Thursday August 4, 2022

God bless friends and family. Laura, myself, and our dog are finally back home from our trip to visit Sam (our son and his wife) and Abby. We were supposed to come back to Illinois on Wednesday afternoon, but decided to stay an extra day. We had a great time together. Sam and Abby are doing very well-enjoying their new lives as husband and  wife.
Today we are going to continue our conversation about how God created the heavens and the earth, as found in the first chapter of Genesis. If you have not read my blog entry for Wednesday, I would encourage you to do so, as this entry is a continuation of that discussion.

​Genesis 1:8 NASB
 8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Regardless of  what you believe about the creation story, if you are a follower of the Lord, and believe (as I do) that God's word (the Bible) is perfect, and without error, then you believe that God created the earth and everything in it (including us). Perhaps you have never thought, in a serious way, about the creation account in the book of Genesis-and if that is you, that is ok. My goal is not to convince you that the earth is old or young. My goal is to spark in you, a desire to learn. There are certain passages in God's Word that leave a lot of questions-the creation account is one of these (in my opinion). We should never be afraid to ask questions of God-it is not "disloyal." The Lord does not desire empty, robotic believers, that just accept whatever they are told without exercising their own critical thinking. Of course, there are certain aspects of our faith that require, well...faith. I have faith that our Lord is a good God because my life experience tells me it's true. 
I grew up believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 consecutive, 24 hour days. There were no alternate ideas presented. We were told that everything science told us (about how old the world was) was demonic propaganda, meant to destroy our faith in God. Perhaps God did use our modern, day and night cycle and created everything in 6 days. It's for sure that our Father has the ability to do so. He didn't even need 6 days-He could have created everything at one time-with a single thought-so, why didn't He? Why didn't God simply create everything all at once? I do not have the perfect answer to this question; but, I ask us this question to get our minds going in the right direction. Why did the Lord have Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis) record the creation account the way He did. What was the original intent of the creation story? This is one of the most important questions that a person must ask themselves when interpreting scripture-any scripture: "what was the original intent of the author." Of course, this question is not asking if it's true-we believe that  Scripture is true-from Genesis to Revelation. The question of intent is more about: what does God intend you and I to learn from a passage, vs. what did God intend the original recipients of the scripture to learn. Often times it's the same, but sometimes it might be different. For example, the story of Christ dying on the cross has the same intent across all time and cultures. However, the account found in Revelation means something different to us than it would have the early church-the truth of Christ returning for His bride is the same, but it is clear that Revelation was written for a more technologically advanced society-John couldn't even understand the things he saw. The truth of Revelation does not change-but it's intent and purpose might.
These are some deep questions-we will continue tomorrow. Pray about these things and ask the Lord to give you wisdom.