Versión español

When I started this blog, one of the first things I said that I would write about was what the things are that have helped me continue as a Christian despite the challenges that Christianity faces. One of those items was the unanswered questions in the field of science, a post that I made a while ago. While this post doesn’t add anything to the scientific discussion there, it does look at the Biblical side of things, and why I think that the biblical account of creation is misread and is in no danger of being irrelevant, regardless of what scientific discoveries might arise in the future. 

When I was a kid, the first chapter of Genesis was amazing. That God would create the world in seven days just by speaking was completely believable and a fascinating story. I see the same fascination with it in my kids’ Sunday School classes. It gives a simple, clear explanation for how the world (including us) came to be and even explains why we have a seven day week.

Of course, growing up has a tendency to altar our understanding of life, making it far less simple, but often far more interesting. This has been the case for my understanding of the first chapter of Genesis. Although I spent many years studying young earth creationism (and I still find many of their arguments interesting), I eventually began to feel like there was something missing from all their discussions and theories of creation. In particular, especially as I studied more about how to interpret the Bible, I began to wonder if we were reading it correctly. We are far removed from the original writers and audience of Scripture, and I began to wonder how they would have understood this passage, and what point it was trying to make. As I have worked through these types of questions, I have begun to understand and interpret the first chapter of Genesis much differently than I did as a child. To be honest, it is a view that has very little to say about the age of the earth or the method of it’s creation. Instead, I believe Genesis 1 was presenting an alternative worldview for the ancient Israelites, one that is still relevant to us today, and one that lays aside the arguments about the age of the earth to focus on some concepts that are much more important to our life.

While there have been a variety of influences in this journey, I must especially highlight the influence of John C. Lennox¹ and John H. Walton. In particular, many of the ideas below come from Walton’s commentary on Genesis.² If you want a much more detailed explanation of some of these concepts, I highly encourage you to read it.

Audience and Author

To start with, we ask the simple questions of who wrote this account and to whom were they writing? Tradition (and the books themselves) has it that Moses wrote the majority of the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Old Testament) and completed it before the Israelites entered the Promised Land (by 1200 BCE³ at the latest). Others argue, based on internal manuscript details and language, that it wasn’t written until later, some even saying as late as the Persian period when the Israelites returned from exile. I struggle to believe that it was that late, personally. Since we have virtually no clear evidence one way or the other, I lean toward it being primarily an account that came from Moses, although the exact timing of when it was committed to writing and how various accounts may have been blended into one are certainly up for discussion.⁴ Regardless, though, there are some characteristics that we need to take into account as we read Genesis:

1. It was written in the Ancient Near East (ANE) in a broader cultural setting that had a way of explaining the creation of the world, as evidenced by works such as the Enuma Elish, an ancient Babylonian creation myth. While nobody has convincingly showed that the creation story in Genesis directly derived from other ancient works from Babylon, Egypt or other places, it is reasonable to assume that the Israelites were aware of how other cultures explained the world, just as we are aware of the culture around us. It is also evident that a variety of common ANE concepts are present in the book of Genesis, although with a significant twist that differentiates them from their contemporaries.
2. It was written with the Israelite’s context in mind – their recent departure from Egypt, their slavery there, and all the Gods and beliefs that they had known in that context, as well as the broader ANE context I just mentioned.
3. Obviously, no person was present during the actual creation, except for the very last few verses when Adam and Eve were created.⁵ This means that this story is only available through the revelation of God. Whether He revealed it to Adam and Eve and it was passed down from there, or whether it was revealed to Moses, there’s no way to tell. That means that God could have revealed the act of creation precisely (what we view as scientifically), or literarily (in a story form that would capture the main concepts in a way the people would understand given their context and culture). While either one is possible, I lean towards the second for a variety of reasons that will be explained as we go.

Genre

As mentioned in that last point, we must decide what type of literature Genesis 1 is to be able to understand it properly. Like many, my default while growing up was to read it as history. It’s a story, so it must be historical. However, it doesn’t take much to realize that there’s more to this story than just a simple account of history. Days 1-3 are mirrored by days 4-6. Either God was very poetic in his creation act (which is definitely possible), or it was deliberately arranged to make it flow smoothly and sound very poetic. Add to that the repetition of various expressions (“It was good”, “there was evening and morning the nth day”, etc,) and we suddenly are faced with a very poetic creation account. After having a brief exchange with a creation scientist who swore up and down that it was pure history, I called up my seminary’s linguistic professor, and he calmly and quickly defined Genesis 1 as poetic narrative, similar (although much shorter) to other creation accounts such as the aforementioned Enuma Elish. That makes sense to me and seems to fit well with the poetic elements present.⁶ That means that it is moved out of the category of “pure” history. While obviously not everyone will agree with me, I have yet to find an argument that convinces me that it has to be history and can’t possibly be poetic.

Purpose

Unfortunately, it is impossible to get inside the author’s mind to determine exactly what his intended purpose was. The best we can do is try to understand the general flow of what he was communicating and understand the literary and cultural purposes of the time when he was writing. While we might not get it perfectly right, it’s probably going to be a lot closer than if we start from our own culture and literary understanding, which is a minimum of 2500 years removed from the original context.

With that caveat in mind, I am persuaded by Walton’s argument that the focus of Genesis 1 is not on structure (the parts and material), but rather on function (the purpose and role) of the cosmos. In particular, he points out that the Hebrew term used for “create” in Genesis 1 brings out more of the concept of “arrange and organize” rather than “manufacture”. In saying this, neither he nor I is trying to claim that God did not, at some point in some way, create the universe from nothing – rather, that is not the focus of Genesis 1. It appears, both in the broader culture and the Israelite context, that the question on everybody’s mind was not “How did God make this all?” (which is what we ask), but rather, “What is it’s purpose, and how does it work?” They wanted to know how it was organized, not how it came to exist. As we shall see, this impacts our understanding of the passage considerably.

Genesis 1

I could spend forever detailing all the complexities of the passage, but instead I refer you again to Walton’s commentary on the matter for an in-depth explanation. Here, I just want to highlight some of the key factors that stand out to me.

1. Have you ever noticed the description of the state of the world in verse 2? That it was “formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”? The description is one of a lack of order, not lack of existence. This fits in well with the ancient concept of darkness and water as conveying chaos and lack of purpose much better than our concept of nothing existing and God calling it into being from nothing.
2. There is a distinct lack of personification here that stands in marked contrast to other ancient worldviews. In other words, the water, the darkness and chaos are not gods and goddesses (such as Tiamat, the goddess of water who was cut in two to form the seas and the sky in the Enuma Elish). This continues throughout the whole account. The greater and lesser lights (sun and moon) are just lights, not gods or goddesses. They’re not even named directly! The entire account shifts the focus from a group of gods who gave function to the earth (and thereby needed to be given sacrifices to control these areas) to a single God who was in charge of everything.
3. Related to that, the concept of chaos is different than what is seen in other ancient accounts. Instead of being evil, it simply is. As Walton says, “There is nothing sinister or menacing about this chaos in Genesis; it is simply the indication that God has not yet done his work.”⁷ In these two points, we see that the author is using familiar concepts, but changing them to develop a new, different worldview.
4. Day one of creation is what I find most fascinating and sets the tone for the rest of the passage. There have been many attempted scientific explanations of how God created light on day one, but waited until day 4 to create what we accept and view as the sources of light. However, Walton argues that the focus is not on the creation of waves and particles, but on establishing the function of the world. In other words, when God separated the night from the day, the focus is on the fact that night would follow day, then day would follow night, and so on. In other words, he was establishing a pattern of time – day, night, day, night, day, night, etc. This is the foundational concept for how we measure time – the passage of days. Interestingly, when we read the definitions from verse five (God called the light “day” and the darkness “night”) back into verses 3 and 4, we get a totally different feel for this: “And God said, ‘Let there be day!’ And there was day. God saw that the day was good, and he separated the day from the night.” I don’t know if that’s legitimate linguistically in the original language, but I think it helps us get a good grasp on God’s focus here. He established time as the basis of our life on earth.
   One other note worth making here before moving on is how God calls it all good. This again seems to contradict the worldview of that time, which seemed to view darkness as one of the sources of chaos and something to be feared. Instead, God says time is good – both day and night. We see a similar reality in some of the other days, in particular day 2 (the expanse of water was also seen at that time as chaotic and sinister) and days 5 and 6 where both wild animals and sea monsters are seen as good, not as evil.
5. Day 2 sees God dividing the water above from the water below. I remember studying creationist literature in high school that argued, based on this verse, that the earth used to be surrounded by a canopy of water that created a greenhouse effect, causing things to grow bigger (dinosaurs), live longer (accounts in the Bible and other ancient cultures) and be generally warmer. I haven’t seen that argument for a while… At any rate, in the ancient world, they did not share our understanding of the sky, space, stars, etc. They literally thought the sky was a hard dome. And that the water in its various forms (hail, snow, rain) was somehow let into the dome by God (or gods), and that the stars were somehow in or above the dome, but certainly not way off into space like we understand them. Their understanding was completely logical given the observational evidence that they had. What’s more, the purpose of the firmament was to regulate the weather system. When we read day 2 in light of this, it makes far more sense. God made a firmament (or vault or dome) that he called the sky. He left some water below and put some above (rain, snow, etc.). Basically, he set up the weather system.
6. On day 3, we see God gathering the water into one place (which matches with their understanding of one land mass surrounded by water) to create dry ground. He then causes plants to grow and reproduce after their own kind. Once again, rather than focusing on the specific items that God created (plants, ocean, dry ground), it is helpful to view this as organizing the chaos into a working system – in this case, the agricultural system. At the end of day 3, rather than unorganized chaos, we have a functioning world: time has been established and called good, and the world is ready for its inhabitants – what Walton refers to as the functionaries, or those things/beings that govern and fill these different spaces.
7. On day 4, returning to the concept or sphere outlined in day 1, we see the arrival and purpose of the lights – to govern the day and night, to separate night from day, to serve as signs for sacred times, and to mark days and years. It is an explanation of their function, not their fabrication.
8. Day 5 also mirrors day 2, this time filling the firmament and waters with their respective functionaries – birds, fish, etc. These are not creatures that are enemies (in particular since the word used seems to indicate the large sea animals, i.e. chaos monsters) – they serve a function and were put there by God.
9. Finally day 6 mirrors day 3, presenting the various animals (domesticated, wild herds and wild predators) as the functionaries (inhabitants) of this sphere.
10. Most notable on day 6, of course, are the humans, who are created in God’s image and given the role of ruling the world God has created. The focus is on the image of humanity – that they in some way carry the essence of God and his character – as well as their role of acting as God’s representatives to rule and subdue the earth. Once again, this role and concept of humanity differs notably from the worldviews of the day, where humans were usually created out of some sort of conflict or sexual relationship between the gods, where they could be an annoyance to the gods (too noisy), and where they served the role of providing food for the gods through their myriad sacrifices. To once again quote Walton, “Whereas Mesopotamian literature is concerned about the jurisdiction of the various gods in the cosmos with humankind at the bottom of the heap, the Genesis account is interested in the jurisdiction of humankind over the rest of creation as a result of the image of God in which people were created.”⁸

So where does all this leave us? (I won’t get into day 7, since most of the disagreement about interpretation focuses on the creation part, not the resting part.) I think that there are a few things that Genesis 1 is not, and a few things that it teaches us that we have often lost sight of.

First, it is not a straight history text as we often have considered it. Second, it is not concerned primarily with structural creation (things), but rather with a focus on function – how the universe works. As such, it really has almost nothing to say about scientific matters or the creation method and timeline. It is not focused on teaching the age of the earth and the physical steps in creation. In this sense, we are free to follow wherever science leads – a discussion that is far from settled.

What this account does still teach us is a variety of truths that are important for our lives. First, it was created (made to function) by God. In our time, this contradicts the purely naturalistic view that says everything happened without God, just as it contradicted the ancient worldview that a bunch of different Gods were the source of this world. We can debate long and hard about the details of how God created the world (structurally), but those disagreements and debates should not derail our conviction that God created it.

Second, it proclaims that the world is good and functions the way it is supposed to. This was a huge message in a time when there were so many chaotic forces of nature (wild animals, darkness, the ocean) that were to be feared rather than celebrated. In our day, most of these things do not hold the same element of fear that they once did. Instead, our culture is more likely to view the world either as a resource to be used and abused or as an entity to be worshiped. The creation story charts a middle course. The world is good and to be understood and appreciated, but not to be worshiped. The cosmos is to be subdued and ruled by humanity, but not abused. It is good, and we should treat it with the respect and care it deserves. What’s more, it teaches us that even time was a creation of God, and the passage of time is a natural and good reality. We struggle with this as we strive to halt the hands of time (or at least our own aging!), but time itself is a creation of God for this world.

Finally, the value of humanity as created in the image of God is upheld, with all its ramifications. We are valuable and separate from the animals, who were not created in God’s image. We have a purpose in this world, and it is a significant and, dare I even say it, noble purpose – to steward the world that God has made. This has huge implications for how we view ourselves, our work, and our place in this world.

Genesis 1 is a beautiful passage of Scripture. I love it. I think it does a lot for setting the tone of Scripture, for who God is, for who we are, and for how amazing this world is. And I think that we do a serious injustice to both this passage and to our understanding of our role in this world when we spend all of our time focusing primarily on a debate about scientific ideas that most of us don’t fully understand and that detract from the primary messages of the chapter. While I don’t insist that everyone has to convert to my (and Walton’s) interpretation of this passage, I do think that we need to set aside the debate about how creation happened and work together to proclaim the presence of God, the value and purpose of humanity, and the wonder of this world that God has given us.

^{1 Especially his book Seven Days that Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science. Zondervan, 2011.↩}

^{2 NIV Application Commentary: Genesis. Zondervan, 2001. I have found this commentary fascinating. It is one of the few commentaries that I have read like a book.↩}

^{3 I’m going to use BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) as my dating abbreviations. Don’t read anything into it one way or another. Some Christians will get annoyed at the removal of Jesus by changing Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD – Year of our Lord). Non-Christians can get annoyed at leaving Jesus in the terms. Since someone is going to be mad no matter what, I’m trusting in the grace and maturity of Christians to not make this a big deal. Prove me right.↩}

^{4 It is entirely possible that the accounts found in the first five books were passed on orally or in written form from Moses, and even prior to Moses, before being collected and synthesized into one account. It is even possible that there were multiple different times of collation, done at different times. This does not have to negate the primacy of Moses as the “author”. As Christians who believe God’s word was inspired, it is possible to extend that inspiration to the subsequent editors as well as to Moses. Paul said that all Scripture is inspired, not that one particular person or method of writing it down was inspired. It was a human-divine partnership, and I think too often we needlessly restrict that partnership to a specific belief about how it happened.↩}

^{5 For the sake of this post, we won’t get into the debate about whether Adam and Eve were real people or are literary figures to convey a truth about humanity.↩}

^{6 Some argue that Genesis 1 does not fit into traditional Hebrew poetry such as that found in the Psalms or prophets, that uses parallelism, chiasm, etc. I would argue that while it might not match exactly a lot of the poetry found in other parts of Scripture, I hardly think it makes sense to ignore the poetic elements of this passage because they aren’t exactly the same as other poetry, especially if we consider that Genesis may have been written hundreds of years before much of the other poetry.↩}

^{7 Walton. Genesis. p. 74.↩}

^{8 Walton. Genesis. p. 134.↩}

Versión español

The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. But it’s also probably the most argued-about book of all time as well. It doesn’t take much for a disagreement to start about what a specific passage is describing and how to interpret it. That doesn’t mean that the basic storyline of the Bible is hard to understand – it isn’t. It just means that people bring a lot of assumptions to the Bible, assumptions that influence how they understand different passages or even the whole thing.

Why does this matter? Well, the assumptions and approach we bring to the Bible drastically affects what we take from it. It’s like reading the Bible with different types of glasses that reveal different things. Different approaches have different advantages and disadvantages, and we need to be honest about them. It’s also helpful to understand (especially within Christian circles) where others are coming from, because often we argue and accuse each other of not taking the Bible seriously, which is rather unfortunate and causes a lot of division that is often not really necessary. In some ways, I am writing this post so I can share my approach to Scripture and to ask for honesty and understanding from those who might not share that approach. I hope that in the end you can see some value in some of the other ways to approach Scripture, even if you don’t fully agree with every aspect. As a Christian, some approaches definitely don’t hold much value. But some (more than one) do.

Below are 7 ways to interpret the Bible. It’s not an exhaustive list – there are probably variations on each of those, and maybe categories I haven’t thought of. But it’s a helpful place to start. Where would you fit?

1. Hearsay – okay, this isn’t really a way to read the Bible, but it is the approach that many people use. People in this category will usually quote someone else and what they have said about the Bible without actually reading it themselves. Obviously, people in this category don’t take the Bible too seriously, and can be frustrating to deal with when they clearly don’t really know what they’re talking about. Like any of us who try to pretend we know more about something than we really do, right?
2. Mythically – People in this category usually treat the Bible as an ancient document that may or may not have some truth in it, but is largely on the same level as any other ancient religious teaching, such as the gods of Rome or Greece. The stories are mostly considered mythical, especially if there is anything supernatural. They may take the Bible “seriously” as an ancient document, but certainly not as the Word of God.
3. Casually – many would fall into this category, although for many different reasons. Some believe the Bible has some good teachings, but it’s no more authoritative than any other moral teaching. Others believe the Bible to be the Word of God (they take it seriously), but never really engage with it much. The reasons can be many (too busy, don’t like reading, not disciplined, find it boring), but they often come across as just excuses. It would be fair to ask how “seriously” people in this category take the Bible, but I also don’t want to be unduly harsh to the many who do take the Bible seriously, but don’t read it much.
4. Historically-Critically – the people in this category may take the Bible seriously – some of them, anyway. They may even consider it to be the Word of God. But they have a tendency to be very critical and/or skeptical of what it says and to put themselves above the text, trying to judge what is really true and not true. I have in mind here people like the German textual critics who divide the Bible into many different sources, as well as approaches such as the Jesus Seminar. The first group will often take the Bible seriously (and can have some very important and helpful insights), but their tendency to carve up the Bible – and their extensive disagreements on how it should be divided – tend to undercut faith in the Scripture. A group like the Jesus Seminar, who divided the teachings of Jesus into various categories from “accurate” to “completely fabricated” (and only affirmed a few small phrases as actually being from Jesus) come across as arrogant and, to be honest, completely clueless. While I am all for studying the history of the Bible, this group has placed themselves so far above the Scripture that they claim they can know far better than the eyewitnesses what Jesus really said, and they have placed themselves in the position of saying that they are the deciders of truth, not the Bible.
5. Literally (or traditionally) – okay, technically, literally should mean that they read the Bible according to the style of literature it is – read the poetry as poetry, parables as parables, history as history, etc. And most in this category do that. But this term has also been extended to mean, to quote a song I heard often growing up,  “God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me.” In other words, whatever the Bible “clearly” says is what they hold to, even though many of the “clear” teachings (particularly on non-core doctrines) are very culturally interpreted. They hold to “traditional” teachings, which are not always as obvious or traditional as they think they are, and which may not be what the original audience would have understood from them. I don’t want to sound too disparaging to this group, because a) I was in it for most of my life, and b) they take the Bible very seriously. In fact, I have known so many deeply godly and wonderful people in this category that I heartily encourage people to take the Bible as seriously as these! However, I have also seen a lot of anger and dogmatism from this group, and a refusal to allow that anyone interpreting a passage differently than them could have a point. For some, the Bible has become their god instead of a means to know God. As well, I have seen a lot of fighting between members of this group who disagree theologically on various topics (pick one – the return of Christ, free-will/predestination, status of women, etc.) and point to their own verses that “clearly” show that they are right, even though others point to verses that “clearly” show that they are wrong! So while there is a lot of good in this group, there is a lot of potential – too often realized – for stubbornness and insistence on being right.
6. Historically-Culturally – people in this group view the Bible as a document written by humans under the direction (inspiration) of God. To be fair, many (most?) in these last four categories would agree with that. The difference is that those in this group (who also take the Bible very seriously) place a high value on understanding the influence of culture, history, and our humanity on the text, as well as trying to understand how our own culture and context influences how we read and understand the text. This group tends to raise a lot of questions – how does our understanding of the Ancient Near East culture influence our understanding of the creation account? How did Paul’s cultural reality and upbringing influence his comments and actions regarding the role of women? How do we understand the conquest of the Promised Land and some of God’s commands to kill everyone? They also tend to be a lot less firm on many secondary doctrines, because they see uncertainty in the text. The benefit of this approach is that it digs deep to try to understand the message of what God was really trying to communicate in their culture and context and how we can appropriately convey this message to our current culture and context. The challenge is that it can be easy to move subtly into group 4 that I mentioned above (they are very similar, after all), standing critically over the text, or becoming so skeptical about what is accurate that they end up sliding into a belief that the Bible is not really God’s Word. Another challenge is that of becoming arrogant due to the amount of learning about different topics that is required, and becoming just as dogmatic about secondary topics as those in the literal group. But let’s be honest – arrogance and dogmatism are common traits for anyone in categories 4, 5, and 6. It doesn’t take much for us to think that we’re right and everyone else is wrong!
7. The Bible as narrative – The basic idea here is that we should understand the Bible as a story (not meaning fiction, just story) that reveals how God was working in a particular time and place. The focus is less on developing theology and doctrines, and more on relationship and how people listened and related to God in a specific time and from there, how we can listen and relate to God in our time. The concept is used rather broadly and in a variety of different ways. The focus on relationship with God can be very beneficial and can both bring alive our relationship with God and assist us to see how He might relate to us in our present situation. On the other hand, some have used this method to move away from key and traditional church beliefs as well as the original author’s intent. It can use a self-centred approach, ignoring theology and church history and using humanity and our feelings and society as a starting point to make the stories (and God) fit into our beliefs. Most proponents would probably argue that they take the Bible seriously; however, depending on their approach and assumptions the results can be wildly different. I believe that adding an understanding of the Bible as narrative or story can be very helpful, but I don’t think we can ignore 2000 years of theology to do so.

So those are the 7 categories that I see. With that in mind, I want to pull out two key concepts.

First, except for categories 1 and 2, there are people in each category who take the Bible seriously – often very seriously. However, their approach to Scripture varies for different reasons. I would encourage us not to assume that someone holds a low (“not God’s Word”) view of Scripture simply because they don’t approach Scripture the same as us – or hold to all the same interpretations as us.

Second, as someone who gets tired of all the fighting, I would like to ask us all to show tremendous grace to people in other categories. This is especially true for those who find themselves in the last four categories, which is where most of the intense disagreements in the church seem to come from. I find myself presently in category 6, and it can be very frustrating to hear people who view the Bible “literally” say, directly or implicitly, that I don’t take the Bible seriously because I differ in my interpretation of a verse or doctrine. I take the Bible very seriously. And I know you do, too (assuming you’re a Christian). But my serious study of the Bible may lead me to a different conclusion than your serious study of the Bible. It’s okay for us to disagree, assuming that we maintain orthodoxy (if we start to ignore Christ and reject primary beliefs and creeds such as the Apostle’s Creed or the resurrection of Christ, then it’s a whole other issue).

My next post will (hopefully) address the creation account, my interpretation of it, and why it is something that has helped me to continue in my faith rather than losing it. But I felt that it was important to challenge us all to be honest about how we interpret the Bible, and to strive for grace and understanding when others interpret some parts differently.

Spanish Version

For this first posts in this series, The Struggle of Faith, click here, here and here.

One of the subjects that has been of the most interest to me – and also most challenging to my faith as a Christian – is that of the origin of the world and the creation or evolution of humanity. When I was in Grade 12, I was just about ready to throw in the towel on my faith. After hearing so much about evolution, I figured that if God wasn’t necessary to explain our existence, why would I continue to believe in Him? I began to study the topic as deeply as possible, and I realized that there were still many things that evolution didn’t seem to explain adequately to me. Since then, I have continued to study this debate, doing my best to understand the beginnings of our existence. At different times, the arguments by one side or the other have struck me as convincing. Each side of the debate has some interesting points, as well as some really weak ones. I found that trying to follow the discussion and make a decision about the truth caused me a lot of confusion. In fact, for a number of years, I gave up studying the subject, because the lack of certainty, the illogical arguments, and the disdain and arrogance shown by each side drove me nuts. What’s more, I despaired of ever arriving at a concrete conclusion, something that really frustrated me.

In the last 3-4 years, I have returned to this topic, once again trying to understand the answers to this question. I still don’t have concrete answers, but at least I have come to peace with the situation. I have arrived at some conclusions – not about how, exactly, the world began to exist, but about the nature of the debate, my ability to understand the science, and some problems with the theory of evolution that still don’t have scientific answers that seem credible to me. I will give my conclusion about the nature of the debate between creation and evolution at the end of this post. As for my ability to participate in the debate, I explained my position in my previous post. So, the purpose of this post is to lay out some things that still don’t make sense to me about the theory of evolution.

I am certainly not claiming to have the final answer to this debate, and I’m not even aiming to give a firm conclusion. As I said in my last post, even the scientists don’t agree about this topic, despite the oft-heard declaration that “the science is clear” in favour of evolution. It isn’t. I’m not speaking as an expert, but as an ordinary person who has questions and is searching for answers. As such, I’m going to present the issues that most leave me feeling unsatisfied. My questions and doubts are mainly about the theory of evolution, but that isn’t the full story. Please read to the end of the post before drawing any firm conclusions, especially if you are an evolutionist of whatever stripe.

One note: for my most recent research into these themes, I have used many different web sites from non-Christian sources to try to understand and appropriately present the humanistic/naturalistic perspective that is considered the “scientific consensus”. For a Christian perspective, I have primarily used the sites of the Institute for Creation Research (icr.org), The Discovery Institute and their related site, evolutionnews.org, and Biólogos (biologos.org). The first gives a perspective of Young Earth Creationists, the second is based on the theory of Intelligent Design, and the final one is from the point of view of some evolutionary theists.

So, without further ado, here are the dilemmas from the theory of evolution that most catch my attention and have left me wanting:

1. The uncertainty about the steps of evolution. It’s difficult to hear over and over the mantra that evolution is a fact and proved beyond a shadow of doubt when the scientific articles are littered with ambiguity. When reading an article about the steps of evolution for a particular species of animal or anything else, the article is full of “maybe”, “perhaps”, “probably”, “we’re not sure”, “possibly”, etc. I understand that there’s still a lot to learn and a lot of gaps to fill in, but it doesn’t fill me with confidence when all the articles are like that. Even in the cases where they say that it is certain, a closer look reveals the same problem. I don’t expect  perfection, but I’d like a lot more certainty and evidence about how something happened before I accept it as gospel truth (pun intended).
2. The concept of Infinity. A common argument from those who don’t believe in God is that God couldn’t exist because, “Who created God?” But I’ve never understood this argument, because evolution (without God) ends up with essentially the same problem. Either the universe always existed and is itself eternal (so who created the universe? And why is an eternal universe more acceptable than an eternal God?) or there was nothing until about 14 billion years ago, then suddenly matter, and thus time, burst into existence (where did everything come from? And how can “nothing” suddenly create everything, including time?), or there was some other eternal force (e.g. gravity, as Stephen Hawking apparently suggests) that always existed, which again leaves us with the question of how gravity could always exist or why it’s okay for that to be eternal, but not God. In every case, we have to deal with the concept of infinity/eternity, and the beginning of all things. I think the concept of an eternal God makes just as much sense as any other answer. Maybe more, because at least with the concept of God there is intelligence and power capable of creating everything, something that the other ideas don’t appear to provide. I know that it’s difficult to believe in God when He can’t be measured or experienced in quite the same way as the physical world around us, but I don’t think it’s fair to exclude the possibility just because of that.
3. The creation (or rise) of life from non-life. At least everybody is in agreement about this point: we don’t have the slightest clue exactly how life began on earth. There are many sites that give explanations or theories as if it were certain, such as this one from Berkeley, but the reality is that we don’t know how the ability to replicate or reproduce began. Some sites, such as this one or this one from Live Science, state that we know exactly when life began, but not how. Biologos agrees, and give their opinion here. They are optimistic that further investigations are going to bring new evidence and explanations about how life began. On the other hand, evolutionnews and ICR (here, here, and here) don’t believe that it is (or was) posible for live to arise from non-life.
   In my opinion, at this point the reasons and complications against the spontaneous creation of life appear more valid. The evolution of life, which appears so certain when one reads a basic explanation from an evolutionary source, appears much less certain upon reading an article that outlines how difficult and apparently impossible it is to combine basic elements and begin a process of reproduction. In my view, there is at present a total lack of evidence that this can happen. There are just a lot of hypothetical ideas of what might have happened.
   On the other hand, Biologos has a very good article that reminds us that a lack of answers does not necessarily indicate the presence of God. The answers often arrive with more experiments and investigation. But at the moment, this is a crucial barrier that the theory of evolution has not been able to satisfactorily cross.
4. The tendency of mutations towards destruction and neutrality. Humanistic evolution says that each organism has arisen due to gradual changes throughout the course of millions of years. The most common mechanism held responsible for these changes is mutation. A mutation (says the theory) brings certain benefits to the organism that helps it to survive and copy itself better than its competitors, thus allowing it to become dominant. Over time, the compilation of mutations leads to the rise of new organisms, until we have the variety and diversity that we see today. Everything sounds nice and simple.
   But the reality (and once again, everyone is in agreement with this part) is that the vast majority – nearly all – of mutations are negative, or at best, neutral. And the few examples of beneficial mutations, such as “superbugs”, never bring a change in species, which makes suspect that they are not really evolutionary changes, merely adaptations of an organism that allow it to survive in a different situation.
   A relatively recent example of this comes from Harvard Medical School, where a long-running experiment produced a “significant” change in the bacteria being investigated – a mutation that  could be seen as a step, say the researchers, towards the beginning of a new species. (A bacteria began to use an element in the presence of oxygen when it had not been able to do so previously.) But others say that this investigation doesn’t demonstrate evolution, and it definitely doesn’t show the creation of a new species, or even steps in that direction. In fact, the rebuttal points to another scientist who made the same bacteria do the same thing much more quickly, but did not believe that the change was anything significant.
   Another discussion about mutations, but on the genetic level, speaks about the belief that there are many “pseudogenes” (false or inactive genes that remained in our DNA after the mutation of new ones that made them unnecessary). This idea is being challenged by new research (and here) that show that at least some of these “pseudogenes” have active and important roles, and that maybe they are not indications of previous mutations. To me, this case appears very similar to the argument about vestigial organs (organs left over from evolution that no longer have use). In the many years since these organs were first proposed as “proof” of evolution, we have discovered that almost all of them – and some would say every single one – serve a useful purpose. In fact, Francis Collins, who directed the Human Genome Project which mapped out the human genome, declared that the extra pseudogenes (junk DNA) in our bodies was evidence of evolution. But in 2015, he retracted this statement, saying that the majority of the things that appeared extra, are not.
   So despite the beliefs and proclamations of the evolutionists and the constant reports of the evolution of new superbugs, positive mutations are not very common, and up until now, as far as I know, scientists have not been able to force variations that create new species, but rather only variations within the same type of organism. And if millions of beneficial mutations are necessary for a new species to arise, it’s difficult to believe that it’s possible. I know that that last statement is an expression of belief, not fact – the so-called “argument of incredulity” – but I just don’t see sufficient evidence to be convinced that mutations can create new creatures.
5. The creation of biological information. The last two problems mentioned have as their root the problem of the creation of information. Despite all of the discussion about mutations, these mutations do not appear to result in the creation of new information. The theory of evolution says that the complexity of organisms has increase bit by bit until the present day, when we have extremely complex organisms. But it appears that mutations only result in organisms that are weaker or have modified their form, and never in the creation of new information or in an organism that is different and more complex.
   For example: One theory proposes that multicellular organisms began when a single-cell organism entered into another single-cell organism and the two began a symbiotic relationship that gave them (together and individually) a competitive advantage. Again, this sounds good. The problem is that for this organism to copy itself as a complete organism (new organisms that include both parts), there has to be a mixing of the genetic information of the two (their DNA) in order to make a copy, something that doesn’t appear overly common or easy to do. And if that wasn’t enough, there also needs to be the creation of new genetic information to guide the new organism and the new DNA in how to work together and replicate itself. DNA doesn’t just include the basic information for the parts. It also contains the information necessary for all the different parts to work together – information that simply didn’t exist when they were separate organisms. It needs to define which part of the new gene will reproduce first, how they will interact, etc.
   Maybe that’s not the best example, or not explained the best – remember, I’m not a scientist, I’m just someone trying to explain what doesn’t make sense to me. And the creation of new information at a genetic level isn’t simple, and it doesn’t appear that there is a natural mechanism that helps the process to work. Yet many times, when an article is talking about organisms and the “evolutionary advantage” that a mutation confers on them, it speaks as if the organisms had some sort of intelligence or guiding principle. But they don’t. A unicellular organism just makes copies of itself and does it’s job (if it has a job). If it lives in a good environment, it can make many copies. If it enters into a less hospitable place, it dies or cannot make many copies. It doesn’t have the ability to think, “Aha! Here’s a good spot! I’m going to stay here for a while. And if I join with this or that other organism or cell, then we can survive longer and grow stronger. And even better, if we mix our genes, we could become something incredible!” Unicellular organisms simply carry out automatic processes. So if they’re going to mix with another cell to form a new organism, they have to be able to do it automatically – it’s either an inevitable process or something external (environment, etc.) forces this combination to happen. There is no guidance, intelligence, or deliberate help.
   If you want to study the concept of the beginning of multicellular organisms more in depth, you can go here to gain an evolutionary explanation. Stephen Meyer and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute are those who best explain the problem of the creation of biological information, and you can find more information here or here (the first article has a link that connects to a book on this topic by Stephen Meyer). As well, both ICR (here) and evolutionnews (here) mention an article by two non-Christian scientists that says that chemical reactions do not appear to be sufficient for the evolution of life, and speaks about the possibility of information and networks, instead of chemistry, as the key for the formation of life. However, they don’t really give a clear explanation about how this works. The original article is available here, although you have to pay for it.

So, those are the points that most catch my attention regarding the origins of life. It is a huge topic, and there are many things that I have not mentioned. As always with this topic, I have more questions than answers. If I had to choose my own position, I would probably align most closely with those who argue for Intelligent Design, but my position has changed various times in my life, and could very possibly change again in the future. As Denis Venema said in the article that I mentioned before, the lack of answers does not necessarily mean that there aren’t answers, just that we don’t have them right now. But right now there appear to be some significant barriers for science to show that evolution without God isn’t possible.

But – and this but is very important – this doesn’t mean that I’m completely against the concept of evolution without the direct intervention of God and through completely natural means, even though it presently seems incredibly hard to believe. It is possible that we will find answers to all of the problems that I have mentioned, and many others that I haven’t. Maybe we will someday be able to fill in the holes of our understanding with knowledge. And that would be fine. Even if we discover that it was not necessary for God to intervene to create new species and form life from non-life, I would still continue with my faith. Why? Because it still seems that our universe needs something (or someone) outside of itself to start it. Because even though science might be able to explain the “how” of life, it’s terrible at explaining the “why”. Because there are still various other lines of reasoning that point to God. And more than anything because our faith isn’t centred on how God created the world, but on the person, death and resurrection of Jesus.

But apart from all that, the conclusion that I’ve come to about the whole debate between creation and evolution is that we are wasting a lot of time discussing a secondary matter. I don’t believe that the Bible, and the first chapter of Genesis in particular, was written to give a scientific explanation of the creation of the world. I’m not a scientist, but I am a theologian, at least to some degree. I study the Bible a lot, and I don’t think this creation/evolution debate captures the point of what the Bible is saying. I will do a post soon about this (well, as soon as possible with 4 kids, work, and taking classes), but first I have to deal with the question of what it means to “take the Bible seriously”, a discussion very important (at least within Christian circles) to be able to discuss the significance of a lot of Biblical passages – especially Genesis 1.

If you have a comment or question, please put drop me a note below. God bless.

Versión español

Over my first few posts, I’ve looked at how faith has been a struggle for me, but how I’ve ultimately come down strongly on the side of believing in the truth of Christianity and some of the reasons for that decision, as well as explaining the concept of faith. Over the next few weeks, I want to examine some of the reasons for faith that I listed in my initial post, and give a little more detail about them.

The first topic I want to address is the topic of science and faith, although to be precise, I am referring far more to the debate about the origins of humanity – evolution and creation. I dare say that virtually all of us are fine with science when we’re talking about repeatable events and technology in our life (as in, we all agree that science has a method and it produces results that we can acknowledge as valid). But the matter of origins is a different one, because it can’t be repeated and most of the evidence is circumstantial or based on speculation. This has been a topic of significant interest to me for years, and one that gets a lot of attention in our North American society. But before I even touch on anything remotely scientific, I think that there are a few details we need to examine so that we can approach this topic reasonably instead of fanatically. So, here are a few things I want you to think about before we dive into the scientific (and later, Biblical) details.

How qualified are you?

The obvious first question for us to ask is, how qualified are we to deal with scientific matters? Let’s be honest, the field of science is a vast and hugely technical one, and most of us aren’t qualified to weigh and assess the different arguments. For example, where would you rate yourself on the following scale?

1. Virtually no scientific knowledge. Don’t know, don’t care.
2. I can answer basic questions, don’t mind science
3. I enjoy science and research questions that I have
4. I love science, study it hard, and (likely) have a science degree and job
5. I am an expert in at least one scientific field and informed in others

I would put myself firmly in group 3, and have been tempted at times to pursue a degree or career in science, but life has taken me other directions. I would guess that the vast majority of people fit into groups 1-3, and only a small percentage make it to group 5. This makes it very difficult to have a strong, studied opinion. It’s not impossible to be informed, but we run the risk of holding strong opinions that are, quite simply, wrong.

Quantity of Information

Another challenge facing us “average” people is the sheer quantity of information available to us in our society. There is a reason that this is called the information age. The amount of research that is available to us at any given moment is staggering. A quick Google search on “ human origins” came up with 18 million articles! While obviously a lot of those results would go in completely different directions than just scientific knowledge, and much of the information would be repeated, it still highlights the fact that there is too much information for any one person to know it all. The average person is bombarded with conflicting viewpoints and has very little ability to discern which are credible, and which are pure nonsense. Which leads to another problem:

Disagreement in the Research

There are a lot of very smart people in this world. Many of them are scientists who have devoted their lives to research and study scientific issues, and in particular, issues related to the origins of the world and humanity. But the reality is, they don’t agree with each other. If you have ever watched a debate between scientists with differing points of views, it becomes evident very quickly that there is significant disagreement about which studies or science is accurate and valid, which sources are credible, and even the definitions of many of the concepts that are being debated. The so-called average person is left struggling to know what is most significant and who is performing a slight-of-hand.

Another source of confusion is the shifting of scientists from one school of thought to another. While there are many variations of beliefs regarding origins, as a Christian I notice four different groups that jump out. There are the atheists and/or naturalists who believe that everything has a natural cause and that God doesn’t exist or at least doesn’t participate in creation and our world at all. Then there are Christians that fit into three different categories: Those who believe in God but believe that he created the world through natural means (theistic evolution, such as that espoused by BioLogos); those who believe that he interceded supernaturally and directed the evolutionary process (Intelligent Design such as the Discovery Institute); and those who believe that God created the world in six literal days as laid out in the Bible (Young-Earth Creationists such as the Institute for Creation Research). Note: I point to these organizations and web pages only as examples of each view. Explore them or others at your leisure to get an idea of the different views.

Each of these different viewpoints can claim scientists who are considered experts in their fields (doctorates, professors, researchers, etc.). And each group holds people who were “led by the evidence” to move from one set of beliefs to another. There are atheists who used to be Christians but scientific study led them to abandon their belief in God. But there are also atheists who have become Christians and joined one of the Christian camps and who were led that way by the science that they were studying. And there are Young Earth Creationists who have become Intelligent Designers, who have become Evolutionary Theists, and so on. Who knows how many people have moved from one camp to another, or if one is more common than another? So ultimately, we’re left with a bunch of different scientists, usually very intelligent people dedicated to their science, who can’t agree on how things got started. And if they can’t agree or even make up their own mind, why do we think that we can provide all the answers to the questions of our origins?

The lie of objectivity

This brings up a point that many mention regarding Christians who are scientists. The argument is that because the Christian believes in God and the Bible “by faith”, this means that they are reading their own beliefs into their research and are not objective. First off, I would just like to remind you of what I just pointed out – that many scientists have become Christians because of the science that they are studying, not in spite of it. Science influenced and led them to change their beliefs, not the other way around.

But more importantly, the reality is that it is very hard, if not impossible, for anyone to be truly objective. Everyone brings a whole lot of previous experiences and a set of beliefs to their life. Every atheist, every Christian, every person has a million different things that have shaped their lives, their presuppositions, and the lens that they use to interpret their findings. We are not truly objective, no matter how hard we might try. The best we can do is try to be aware of the influences in our life and the worldview or beliefs we are bringing to our work and life. Any scientist, whether Christian or not, is approaching his or her work with a specific worldview and history which influences how they do their work, and in particular, how they interpret their data. Obviously, some data is more open to interpretation than other, but the point remains the same. The atheist and naturalist who has already written off the possibility of God and supernatural intervention, for whatever reason, is no less guilty of interpreting according to their worldview than the Christian. Which leads me to the next point…

The role of faith

This is a tricky one to explain. Basically, the thought or accusation is that Christians “live by faith”, while science is based on facts. What people often mean by this is that Christians don’t care about facts, or that there is nothing provable in Christianity, while science is all about proof and demonstrable facts. The idea is that one is based on belief or faith (implying lack of evidence), while the other is based on study and proof.

I want to push back against this on a few levels. First of all, as I explained in my last post, faith is based on knowledge. So I have faith in Christianity because I have studied the historical records and analyzed it from many different angles, and have come to believe (have faith) that Jesus is the Son of God. Similarly, I have studied the origins of the earth and humanity from many angles, as best as I am able, and I have come to believe (have faith) that the evidence points to the existence of God. Many other people far more intelligent than me have come to the same conclusion. So we have faith in God’s existence and his creation because of evidence, not in spite of it.

But the reality is that other people have investigated the same issues and come to a different conclusion. They have decided that the evidence is against Jesus being the Son of God and God being the creator of the world. We all look at the same evidence, and arrive at different conclusions. So why is one side (Christians) accused of being irrational or against evidence? If the evidence was so clear that (virtually) everyone agreed, then there would be no faith involved. But if significant numbers of people disagree on an issue, then both sides are exercising faith when they choose to believe something, because the evidence is not strong enough for it to be conclusive. In other words, both sides live by faith.

To expand this point, think about how we analyze the information we receive. We are bombarded by news reports and studies that talk about the advances or changes in our understanding of human origins. Depending what you read or who you listen to, the investigations point one way or another. Even the same study can be proclaimed as evidence for evolution (or creation), then ripped apart by opponents for various reasons, or turned to demonstrate the opposite of what it was originally claimed to show. Each person has to analyze the information and make a decision about what reports are valid and accurate. Since many of us don’t have the critical abilities to verify the accuracy of a scientific study, we base our choice of who to believe on any number of things: how does this match up with other studies? Do I trust the person that authored this study? Does it match up with my already decided worldview? Does the author, or his opponent, sound more credible? Not even scientists rigorously review every single study that comes out, though they are more likely to review and critique at least some of them. What I’m saying is that the study of our origins is loaded with faith choices that we all make. There is simply too much information for us to weigh, and most of it is far too technical for us to understand, so we trust (have faith in) the people that we’ve chosen to believe and listen to. And often times, the reason we’ve chosen to believe them has nothing to do with the actual evidence, and much more to do with other factors. So both sides “live by faith” – that is, everyone chooses to believe something they cannot absolutely prove, but which has some evidence to support it. And both sides think that the evidence supporting their beliefs is overwhelming. But if it was, we wouldn’t be having this debate, would we?

Just one further note related to this. At present, the “majority opinion” in the scientific community comes down on the side of evolution with no need for God. I think it’s fair to ask whether the majority opinion is always right. Many of the people who hold this view were brought up in a society with an aggressive anti-supernatural view and taught with the assumption that either God didn’t exist or that science was proving He wasn’t necessary. God was an old-fashioned belief from a primitive or uncivilized time. It is natural, given this base assumption, that most people will assume that evolution is true without even examining it closely. I am curious how many of the people raised within this belief system have ever pushed back against this assumption and tested to see if it is valid. I don’t have an answer for that, but I suspect that there are a lot of unrecognized assumptions in the beliefs of many scientists, and that these assumptions influence their work.

Conclusion

So, what do I want you to take from this? Just a few things.

1. Humility – be honest about your own scientific knowledge, even if you’re a scientific expert. When it comes to the question of origins, a lot of very smart people hold to a lot of very different views. And while many (most?) of them hold those views because they believe that’s where the evidence points, many (on both sides) probably hold them because of underlying assumptions and beliefs. And those of us who are not experts especially need to hold our scientific views loosely.
2. Faith – acknowledge where you are exercising faith, or better said, that you are choosing to believe many things that you have not personally examined closely. How many experts and opinions do you believe that you have never actually studied? How many tests have you done yourself as opposed to simply accepting the conclusions of others? What are the assumptions or motives underlying the different experiments and how they are reported and interpreted? How well do you know the character and the credibility of the people you are choosing to believe?  Why do you choose to believe them over other people that you have also not studied? I suspect that you will discover you know very little about most of these people and experiments, including the assumptions that have gone into them. The reality is, in order to do our job and live our life, we need to believe in a lot of people and things that we simply can’t study – we don’t have the time, knowledge or energy to personally validate everything. But we do need to be honest about the amount of untested faith we are demonstrating.

This post pushes us hard towards skepticism, and I don’t apologize for that. No matter where you are personally in your view regarding the origins of humanity, I think we need to examine our position closely. There is a lot of arrogance in this debate, from both sides, and the vast majority of it is misplaced. I think it is crucial for all of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, to acknowledge that there is still far more that we don’t know about the scientific details of our origins than we do know. And quite frankly, many of us waste a lot of time arguing about details that we’re not really qualified to argue about.

Over the next few posts, I will lay out where I stand on the scientific evidence, and then what I think the Bible points us to in regards to creation. My next post in particular, about the scientific evidence, is certainly not intended to answer all the questions or prove one thing or another. I will simply be explaining the items that stand out the most to me and which have led me to a stronger faith in the Bible and in Jesus, as opposed to throwing Christianity out altogether. You, of course, will have to do your own research, examine your own biases, and draw your own conclusions.

As always, feel free to drop any comments below. I won’t always respond to them in timely fashion (my life is busy like anyone else’s), but I will definitely read them. Until next time, then, God bless.

Versión Español

My apologies for not having written anything for a while. Between a trip to Venezuela and my parents visiting for a couple weeks, among other things, I haven´t had a lot of extra time to write lately. Also, fair warning that this post is much longer than I had expected. For those who don’t want to read a mini-book, you can scroll down to the “Summary” at the end of the page to get the short version of what this post addresses.

Faith
Although faith is essentially the key element of Christianity (see Paul’s argument in Romans 3-5), it is also one of those slippery concepts that is hard to define and difficult to grasp. It includes concepts such as trust and belief, and is often set up as the opposite of proof and/or certainty (see the second definition according to the Oxford Dictionary).

The results of this confusion can be quite negative. Opponents of Christianity can often reject Christianity because they think they will have to shut off their brains. Christians often beat themselves up for their low level of faith, especially if a particular miracle they were seeking doesn’t occur. Honest inquiries can be shut down because “you just have to have faith.” All told, this concept, which is supposed to be a treasure of the Christian faith, becomes a stumbling block and a source of stress to many. So how can we try to grab hold of this idea of faith in a way that makes sense, but also elevates it back to it’s valued position in our lives?

I don’t claim to have all the answers to this, but hopefully some of these thoughts can help us move in the right direction. Feel free to add your own thoughts below, but in the meantime, here are two concepts to reflect on.

The Foundation of Faith is Knowledge
This sounds counterintuitive at first. We have developed the idea that faith requires a lack of certainty. When we talk about acting in faith or having faith, we tend to think of a lack of knowledge, believing in spite of evidence to the contrary, blind faith, or walking by faith – believing in something that we can’t see. I will agree to some aspects of these ideas, but far too often we turn faith into “wishful thinking” or intense emotions that we try to stir up within ourselves. But I believe that our actions of faith (stepping out into what we cannot see) are only actions of faith if they are firmly based on knowledge and certainty. If not, they are at best flights of fancy, and at worst attempts to manipulate God to do what we want Him to do.

Let’s give a practical example. I have faith in my wife. Specifically, I have faith that my wife will not abandon me for another man or have an affair. That faith allows me to go away for a few days or even weeks without worrying about our relationship or how she will act. But why do I have that faith? Simple – because I have known her for years. After nearly 15 years of marriage, I know her extremely well, and therefore I have faith in her. In fact, over those 15 years, my faith in her has grown steadily, because she has demonstrated to me time and again that she is worthy of that faith. Faith is based on knowledge.

But, some might ask, can’t that faith be shaken? Haven’t many people found out the hard way that their spouse wasn’t worthy of their faith, that they didn’t really know them? The answer is a clear and obvious yes, faith can be shaken! But the key here is not whether my faith was misplaced, but whether my knowledge was faulty. In virtually every case where faith has been shaken, it’s either because the person proved through their actions that they weren’t worthy of faith (therefore strong faith never should have developed in the first place) or because the knowledge of this person was faulty and incomplete. In many of the cases of affairs or other nasty developments in relationships, the person guilty of the offense was hiding things from the other person (or that person simply didn’t care to see the truth). So again, the foundation of faith is knowledge, and faith is shaken by lack of knowledge.

This is true for virtually anything or anyone that we have faith in – I can’t easily think of examples where this would not apply. We have faith that the sun will come up. Why? Because it always does. We have faith that the chair will hold us. Why? Because they virtually always do (and in the few cases where it doesn’t, our knowledge of that chair was incomplete or faulty!) We have faith that certain people or businesses or ventures are trustworthy because of our experience of them or our knowledge about them. Conversely, we have faith that certain people or businesses or ventures are not trustworthy, again because of what we know.

In fact, I would go so far as to argue that “blind faith” is practically non-existent. We are always making our decisions of faith based on something – our impressions, our gut feeling, our trust in an individual, etc. There may be many times where our faith is misinformed, severely lacking in knowledge, or foolish, but it’s virtually never blind. There is always some sort of knowledge that surrounds it and informs it.

So now we apply this to God. The Bible is clear that we are saved by faith; however, this does not mean that we are making a decision based on lack of awareness. At the very least, when a person decides to follow Jesus, they have a knowledge of their sinfulness (or else why are they choosing to follow him?) and who Jesus is. The level of knowledge at the beginning might be very simple, and their decision might even be based on knowing the person telling them about Jesus more than knowing God! But they are taking a step of faith based on knowledge of some sort.

Of course, as with any relationship or venture, the level of knowledge must grow for the faith to grow. In the beginning, many things can shake our faith – unanswered prayer, tough questions, disapproval from people we love and respect, or any number of challenges. And if we never grow in our knowledge of God and our relationship with God, our faith will be very weak and immature. But as we grow in our knowledge of God and in our relationship with him, our faith begins to grow. The more that we know about God and Christianity, the more our faith can grow. This has certainly been true in my life as I have come across many challenges to Christianity. The more I have studied and looked for answers, the more my faith has grown, even though I don’t have all the answers by far. And the more that we know God personally (through our study of the Bible, prayer, listening to His voice and interacting with him), the more our faith grows. Again, as I have seen God answer prayers (sometimes very specific ones in very specific ways) and speak into my life, I have grown in my faith.

Faith at work
This concept of knowledge as the basis of faith is important because faith is always shown through action, and that action usually involves a level of uncertainty.

If we return to my example of having faith in my wife, the action of faith is leaving for a stretch of time. It is certainly true that in my absence something could happen. I cannot objectively prove to someone that I can trust my wife while I’m gone. If I didn’t have faith in her, I would never feel comfortable leaving. But I do have faith in her. I am certain that I can leave for a stretch of time and sleep peacefully at night knowing that she will be faithful to me. My knowledge has led to faith, which allows me to take an action (do something!) based on that faith.

We see this time and time again in the Bible. God spoke to Abraham. Because of this revelation (knowledge) Abraham had faith in God – He had spoken to him! This faith allowed Abraham to leave his home and follow God. Later, because God had spoken to him and shown Himself faithful, Abraham was able to act again in faith by being willing to offer his son as a sacrifice. He knew that God would be faithful. “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8), and later, “He considered that God was able even to raise him [his son, Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Hebrews 11:19). Surely in both these cases trying to explain his actions or “prove” that they were valid would have been difficult. These steps of faith would have looked foolish and must still have been very difficult, but the knowledge-inspired faith allowed Abraham to take action, even without being able to see how it would work out.

We see it again in Matthew 9:20-21 where a woman suffering from bleeding knew that she just needed to touch Jesus to be healed (the text indicates certainty). She knew who Jesus was. That knowledge led to faith, which led to action. In Luke 7:1-10, we find a centurion who knew how authority worked and who Jesus was, so he told Jesus that he only needed to say the word to heal his servant, which Jesus did – and then commended him for his faith. In both these cases, objectively speaking, there was uncertainty. These two could not have proven to anyone that Jesus would do what they asked. But their knowledge gave them faith, and their faith led to action.

On the other side of things, the crowds at Jesus home town “knew” who he was (or thought they did!), and this faulty knowledge prevented Jesus from doing any miracles (Matthew 13:53-58). Although we never state it, we often assume in this passage that Jesus tried to do miracles but couldn’t. I don’t think this is an accurate assumption. Considering their reaction to him, I suspect he only did a few miracles because nobody even bothered asking him. Their lack of faith (based on faulty knowledge) prevented them from even paying attention to him. Or what about Thomas, who refused to believe in Jesus even though he had 10 of his closest friends (the other apostles) and various women telling him that they had seen Jesus, not to mention the empty tomb that he could investigate for himself. He had plenty of knowledge, but was not willing to take a step of faith based on that knowledge. No wonder Jesus chastised him for his lack of faith. Jesus wasn’t promoting blind faith from Thomas or from us, he was just expecting belief in the evidence he was given! (Here we see another reality: faith is based on knowledge, but knowledge does not always lead to faith. We have to make a decision based on the evidence we have.)

But we must be cautious with this idea of faith based on knowledge, because there are two different ways of knowing God, both of which apply faith in different ways. The first is our general knowledge of God and who He is. He is a good, yet righteous, God. He loves us. He will be with us. He is all powerful and able to do all things. We have faith in God and pray and act according to what we know about God in general. These acts include things such as sharing about Jesus with others, praying for them, and trusting God and continuing to obey in difficult times. We do indeed live by faith – our knowledge of God informs how we live and the decisions that we make.

But God is also sovereign. This means that we also need know (or at least seek to know) God’s specific will for specific situations, and what He wants in them. For example, I have had a bad back for years. I have asked for healing from God many times in regards to my back, as well as seeing various chiropractors and health professionals and taking whatever other steps I can to help it. To date, none of those prayers (or other methods) have brought healing. It is easy to ask the question, “Do I not have enough faith?” In fact, one time that someone was praying for me, they asked if I had ever prayed in faith, believing that God would heal me, and when I hesitated in my answer (I’ll get to that in a moment), they said that “this time” we would pray in faith, believing that God would heal me. I didn’t get healed.

The problem with these types of scenarios (often base around seeking miracles, although not always), is that we end up blaming ourselves or others for not having enough faith. We end up approaching faith like a feeling or a sentiment that, if we can just stir up enough of it, will make God do what we want him to do. But this seems utterly unfair and even unbiblical to me. It is true that Jesus chastised the disciples for their lack of faith a few times (see Matthew 17:19-20 and 8:26 and the parallel passages, Mark 4:40 and Luke 8:25), but these occasions seem to be more focused on their absolute lack of faith, not how intense it was on a scale of 1-10. In fact, on two separate occasions, he tells them that they only need faith the size of a mustard seed to cast a mountain or a mulberry bush into the sea (Luke 17:5-6 and Matthew 17:19-20)!

See, if we just approach faith like something we need to “muster up”, then we are forever falling short, even though we only need faith the size of a mustard seed (barely any!) But if we approach it first and foremost as faith based on our knowledge of God in general, and then based on our knowledge of what God wants in this specific situation, we have a very different view of faith. In response to the situation about my back, I pray with absolute faith that Jesus can heal me if he wants. But I have never heard him clearly saying that he wants to and plans to heal my back. In fact, I have received constant encouragement and peace from the passage in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, where Paul pleads with God to remove his “thorn in the flesh” (whatever that was), and God tells him that His grace is sufficient. As I listen to God, it seems that His response to my request for healing is “My grace is sufficient.” I will continue to ask for healing at times, especially when it flares up, because that’s what I want and maybe He will have a different answer later. But I no longer beat myself up for a lack of faith like I used to (and see others do)!

At times a person’s faith in the general character of God may bring about healing, but would it ever overcome His specific will in a specific situation? Or put another way, can a person “work up” enough faith to move a mountain if God doesn’t want the mountain to be moved? The idea is foolish, and yet that is often how we approach faith. “If I just work up enough faith, if I just believe hard enough, then God will do what I want!!” No, He won’t. Jesus only did what the Father willed and showed him (John 4:34, 6:38, 8:28) – which, by the way, included him leaving places where people were still looking for him, and not healing absolutely everyone – so why should we think that we can do whatever we want without knowing whether it is what God wants? The assumption behind God’s promises to answer our prayers or bring healing or move mountains is that we are praying according to His will. If not, well, good luck with that!

All of this leads to a few practical steps in regards to faith.

1. Focus on knowing God. Learn about God, learn about the Bible, learn about our faith. But also know God personally. Pray, read Scripture, study God by yourself and with others, learn to listen to His voice, try different spiritual disciplines. The better you know God and the more you experience Him, the more your faith will grow.
2. Don’t panic about doubt or things that may shake your faith. They are opportunities to learn about God and to know Him more. Sometimes our knowledge is inadequate, and we need to increase it. Sometimes it is faulty, and we need to alter it. Questions and doubts do not prove a lack of faith, only a lack of knowledge. And you can grow in that!
3. Live by faith in what we know. We all have a level of knowledge about Jesus and the Word of God (if we are Christians). Living by faith is nothing more than taking our knowledge of God and acting on it. Most days this is not anything crazy like giving away all of our money or launching on a major adventure. But it shows up in a lot of little things that are still challenging – loving the difficult neighbour, forgiving someone who offends us, sharing the good news of Jesus when it comes up, telling the truth, making ethical business decisions. Each of these (and others) requires us to take what we know and act on it, usually without being able to see what will happen as a result.
4. Seek to know God’s specific will in situations. Don’t beat yourself or others up for their lack of faith, especially when you don’t see miracles happen! Seek to know what God wants in a situation (and invite others to help you discern that), then act according to what He reveals. Maybe He will give specific guidance on what He wants in a situation, and then we need to act on that. Maybe He won’t, and then we need to act wisely based on what we know of Him in general and what the situation calls for. But let’s not “wish really hard” for something and call it acting in faith.

Faith is a beautiful reality of life. We all live by faith regularly – faith in institutions, people, ideas, theories. No one is exempt, Christians least of all. But our faith isn’t just wishful thinking or an attempt to manipulate God to do our will. Our faith is firmly based on a knowledge of God – both general and personal. Let us seek to know Him more, so that we might live more and more fully in faith.

Summary
The problems that I see with faith (especially in the church) is twofold:

First, faith is seen as believing something without evidence. I think that the Bible clearly shows us that faith is believing something based on what we know. It is true that there might be gaps or we might not have perfect knowledge, but any time we show faith, it is based on what we know. It is not faith to believe something that we have no evidence for – that is wishful thinking or, at times, just plain foolishness.

Second, faith is viewed sometimes as an intense feeling that people use to try to make God do what they want him to do. We do not get what we want by trying harder to believe. Nor do we make God do stuff just by our intensity of belief. If God has revealed something to us, then we can have faith. If he has not revealed His will, then we cannot have faith in a specific action by Him.

To be practical (because this is the most common scenario where we get confused about faith), we know that God sometimes heals and sometimes doesn’t. So we can have faith that God is able to heal, but unless He has specifically showed us that His will is to heal in this specific circumstance, we cannot have faith that He will (guaranteed!) heal us (or whoever needs healing). It’s impossible to have faith in something we don’t know. I have seen countless examples of people trying to force themselves to have faith or make God heal someone by faith when there is no indication that He is willing to heal in that circumstance. The resulting devastation when they don’t receive an answer and, at times, loss of faith in God, is painful to watch and entirely unnecessary.

We grow in faith by knowing God better. The better we know Him, and the more we are able to discern His specific will in a variety of circumstances, the better we are able to stand strong in our faith, because our faith has a solid foundation and a proper perspective.

Versión Español

Every once in a while, I wake up in the morning and I’m not sure if I believe anymore.

I’m the rational sort. I like understanding things and the reasons why they are the way they are. I like having answers and solving problems. I like being able to explain things and prove my point of view. And while Christianity is rational in a lot of ways and has lots of things that can be studied and proved and examined, it ultimately comes down to faith. And I don’t like that.

Faith is hard for me. I’m not the person who will advocate so-called “blind faith” – I think that faith involves a lot more knowledge than we sometimes give it credit for, a topic I’m sure I’ll address at some point. But despite this, faith still involves taking a deliberate step into or onto or toward something that we can’t see clearly. Something we can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, often to ourselves, and especially to others.

At times I look at the Christian story and simply think, “Really? I believe that?” I think about my high school intellectual friends (because most of my friends were winning the “best student” awards) and imagine them looking at me and thinking, “He seemed so smart.” Of course, since we went different directions in life, I have little to no contact with any of those friends, so it’s all in my imagination, but still, that’s what I imagine many of them would say. Although maybe they would only grant me “sort of smart” status. I can live with that.

Regardless, I find myself periodically experiencing moments of doubt about Christianity. In fact, my theme verse in life feels like it should be John 20:29, where Jesus says to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” I envy Thomas because Jesus actually appeared to him – a proof that he hasn’t bestowed upon me. In my moments of doubt, that verse seems to mock me, holding up an ideal (belief without sight) that I struggle to hold firmly.

And yet, every time I experience doubt, I sit down and review my faith. I consider all the options – atheism, other religions, agnosticism, etc., and I always end up affirming once again my belief – my faith – in the Christian story. Why? What is it that I find so compelling, that keeps drawing me back even when I doubt?

There are many reasons, but here are a few of the key ones. I share them here for those of you who, like me, struggle to hold on to faith in a world that seems to want to pry it away from you, or for those of you who are considering your own faith journey. Feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comments section (if I actually managed to get this set up right and the comments section works!) I will likely expand on each of these in the future, but for now, I’ll try to keep the explanations brief.

1. Science doesn’t explain everything – I love science, but it doesn’t seem to make any sense if God is left out of the equation. There seem to be many questions that science doesn’t answer, and gaps that don’t seem likely to be filled through natural means. Lots more that could be said about that, but I’ll leave it there for now.
2. I Love the story – The Christian story is fascinating to me: That God created this world for us, then essentially gave it to us to care for and develop, with the intent to help us through the process; that we rejected Him and have faced the consequences and failures that go with that, both personally and societally; that Jesus then showed up proclaiming the arrival of God’s kingdom and inviting us to join it and to reengage with God in building His kingdom here on earth (and eventually the fulfillment someday). I want to be part of that story, not just kick around this world trying to make myself happy, or survive, or get the most stuff.
3. Explanatory power – C.S. Lewis summed it up best when he said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” (In Is Theology Poetry, p. 15) Christianity makes sense of everything else in the world. Created in God’s image, people are capable of tremendous good and love. Yet corrupted by sin, they are also capable of the foulest, most evil deeds imaginable, as well as everything that falls between those extremes. Add to that our desires for beauty, love, meaning and justice, which point to a reality beyond us. To me, Christianity explains the world and what I experience perfectly.
4. Archaeology and history – While there are still questions and debates that rage, for the most part the history of the Bible is solid. Places exist. Details line up. Inconsistencies and questions are solved again and again. That doesn’t mean that everything is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, it simply means that I have many reasons to trust the Bible and what it says. This is in stark contrast to other holy books (the Book of Mormon is the most notable in this regard) and in contrast to the many efforts from those trying to prove the Bible false.
5. Experience of the supernatural – This is a tricky one, because many people from many different faiths or backgrounds have had supernatural experiences. As well, there are significant forces that can influence our experiences – our history, moods, false information or assumptions, expectations, etc. But at the same time, I cannot ignore the few experiences of the supernatural that I have had, nor am I willing to write off every story of healing, speaking in tongues, and other things that I hear about. To be skeptical of individual supernatural experiences is understandable; to write off every experience of every person as superstitious or false is ridiculous and arrogant. I refuse to let supernatural experiences (mine or others) to be my only guide in life; however, when combined with the other elements mentioned here, the experience of God and the supernatural is a significant reason for my faith.
6. The Resurrection of Jesus – This is by far the core of my faith. Paul states it pretty clearly in 1 Corinthians 15:14 and 17, “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain… And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” Time and time again, I come back to the resurrection of Christ. I have looked at it from countless angles, examining the reliability of the New Testament, the growth of the church, the conversion of Paul, the accounts of his death, and so on. I know the arguments for and against, and over and over again I find myself affirming the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. This is a matter of faith, I know, but it is reasoned, logical faith – even thought I still find it hard to believe at times. And if this one act of history is true, then everything else flows from that.

And so I am a man of faith. I hold to what is considered orthodox Christianity not because I was raised that way or because I am ignorant of the real world or hiding from the difficult realities of life. I hold these views because as I reflect on life and history and science and Scripture, I find the best explanation is Christianity. When I consider my options, I find nothing as fulfilling and solid as Christianity.

So when the doubts arise I examine them. I turn them over in my mind. I research the questions that they raise – sometimes finding answers, sometimes not. I ask the hard questions, at times repeatedly. And then, eventually, I let them go. Because every time my reasons for faith are stronger than my reasons for doubt.