There is one thing I’ve learned from going up in a church. Christians like to argue a lot. We argue about predestination. We argue about what political party is “God ordained”. Since coming to school this year, I’ve heard a lot of arguing about creation. Was it created in 6 literal days or in 6 time periods? Was it even created in any sort of order? Did God simply begin a total evolutionary process? Questions having to do with creation don’t stop there.
For a recent assignment I had to interview people about their views on creation. The first person I interviewed was a family friend who has their Doctorate from Cambridge University in Old Testament Exegesis. If anyone had creation figured out it was going to be this guy. But when I interviewed him, he admitted that he could not tell me which creation view was correct. He even said that he didn’t think it really mattered how God created the world. This blew my mind.
The next person I interviewed was a family member who has studied the Bible but not at the college level or anything. When I asked her what she thought about reconciling creation and science she answered, “The Gap Theory”. I admitted to not knowing what the gap theory was. She explained, “When you read Genesis 1:2 it says, “Now, the Earth was formless and empty…” I think the “now” emphasizes the idea that it hasn’t always been formless and empty.” I asked her if she had looked up the original Hebrew and she said, “No.” Then I pointed out that my translation did not use the word “now”. She got very defensive and frustrated.
I don’t know if my family member’s view even accurately represents the Gap Theory. However, I think an important lesson can be taken from these two interviews. Knowledge and learning are important not so that we can simply know more and have “smarter” opinions on things but so that we can be humbled. From my title you may think that I’m saying we shouldn’t ever discuss creation or strive to learn more about it. That’s not it. What I am saying is that we Christians spend way too much time focusing on minor differences when we should be coming together as a community, honoring our Lord. The more we learn the more we realize how little we know.