science, or of religion, to affirm that this or that issue is absolutely irrational, unjust, or unfitting the schemes of eternal

When we read the opening lines of the book of Genesis, we are reading the words and thoughts of the author(s) or narrator(s), who write from within a cultural perspective. (I shall refer to the author in the singular) These opening words are the beginning words of an entire story not just an isolated treatise on cosmology. We must not read, “In the beginning” without reading the ending of Genesis, “So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt”. [Gen. 50:26 RSV]

The author writes using the available knowledge of the natural world, as he understood it for a specific reason for a specific people. The author was writing during the time of the Babylonian Exile until possibly shortly after the Exile. He is writing to a people who are endanger of loosing their since of identity and distinctiveness in the culture of their captives. The author is also writing with in a relatively new found understanding that there is only one true God of the universe--Yahweh.

At first glance, the opening chapters of Genesis seems to give us an account of the earth’s beginnings, the beginning of plant and animal life on the planet, and finally the beginning of human life. Yet, if we look at these opening chapters a little closer, we will see that these scriptures are not scientific or theological literature but religious, wisdom literature. As wisdom literature, we find the fullest truth of these scriptures and after all, it is the truth that frees us and empowers us to be the best we can be. Truth lets our souls and minds soar to the very heights of heaven and divine possibilities. Facts tend to anchor us here in this world only.

We see in the opening chapters of Genesis the story of the creation of life and people. We read a story about people, be they real or not, who none-the-less serve as archetypes for conveying timeless insights to the human mind, our social and family structures and problems as well as some very general principles of human life. These stories give us insights into the problems of human reason, speech, freedom, sexual desire, and the love of the beautiful, shame, guilt, anger, and human kind’s response to morality. (Kass p. 10)[ii]

We see clearly the dynamics of male and female relationships; we see the dynamics between siblings, fathers and sons, neighbor and neighbor, stranger and stranger, and humankind and God. (Kass p.10)[iii] I dare science to refute this understanding or religion to deny it.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis lay the foundation for the life-wisdom teachings of the remaining 49 chapters. The remaining chapters show us the wisdom of how to overcome the obstacles of human relationships.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis show us the wisdom of accepting what is fundamental and essential in the human condition—we are finite creatures; we are dependent on forces we can’t control, and we must give our lives meaning and purpose in our relationships to others and to God through knowledgeable choices.

Genesis opens up with the grand sweep of creation and closes with the emergence of a small group of people who have a very distinct way of relating to one another in families, in communities, and as a nation. (Kass p.11)

Genesis is a wisdom book—not a science book nor a theology book. It is a book that highlights certain aspects of the universality of human weaknesses and failures as well as the wisdom of how to best live in our personal, familial, communal, and national relationships in spite of our weaknesses and failures.

I maintain, as Alexander Campbell does, that modern scientific and theological thought have simply given us different frameworks, or story lines if you will, to explain the common human experience within the greater whole of reality. This is what all these so called explanations of creation have in common—The Mysterious Whole of Existence. Science can’t propound theories, religion can’t put forth doctrine or dogma unless each starts with the given of The Mysterious Whole of Existence.

The bible writer was not interested in whether his story of creation would stand up under modern scientific scrutiny, and neither should we be. The Bible writers, the Bible redactors, and the Bible compilers were interested only in giving an orderly account in story form, sometimes historical story form, of what they believed was the distinctiveness of the Jews and later the Christ people in their relationships to the ultimate source of life and order in the universe and to one another.

The answer for why people haggle and argue over creationism, intelligent design, evolutionism, and scientism is found in the story of Adam and Eve. It is Adam and Eve’s desire to be self-sufficient and self-purposeful that motivated them to be as God. Moreover, in fact they did become like God in knowing good from bad, [not good from evil] but with this knowledge comes a different level of self-awareness. This newly acquired self-awareness resulted in their experiencing fear, shame, and uncertainty. Fear, shame, and uncertainty then became the motivators for trying to know more and more in order to abate the anxieties of life and to achieve peace, comfort, security, and status. We still find ourselves locked in this vicious cycle.

As creatures, we are first and foremost creatures of faith. Our very mode of being in the world is by faith. It is an unhealthy pride that pushes us to know more than we can. It is a pride that seeks to compete with our Creator and Sustainer. It is a pride that denies the reality that we are finite, dependent creatures who must live by an ultimate faith in God or suffer the mental and spiritual illnesses of the prideful. Here what the writer of Ecclesiastes says.

(Eccl. 3:11, He [God] has made everything beautiful (valuable) in its time; also [God] He has put eternity into [humankind’s] man’s mind, yet so that [we] he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Interview with NOVA, Brian Greene, the author of The Elegant Universe, talks about A Theory of Everything.

NOVA: Do you think there are limits to how much we can know about the universe?

Greene: I don't know. I'd like to think that there aren't, but I suspect that's a little optimistic. An analogy that's used in the NOVA program that I'm quite fond of is: We are certainly aware of intelligent beings on this planet whose capacity to understand the deep laws of the universe is limited. No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail. There we have an example of an intelligent living being that will never know this kind of truth about the way the world is put together. Why in the world should we be any different? We can certainly go further than cats, but why should it be that our brains are somehow so suited to the universe that our brains will be able to understand the deepest workings?

By nature we are curious creatures, this is healthy and creative. However, pushing our curiosity beyond its limitations, aspiring to be god-like beings brings a sickness of the soul that so many suffer from today—including many scientist and theologians.

To be truly human, we must live by faith that we are God’s creatures—by what ever process God chose to bring us in to being and into a divine relationship. As the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, we will never really know some things, not in this life-time at least. We must live by the faith that in God’s goodness in life and death we can count on God’s personal participation in our self-determination and meaning-making activities within the created and natural order of things.

With this confidence, let us openly acknowledge that God doesn’t have to conform to our understandings of how, why, or when reality came into being. Many scientific and religious explanations concerning beginnings and endings are nothing more than the feeble attempts of frightened, anxious, and prideful people to abate the anxieties of life by through knowledge. Many scientist and religious people are corrupting their divine power of self-determination with Adam’s and Eve’s pride. Hospitals and grave yards are unnecessarily full of people who refuse to live by faith in God’s goodness as revealed in scripture and have sought to do it their way to their detriment.

God is the Creator-sustainer and will not let anything of value be lost to God—trust this; live in the glory of God’s on going creativity in you and in the world. The intricacies of this truth are beyond our scientific or religious understanding and explanation, but I believe a true person of faith knows what is ultimate and essential in order to be the best person they can be and to be a powerful person of faith.

Minister: When the physicist defines and dissects the smallest possible, discrete unit of energy or matter, they will find that the simplest person of faith has been there first.

Minister: When all Aether, the non-physical medium permeating the entire universe, endowing space with [its] measurable physical properties has been quantified, they will find its fullest measure has already been taken by the simplest person of faith.

Minister: When the sources of all energy of the known universe are understood, catalogued, and measured, they will find that the simplest person of faith has already understood it and measured it.

Minister: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gives us this insight, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

Let us know this: Science may tell us how God did it, Scripture tell us that God did it and why. Therefore, let us strive in our sciences and in our religions to seek to know that which brings life and it more abundantly for all peoples and life on this planet.

[i] EarthLink: Kansas Debate challenges Science Itself May 15, 2005 7:20 EDT

[ii] Kass, Leon R. The Beginning of Wisdom, Free Press, New York, 2003.

[iii] Ibid