Mr. Meyer,

I received a link from my cousin, that you will be giving
weekly seminars on the CSU campus.  I think it is great you are doing
this, as college is a time where confusion may arise due to new facts
of science that are given to students.

There is one question I would like to ask.  I see from your blog
profile that you have some experience in the field of science, which
is admirable if you are going to speak on the subject.  I also see
that you support books, DVDs, and websites that maintain a young-earth
creationist view.  My question is this: If God made the universe the
way it is, why has God made the evidence across many branches of
science appear that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the
universe is 13.7 billion years old?  In other words, why did He
deliberately cause such misleading evidence?

This question comes with good intentions, as I am not wanting to
debate.  I would really like to know your thoughts.  I think we both
know this is a big question, as it impacts the credentials of Genesis,
and thus the theology of Christ Himself.

Thank you kindly,
JK

Dear J,

Thanks for your great question.  I wrestled with it myself a number of years ago when I began to seriously ask about the age of the earth issue.

For me, the first question was what constraints I had to accept because of Scripture.  Does the Bible allow various interpretations on age, or is a short time frame required by an honest reading of the text.  Obviously, there are sincere believers that answer that question differently, just as is the case with other important doctrines of the faith.  Trying to approach the subject as objectively as possible, I read and watched material from both a young and old earth creationist perspective.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that accepting both an inerrant view of Scripture and an old universe required such a loss of historical support for key Christian doctrines that those doctrines lost all connection with the real world.  For example,

- Homo Sapiens must have existed for at least 100,000 years if conventional geology is correct.  But if Adam as the first human was a historical person he could not have lived nearly that long ago.  It is hard to accept Homo Sapiens existing before Adam who are somehow not human, i.e., not made “in God’s image”.  Yet if Adam was not a historical person then I lose any real meaning to the fact that Jesus was the Second Adam.

- If the world is old then death has been the primary means to biological progress.  But Scripture indicates that death is an enemy that entered with Adam’s sin.

- Genesis 1 tells me that all animals ate plants in the beginning, but the fossil record is full of carnivores.

- If the world is old then a world-wide flood could not have happened because the geologic record reveals time not catastrophe and a year long global inundation would leave tremendous evidence that is apparently not there.  However, if the world is young then only a world-wide flood could explain the fossil record.

- On top of all of this, Jesus referred to both Adam and Noah has historical figures and based teachings about present issues (marriage) as well as future ones (his return) on the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis.

Eventually I concluded that the Bible presents a very complete, logical, consistent view of God, man and life if Genesis is taken as simple history.  But if Genesis is allegorical then Jesus’ death for sin, his resurrection as a victory over death, and the qualities of the promised Kingdom all lose a context that explains their meaning.

Having come to that conclusion about Scripture and doctrine, I then turned to see if the case for an old earth was really as solid as our cultural paradigm claims it to be.  Though I admit the idea seems strange to everyone who has not looked into it, there is actually very good evidence that the earth is young.

Probably the most difficult question in light of a young universe is that of distant starlight.  But it turns out there are a host of difficult questions for the proposal of an old earth and universe.  The geology of the earth fits much better as an explanation of a flood that as the result of vast amounts of time (for one thing among many, layers such as those that exist in nearly all of the geologic column are formed by rapidly moving water, not stationary seas).  The presence of C14 in every tested carbon source on earth is so far unexplainable by any old earth scenario (C14 has a half-life of 5740 years and should be undetectable after 100,000 years).  The new evidence for genetic entropy would seem to make a long time frame for complex life forms such as ourselves impossible.

I have looked into a long list of age related evidences that are available on the web or in books and I have found a great deal of material that 6 years of college science education never directed me to.  And I have become satisfied that an honest look reveals that God did not “deliberately cause such misleading evidence”.

But one then can ask, why do we all “know” that the world is old?  I’m not sure why that knowledge seems so certain.  The idea of an eternal universe has been part of many cultures and goes back to the earliest Greek writings.  So apparently the human mind can gravitate that way without any need for scientific support.  In our own day the idea of an old universe is tied to evolution, and so is the legally required view in education and the culturally required view in all research.  I think we all sense that questioning the age of the earth cannot be done as a scientific pursuit in our culture – the a priori assumption is that the question is religiously motivated and is an inappropriate intrusion of faith into the established facts of the physical world.  I would say I have learned that those facts are actually not established at all.

I would also add that coming to finally believe that Genesis actually is history has profoundly strengthened my faith.  This is what Peter, Paul, and all the other writers of the New Testament believed and wrote in light of.  This is what Jesus believed and taught.  This makes the uniqueness of human life, the sanctity of marriage, the purpose of morality, the equality yet complementary nature of gender, the brokenness of our world, and both the nearness and distance of God all make perfect sense.  If Genesis is history Christianity is reality and I understand why Jesus is good news.  If Genesis is not history then Christianity floats in mid air – glorious yet irrational and perhaps in this life, only internal.  If time and evolution are God’s means, there is good reason to question even the miraculous claims related of Jesus.

This may be a longer answer than you were looking for, but it has been an important question for me and I think should be for many believers.  It changes how I think about the One I am praying to.  That has become very precious to me.

Respectfully,

John Meyer

Why look for scientific evidence for matters of religious faith?  Is it even right to try to support our faith with evidence?

Such questions are common in the postmodern idea of God and faith.  But Christianity, when rightly understood, cannot be contained or explained in that postmodern paradigm.  Christianity claims to describe a universal truth that applies to every person, in every culture, past, present and future.  Christianity claims that even if it is not believed or known the truths it describes determine an eternal outcome for every person.  Christianity claims to be somewhat like a scientific law.  It is truth about the universe that is operating whether we understand it, agree with it or believe it.

Claims to universal truth need evidence of some sort that everyone can see or examine.   For example, when Newton proposed his laws of gravity, he stated that bodies were attracted to one another in proportion to the mass of those bodies, and he gave an equation for the relationship.  Anyone with an inclination to do so could do the experiments and calculations again and validate that Newton’s claims to this universal truth were in deed true.

Christianity’s universal claims go beyond just “spiritual” matters.  The claims of Christianity often relate to historical events and some have scientific implications as well.  If Christianity is universally true then the history it describes will be true and the implications in science will be verifiable.

Many Christians have accepted what has almost become a cultural truism – that the historical and scientific claims of the Bible have been demonstrated to be false.  Yet these Christians still hold to a belief in Christianity.  Such a view will eventually (as it should) lead to a loss of faith, both for the individual and in a culture as a whole.  No belief system should survive if the verifiable aspects of its universal claims have been invalidated.

I am convinced that Christianity is true and all it’s claims can be verified.  Jesus is Lord today, and the Person through whom a Creator God has entered, loved and redeemed a lost world.  Jesus is the Person to whom every individual will be universally accountable.  The Bible is the supernatural inspired record of God’s involvement with, and communication with, this world.

One of the reasons I am convinced of Christianity is that its scientific claims can be validated, despite the common assumption otherwise.   The surprising support for the Bible’s claims in the face of overwhelming cultural denial is itself an evidence for Christianity.

A century ago, theologian J. Gresham Machen warned, “it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. … as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.”

For me, science has been one of the doorways that has, unexpectedly, shown me that it is not Christianity that is the logical absurdity.  Sharing the evidence that supports the astonishing claims of Christianity is both a joy and a responsibility for me now.  My earnest hope is that this information can have the same profound impact on the faith of others that I have experienced.

The purpose of this post is to begin the question, what does God see – or want to see – when He looks at “male and female” in Man?  As we already addressed, the terms “male and female” are defined as terms of relationship.  OK.  But what is this relationship supposed to look like?

The first thing we can determine, is that the relationship pictured is complementary in nature.  This can be deduced from several factors.  First, male and female are different.  God could have created two identical beings; He was certainly not constrained by biology to create what He did.  Sexuality is one part of the greater relational picture; God was not forced to work it into the picture for the sake of reproduction.  And, sexual differences related to reproduction are only a small part of the physiological differences between men and women.  Hundreds of differences exist from average body size, percentage of body fat, heart rate, red blood cell count, hormonal differences and even how the brain is wired before birth.  This vast array of physiological differences are all intended by God to create relationship that is asymmetric.  In other words, male and female are supposed to be different, to relate to one another from different places, and so to represent different aspects of what is in God.

Genesis tells us about this complementary intention in another way.  From Genesis 1 we understand the absolute equality of the sexes.   Since both are made in the image of God, both have an intrinsic value, and both are absolutely and equally necessary for God’s representation on earth.  In all my reading and discussions on the issue of equality between the sexes, I have never found someone who can give me a rational basis for gender equality outside of the Biblical basis beginning in Genesis 1.  As far as I know, only those who believe in the Bible have a logical, rational worldview basis for this intrinsic equality.

Genesis 2 and 3 go on to define the diversity within the unity.  Adam is created first.  Adam is given specific instructions related to the garden and is entrusted with the command related to the forbidden fruit.  Though both male and female are to have dominion (1:26), Adam names the animals.  This unique, separate introduction of Adam must indicate a role for “male” in the image of God that is unique.  But perhaps most important in this unique, solitary introduction we find that in accomplishing all these things, and even walking with God Himself, Adam is found to be incomplete.  By design, God Himself cannot complete what Adam needs, for Adam is in the image of God.  Adam must be an “us” and an “our” (Genesis 1:26).  So in the finishing of the Creation the man becomes plural and out of himself comes another – one who is not a separate creation, but is really still him.  Yet not him at all, but clearly a separate person.  Yet not separate, but bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.  “Female” in the image of God was the only thing in all of creation that was not made out of that which was dead.  As Adam looked at Eve for the first time his mind must have been filled with wonder, awe and completeness.  This was “woman” for she was out of man.

To understand God’s purposes, we must not miss this.  Something before had been fundamentally and profoundly “not good”.  Though in face to face fellowship with his Creator, Adam was still alone.  Not even God’s presence could complete the relational picture of God’s image that He had begun.  But God brings a “helper suitable” from Adam’s side.  Asymmetric, complementary, “one flesh” lifelong relationship exists.  Man, the image of God, is now on the earth.   And suddenly, the fullness of the creation becomes “very good”.

Who could miss the parallel with the first two members of the Trinity?  God the Son has been eternally coexistent with the Father.  And both are One; there is only one God.  Yet somehow in that Oneness, the Father is first.  The Nicene Creed attempts to describe it for us – the Son is

eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

The man and the woman, from one being, yet two, united together being one flesh.  Eternal God, One God, yet two Persons in Father and Son.  And out of the relationship of Father and Son proceeds the Third person…

… the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

And from the loving relationship of the man and the woman proceeds the most amazing of all things – the image of God in their image comes forth.  Of them, yet separate. 

What then can we know of “male and female” as God has made it?   First of all, they are, in Genesis 1, not biological terms related to reproduction, they are relational terms corresponding to realities within God.  Biology and sexuality are merely some of the means by which God expresses the relational.  Second, the relational realities are complementary, not symmetric.  In both the way God created the male and the female (Adam first, Adam instructed, Eve from him, Eve as a helpmate), and in the myriad of created physical differences (physical, emotional, intellectual) between men and women, God is telling us there is something unique in both manhood and womanhood that captures what God is.  These two measures of, 1) what God created in male and female (with created differences) and, 2) how God created male and female (would anyone propose that God created the male giraffe or rabbit first in a similar process?) make clear that God has put something very intentional and very special in not just human beings, but in male and female.  The image of God does not reside in humans generically.  The image of God is in male – and maleness – in relationship with female, and “femaleness”.  Or we could say, the image of God is in masculinity and in femininity, and especially in what exists when the two are in covenant relationship with one another.

Having established that “male and female” are relational terms, and that they are complementary in God’s intent, we will next explore how those complementary relational poles exist within God.

But it is important not to miss the application all this has to the college plaza (see previous post).   Gender is not just the way we experience sex.  Can I say it again?  Gender is not just the way we experience sex!  Gender is a part of our identity that comes from God.  It is not just an incidental part of this physical existence.  It is the way we express what God is.   God has made me in His image.  My gender, male or female, is given to me to make me like Him.  It is not what makes me like the animals.   As men and women we need to be called to live out something that goes beyond our sexuality and that puts our sexuality in a healthy and proper priority.   Gender is a call to identity in masculinity or femininity.   When Biblically understood, it is ennobling.  It is the framework for our humanity.  It is the only truth that allows us to escape the otherwise inevitable degeneration of Romans 1 and put our sexuality in the healthy and beautiful context God intended.

But often times our response as Christians is reactionary and simply a list of reasons why gay marriage or homosexuality is wrong.  Though a good case can be made for that, especially from a Christian perspective, it is also a response without much value except as a negative response to our world.

I think Christians miss the great power and beauty of the Biblical message regarding these contemporary cultural issues because we are not grounded ourselves in what God has created in human gender or human morality.  The Christian view of marriage and gender is not just “normal” or “Biblical”, it is amazing.  And wonderful.  And the answer to so much pain and emptiness that is engulfing our world.

Rather than be defensive about my “narrow” view of marriage I want to shout the wonder and glory of what God has made in gender – male and female, masculinity and femininity – which are God revealing expressions that the world has erased to replace with the selfishness of recreational sex.  How sad!  What loss!  And yet we as Christians are often so unaware of what God has made that we spend our own lives seeing no more than a battle with sexual temptation.  We have a sad message when Christians and non Christians alike believe the lie that male and female are ultimately about sexual gratification, but Christians must acknowledge they are not supposed to act on the belief!

The world justifies men having sex with men, or multiple women, or children, or worse, because the world does not know that sex is an aspect, a subset of something much greater and more profound. That sex has a place in a greater purpose, and it is in that greater purpose we discover who we are as men and women, and find a fulfillment – rather than an emptiness – which grows over time.

Most Christians probably know that in the Bible the terms male and female are introduced in Genesis chapter 1 as part of the creation account.  What most Christians haven’t noticed is that “male and female” have a very important introduction – one which does not relate to biology.  Although our first-thought definition for those words brings the notion of  biology or sexuality, the Bible does not provide a basis for that definition in what we are supposed to take away from Genesis 1.

In Genesis 1:20-23 we find ourselves in Day 5 of the creation week.  On Day 5 God creates the birds and the bees and tells them, as you might suspect , to be fruitful and multiply (He also creates the sea creatures).  But we should note that this command to sexually reproduce is not where the Bible introduces the terms or concept of male and female.  Nor are those terms introduced early in Day 6 when God creates the land creatures.  “Male and female” is introduced later in the most remarkable context of the whole account – that of the image of God.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

As believers in both God and Scripture, we must believe that what God did and what God revealed to us about what He did all have a purpose.  Every detail, every word, is accomplished and communicated to express something or reveal something to us.  In that light, Genesis 1:26 is certainly among the most remarkable verses in all the Bible.  The God who wanted His people to know, above all things, that “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), speaks at this unique moment of being God in the plural.  And what is this unique moment?  The bringing of His image into the creation.  “Let us make man in our image…”  Wow.  The one God is an “us”.  The one God is plural.  The one God is Relationship.

What does the plural God look like, relationally?  We are about to get the best picture ever brought into this creation.  “In the image of God He made him (singular), male and female He made them (expressed in a relational plurality).”

So male and female are introduced to us in the most profound context possible.  “Male and female” is not about the birds and the bees.  “Male and female” is about God.

Does this mean the Mormons are right and God is a physical male being reproducing spirit babies into our world with a female?  Not if the Bible is a revelation from God.  We have already shown that male and female are not here intended to describe biology.  They are relational terms pointing upward into the eternal “us”-ness of God, not downward to the physical creation around us.  Remember, God is not just using those terms in Genesis 1:26-27.  He is defining them.

We are told as plainly as possible that Man as male and female is the fullest expression in the creation of that which is God, and that relationship between male and female is the closest expression of the relationship that exists within the Godhead.  Reflections of this relationship have been created other places – as in father and son, ruler and subject.  But none of them come as close to capturing what is really in God as that of “male and female” in covenant relationship called marriage.

But if the point is not biology, then what is it?  How is “male and female” related to the image of God? The next post will explore how we can understand God’s intent – and our gift – in male and female.

Sometimes I get anxious about the future. Yesterday I was reading about our economy and a 1400 page stimulus bill that, given its enormous size and hasty passage, had to be voted on by elected officials who had never read most of it. Yet the bill takes drastic measures never before dreamed of to solve looming problems of epic proportions. One analysis I read carefully described how the stimulus bill was just part of the problem that was going to destroy our economy for years. Others said it was a necessary step to meet immediate and looming dangers.

And I’m just one more person who hasn’t read the bill and wouldn’t understand it if I did. Yet I am by nature a problem solver, and my mind starts spinning on what I should do to protect my family, protect my church, protect my future. And I start getting consumed and anxious.

I need something solid to anchor my life to. A lot of the things generally considered to be sure are now revealed to be actually quite vulnerable. Whenever the sure things become unsure I think all of us become anxious until we find again something solid to keep us steady in the storm.

Years ago I asked myself what I believed – what I was sure of and what the anchor for my life really was. Distilled down to fit on a bookmark, I thought through Ten Things I Know, the ten things that are bigger for me that everything else in life. There are many things I don’t know about the future, but none of that uncertainty changes these 10 things. And nothing in the future will be more important.

What are your “10 things”? Unless they start and end with something beyond this creation then when the storms come you only drag your anchor through the stormy water. The anchor finds something solid when it reaches truth from God. These Truths put the world in its proper place and let us know our course regardless of what storms may come.

Here are the 10 places my anchor catches fast. Maybe they can be a line in the storm for you as well, or a starting point for the Twelve Things or Eight Things that you go back to again and again.

10 Things I Know

1.

There is a God
who has made the world, and made me.

2.

Every individual
has been intentionally created and is deeply loved by God.

I am one of those individuals.


3.

Through the mystery of what is called the Trinity,
my Maker-God walked this earth in human form 2000 years ago.

He came as the prophesied Christ and was named Jesus.

4.

He did that to make possible a personal, experiential and eternal relationship
between Himself and every human being that chooses it.


5.

There is no real life apart from the spiritual life that comes from Jesus.

Not in the creation and not in myself do I find life. Life is the Spirit of Jesus living in me.

6.

God is discipling me personally.

The goal of His involvement is not to make the things of this life work for me,
but to teach me to walk with Him in all things.

All my natural inclinations go against this goal.

7.

Through the Fall of Genesis 3 every human life is born spiritually dead and alienated from God.

As a result, every person begins by seeking life in the creation and in themselves. Making themselves the measure of all things, they reject their Creator, His authority, and His purposes.

The world and the culture I live in
are shaped by and committed to this alienation and rebellion more than any other factor.

8.

God is at work in the world today revealing Himself and calling people back to Himself.

Through the Holy Spirit, I (and every believer) am God’s means for accomplishing that.

My fellowship with God comes as I yield my life to the costs of that work.

9.

The purpose of my life is two-fold.

1) let the Spirit of Jesus express Himself through me to the people He has chosen to put around me, and,

2) bring people, one person at a time, into their own life-experiencing relationship with Jesus.

The primary means for doing these is choosing to love others with that self-costing love
which Jesus has expressed toward me.

10.

One day my whole earthly life will be summed up
by what God has produced as I have followed Jesus in the above two-fold purpose.