S2 E16 TRANSCRIPT
CREATION POINTS TO GOD
INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone and welcome to Spirit-Led Hope. My name is Glenn Erichsen, and in this episode, we are looking at the topic:
CREATION POINTS TO GOD
This episode is the second to the last episode of Season 2 (I know, the Season has gone quickly) and then we are going to take a break while I prayerfully consider what is next for Season 3. We will talk about that in the next episode.
WHY WE SHARE OUR BELIEFS ABOUT CREATION
For now, I want to pick up where we left off in the last episode. In Episode 15, we discussed how we share our beliefs about Creation. But here is the question, why should we share what we believe?
The answer depends on whether you believe in God or not. I know that most listeners to this podcast are Christians, but I know that some are not.
My first answer is for everyone. We should share what we believe about Creation because we are discussing existential questions. You may recall the three Big Questions we explored in previous episodes.
1. How did the Universe begin?
2. How did life begin?
3. What is my purpose and value in life?
These are questions that humans have tried to answer for thousands of years. If you follow world events at all, especially if you read science news feeds, you cannot escape the attention given to these questions.
Just before I sat down to do this podcast, I opened a science website to see the latest news. One of the first articles I saw was about how the author believed that recent models of plate tectonics may explain how life on Earth started so early. That is Big Question number 2.
Yesterday I listened to an interview with Robert Sapolsky who just published his book, “Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.” Sapolsky, like a growing number of scientists, believes there is no such thing as free will. Whether we have free will or not has tremendous implications for all three of the Big Questions. Humans want to know our beginnings and our worth.
Whether you believe in God or not, a humble discussion of these topics is important from a human perspective. A fascinating thing about these questions is that they take on many different forms. Your neighbor’s fixation on looking for aliens is rooted in a desire to know the origin of life. Your young friend’s fascination with the multiverse that is showing up in movies everywhere directly relates to questions about the origins of the universe. Many of the various political movements taking place today are concerned directly with the purpose and value of human life.
We can and should learn from each other even if we have radically different values and philosophies. And that certainly applies to a conversation between Christians and naturalists. But we do need to be grace filled and humble truth seekers when we share our beliefs.
For the Christian, there is an added reason why we should share our beliefs about Creation. For his own purposes, God has chosen Christians to be his ambassadors and to represent him. Because Creation is at the heart of the three Big Questions, our beliefs about the Creator of the Creation give us an opportunity to properly present God to others.
Now we all know that many Christians have done poorly in how they convey the heart of God to people. I have certainly had my moments of failure, and you probably have too. But if we can exercise humility, we will be successful sharing God’s love in a way that can be understood and received.
CREATION POINTS TO GOD
There will always be opportunities to share your beliefs about God and Creation because God has made it that way. The reality is, that Creation points to God. This is by design. God wants relationship with us and so he uses Creation to point to himself.
How does that work? How does Creation point us to God? It starts with our physical senses. We see the mountains and the moon. We touch the bark of a tree. We smell the flowers and hear the birds singing. We taste the honey.
As we begin to experience the world around us through our senses, we begin to engage our intellect and think about what our senses are revealing. We also engage our emotions and allow the beaty of nature to inspire us. We write poetry and songs about it.
But there is something more. Studies have shown that nature evokes in people what we would call a spiritual experience. Now, naturalists may take exception to the word “spiritual” and try to define it in terms of something like brain neurochemistry. But if you ask people to describe how nature makes them feel, you will often hear people talk about a “sense of the divine.” An awareness of something Greater.
Out of these experiences we begin to ask questions. Some of the questions we can answer, and some we cannot. But ultimately, we find that the deeper we go, we will eventually land on the three Big Questions about our origins and human purpose. And when we land on these questions, we find that God answers them directly.
God, knowing that humans would ask the three Big Questions, answers each one of them in the first chapter of the Bible. We read the entire first chapter of Genesis in Episode 8, and there we saw that God declares he is the origin of the universe, he is the origin of life, and that we have purpose and value because we are made in his image. We will talk more about being in God’s image in the next episode.
But here is the point I want to make…Creation points to God so clearly, that no one has an excuse for missing him. I have heard naturalists wonder why, if God exists, he is so hard to find. And the answer is that he is not hard to find because he made us in such a way that Creation points us to him.
God made us and Creation in such a way that we ask Big Questions. And when we ask these Big Questions, God answers them through what he has written, and through his ambassadors. If you are a Christian, our role as ambassadors is to do our job in a way that properly reflects God…including how we talk about Creation.
There are some verses written by the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans that have some very strong language. These verses say that no one has an excuse for not finding God. This is what we read in Romans 1:18-20.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20 ESV
Now these verses do talk about the wrath of God, but that can only be understood when looking at the bigger picture of God’s mercy and grace. Unfortunately, that is beyond what we are looking at in this episode. But here we do see that these verses uncomfortably say that the only way to not see God through Creation, is to train yourself not to see him…Paul says you suppress the truth if you do this.
And that is exactly what we see many advocates of naturalism doing. If you study the history of what happened after Georges Lemaitre suggested the universe had a beginning, you will see examples of this. Some of Lemaitre’s scientific peers purposely steered away from his theories just to avoid the implication that the Bible’s origin story is correct. This is what Paul was talking about.
WHY IS THE GENESIS ACCOUNT SO BRIEF?
While God does reveal himself through Creation, I think it is fair to ask why God seems to provide so few details. I mean, why is the Genesis Creation account so short? Why are there only 31 verses in the first chapter of the Bible about Creation? It seems like God could have provided more details.
Where are the explanations about dinosaurs? Why are there confusing verses that say things like “the earth brought forth living creatures?” What does that really mean?
I think there are three main reasons why the Genesis account is so brief.
The first reason is that Genesis was written for a purpose, and the details we would like do not fit that purpose. God did not dilute the answers to the three Big Questions with a lot of confusing details. The answers to the Big Questions are clear and succinct.
I find it interesting how many skeptics use the lack of information in Genesis Chapter One to reject the Bible. And this really is an unfortunate approach that keeps people away from a deep and healthy exploration of what is written in the Bible.
If you were reading a book of US history, would you expect it to teach you how to solve a trigonometry problem? Of course not! Why? Because the purpose of a history book is to teach history. One would use a book on mathematics to learn about trigonometry.
It is the same way with the Bible. The Bible is a book about God and his relationship to people. It records historical events. It ultimately shows the fall of humanity and God’s love and sacrifice to redeem everyone through Jesus. That is its purpose. We should not be surprised if we do not find an exhaustive account of all God did when he created everything.
The second reason why I believe the Genesis account is so brief is that belief in God will always require faith. Now I know that some naturalists find the concept of faith to be unsatisfactory, but it is an import piece of our relationship with God.
If God gave explicit details about every aspect of Creation, then science could only confirm Scripture. Given enough evidence, science would then, in essence, prove the existence of God. And this cannot be. God gives us free-will and a measure of faith. Both of those would disappear if the Creation account were expansive and every aspect shown to be true by science.
Love towards God can only be properly expressed though a choice. God gives us enough information about Creation to make an informed and rational decision combined with faith. It is an amazing balance reached exactly with what we see in the Bible. Too many details and there is no faith. Too few details, and there is not enough to engage the intellect.
By the way, earlier I mentioned the current trend towards not believing in free will. Take away free will and you have removed our capacity for meaningful love. In a future season we may need to explain how the existence of a spiritual world overcomes the philosophy of determinism and supposed lack of free will. But that is not for now!
The third reason why I believe the Genesis account is so brief is that it fits the Biblical pattern. For example, we see Jesus speaking in parables, and the Old Testament prophets giving partial glimpses of Jesus.
I know that some listening to this episode may not know a lot about the Bible but let me see if I can explain it enough, so that you understand what I am saying.
In the Old Testament, the time between Creation and the birth of Jesus, the Bible records the birth and early life of the Hebrews and focuses on the family descended from Jacob who became known as the Israelites.
Throughout their history, the Israelites went up and down in their relationship with God. But God loved them even though they frequently rejected him. To guide them, God inspired prophets to point the Israelites in the right direction. One of the things the prophets did was foretell the coming of the Messiah…who we know is Jesus.
The prophets painted a very interesting picture of the Messiah. Some of the prophets called him a King. Others called him a Suffering Servant. If you were to gather all the prophecies about the Messiah and put them together, you would see Jesus perfectly described.
But that is not what happened. The Israelites, especially the leaders, cherry picked the prophetic sayings they wanted and made the coming Messiah into the image that felt good to them. Because of this, they totally missed Jesus.
The point here, is that God spoke clearly about Jesus in an unfolding revelation. It was up to the Israelites to pay attention to what God was speaking through his prophets. It was important for the Israelites to ponder and worshipfully think about what God was saying.
In like manner, Jesus often spoke in parables. He did not always lay out a point-by-point thesis that you could follow without effort. Instead, it required active listening and meditation upon his words to understand what Jesus was conveying. Jesus was clear in what he spoke, but the form in which he spoke often challenged the listener to think more than superficially.
This is the Biblical pattern that I am referencing. It is that God often speaks to us in ways that require pondering and meditation. It is a way of speaking that deepens our relationship with God and expands our faith as we dig in and allow the Holy Spirit to give us insight and understanding.
And I think that maybe the Creation account is written a lot like this Biblical pattern. We can be so caught up in the details of Creation that we forget it is a topic meant to make us think. It is during the thinking and meditating process that we learn more about God, more about ourselves, and more about our relationship with God. As we study what Scripture says about Creation, and we explore the universe and life through science, our faith and relationship with God deepens as the Holy Spirit works within us.
There will always be the elements of a Holy Mystery whenever we examine the things of God. He is beyond us, but he reveals more of himself as we pursue him.
CLOSING
I hope that whatever your beliefs about Creation may be, that you go beyond the superficial and see what God might have for you, as you prayerfully and thoughtfully consider the scientific evidence and the scriptural account of Creation.
In our next episode, we will end Season 2 the way we started…with humility.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please email me at glenn@spiritledhope.com, or simply use the Contact Form at spiritledhope.com. That is spiritLEDhope.com.
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As we close this episode:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Until next episode, take care.
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