Sermon from January 16, 2005
God has allowed me to praise Him by studying scripture. It has been going on since I was a 16-year-old boy. I have spent many hours in first-hand engagement with the Bible; but I have never tried to do it alone. I have from the start tried to hear what the collective wisdom of the Church has said about the meaning of the Bible.

That collective wisdom leaves plenty room for individual initiative and insight. It even leaves room for a person's mistakes. But it asks individuals to do all in their power to work within the collective wisdom of the Church.

Now, here comes something I don't want you to miss. The Church has not expressed its collective wisdom about every issue in the human family. It hasn't expressed its collective wisdom about stem cell research or about capital punishment. The millions of Christians who care about these issues are seeking to know the mind of God about them. In the meantime, that doesn't mean that Christians can do anything they wish about these undecided issues; it means they have the liberty to pursue the truth.

The Church has not expressed its collective wisdom about the issue I want to address today. That means that you have no obligation to accept what I say today as binding doctrine. It is a proposal I am making for your consideration. It is a proposal for addressing the longstanding tensions between the Christian faith and the natural sciences.

This proposal represents my mature judgment on the matter, but that doesn't guarantee its fidelity to the mind of God. I ask that you hear me carefully. But agreement with me is not a test of your faith, nor is it the basis of our friendship or fellowship. Hearing me carefully means not only listening to this sermon but to all four of these January sermons.

I asked last Sunday: do Genesis and the natural sciences contradict each other? I said that the short answer is no, if we'll stop treating the Bible as if it had to agree with modern science, (it doesn't!) and stop treating modern science as if it were in a position to judge the validity of the Christian faith (it isn't!).

In other words, I wonder if in the conflicts between Christianity and science, we are fighting the wrong battles. Christians nearly always locate the problem in the discoveries and theories of the natural sciences. But what if a large part of the problem arose from our own theology, because it had captured only part of the truth about the Bible and creation?

I said last Sunday that all human knowledge is partial. That is just as true of theology as it is of the natural sciences. One thing in particular will always make theological knowledge partial. It is the necessity of using human language to talk about God. We have to use language for that purpose, but it is a blunt tool.

The language of the Bible contributes just as much to the tensions between Christianity and science as do the discoveries and theories of science. Let me show you what I mean and offer a fresh perspective.

Human Language and Expression of the Unseen
Let's begin with Genesis 2:1-3: Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Just for fun, let me show you the challenge facing human language, when it tries to talk about God whom we cannot see.

Verses 2-3 say that God rested from all his work. God rested. Does that mean God got tired and needed to recover His strength? Does it mean He took Day Seven off and went back to work on Day Eight?

To say that God got tired seems a bit over the top, if not altogether irreverent. To say that God took a day off sounds like we are taking a human experience and applying it to God. Maybe that's the best we can do, but if you think about it for a minute, it really does seem farfetched to imagine God, who lives outside time, taking a day off.

Some with advanced degrees have ridiculed this language and called the people who use it ignorant hicks, whose religion is irrelevant in a scientific world. My hunch is that people who say that have ulterior motives. They may be looking for excuses to belittle a faith they have already rejected on other grounds and to berate the people who cherish that faith. Don't be intimidated. Plenty of people with advanced degrees are not at all embarrassed to say that God rested from all His work. They are aware of the criticism, but they know the problem is with language, not with the God it tries to express.

So, what is the problem with language? In a nutshell, language is being asked to talk about God, who is not accessible to the five senses. So, the best it can do is to say, "Well, the unseen God is like this," or, "He is like that." Let me give you some examples of what I am talking about from the Bible itself.

The only way the Bible can talk about God, whom we cannot see, is to compare Him to things we can see. So, it says God is a rock, a fortress, a shepherd, a king, a husband, a father. He is none of those, but all of them tell us something true about Him.

He is a rock in that He stays firm. He is a fortress in that He protects. He is a shepherd in that He guides. He is a king in that He rules; a husband in that He unites Himself to His people; a father, in that He imparts life to that which has no life in itself.

The Bible is full of figures of speech like that, and it doesn't confuse us in the least. If you are tracking with me so far, then you should be able to take the next step without any difficulty.

All the examples I just gave are individual words: rock, fortress, king, etc. But the Bible uses another kind of comparison to express what God is like. It is the story. The best example is the one Jesus told in Luke 15, which we call "The Parable of the Prodigal Son." Jesus made up that story to tell us what God is like. We know it is a fictional story, but it conveys indispensable truth about God: He grants us freedom to run away from Him and waits for us to return to Him and rejoices to forgive and welcome us home when we come to our senses. That parable is as true a statement about the nature of God as any mathematical equation is true about the nature of the physical world.

Comparison is the best language can do, when it comes to the invisible world of God. If you are still tracking with me, then you should be ready for my proposal about Genesis.

The Language of Genesis
Why can't we read Genesis one and see it as truth about God in story form? Like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Genesis one tells a story that conveys indispensable truth about God: He created the universe and everything in it; He created man in His image; and all He created is good. That three-fold truth is the point of the story, and it is beyond the competency of science to determine its truth. We don't have to make the details of the story agree with science any more than we have to name the far country where the prodigal son squandered his inheritance.

Looking at Genesis one like this begins to pay off. Look first at Genesis 1:6. And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky."

What we call the sky the ancient Hebrews may have thought to be something solid keeping back some of the water that once submerged the earth. That is where the rain comes from. That picture contradicts everything modern science tells us about the sky we look at every day.

But so what? Whether they thought the sky was a solid dome or an atmosphere is incidental to the point of the story, as the laws of inheritance were incidental to the point of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The point of the Genesis story is to express the revolutionary truth that one God created the heavens and everything else.

Second, did God create the world in six 24-hour days, or does Genesis use the word day to mean an age of undetermined length, which is more accommodating to present scientific evidence that the universe has been around for a long time? Books have been written about the length of days in Genesis one. If Genesis one is truth about God in story form, then it gives us a new way to look at the issue.

Genesis arose within the nation Israel with their experience of working six days and resting on the seventh day. Why not use that national experience to represent God? "We Jews work six days and rest on the Sabbath. Why not represent the creation of the heavens and the earth as the work of our God, taking place in six days, followed by a divine Sabbath?" It was a memorable, elegant way for Jewish theologians to express the revolutionary truth that one God created the universe and everything in it. And no one has ever improved on it.

Seeing Genesis like this doesn't take anything away from orthodox Christian belief in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth – unless you think the Parable of the Prodigal Son takes away from orthodox Christian belief in a merciful God; and it doesn't violate the doctrine of inspiration of scripture – unless you think the Parable of the Prodigal Son violates that doctrine. Seeing Genesis in this way allows science to accumulate knowledge by its own methods and to be evaluated by its own standards. It allows theology to accumulate knowledge by its own methods and to be evaluated by its own standards.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Now, I need to make two important pastoral comments. First, if you believe God created the heavens and earth in six 24-hour days, that is an honorable position to hold, and you are welcome to be a part of this church and defend that position. I would not want you to accept what I have said, unless your conscience was clear to do so.

If you hold that position, you know as well as I do that some of your Christian friends would agree with you on nearly every point, but they believe those six days were six ages of undetermined length. If you hold that position, it is an honorable position to hold, and you are welcome to be a part of this church and defend that position.

I know that I could be wrong in the position that I have presented today. As I said earlier, the Church has not expressed its collective wisdom about this, and it would be abuse of my calling to impose what I have said on the conscience of this congregation; and I won't do it. Diversity is important on this matter.

Second, I want to be clear about what we should go to the wall for. The indispensable truth of Genesis one that we all share is: God created the universe and everything in it; He created mankind in His image; and everything God created is good. That is binding on the Church's conscience. Anyone who denies any of those statements puts himself in spiritual danger.

Having said that, the debate about the length of days and whether Israel thought of the sky as a solid dome illustrates a major point that my proposal makes. The language of the Bible is a decisive factor in understanding Genesis one. Is every verse in Genesis one to be read literally or in some other way? It's not just liberal theologians who ask that question; the most conservative of the conservative ask it too. My proposal, which is open for debate and not binding on your conscience, offers a way of looking at Genesis one that is less literal. I find it attractive for several reasons.

First, it affirms the fundamental Christian doctrine of creation. God created the universe and everything in it. He created man in His image. And all He created is good. It goes to the wall for this truth but doesn't treat the details of Genesis one as if they had to agree with the findings of the natural sciences.

Second, my proposal makes an important distinction. It says that the biblical revelation in the story of Genesis one teaches us that God created the universe and everything in it; it does not teach us how God did it. To learn that, we turn to the natural sciences. If physics is right that the material universe began from a small clump of matter and has been developing for 15 billion years, then we who believe Genesis will rejoice and say, "Look how wise and majestic God is!"

My proposal eliminates the need to debate the meaning of day in Genesis one. That detail is incidental to the point of the chapter. However long it took for our solar system to become what it is, it was God's idea, and He caused it to happen. It came out of His mind, will, power, and freedom, and He continues to govern it.

This distinction between God as the source of creation and science as the effort to explain how the material creation works leads to a third attractive feature of my proposal.

It allows science to accumulate knowledge by its own methods and to be evaluated by its own standards. It also allows theology to accumulate knowledge by its own methods and to be evaluated by its own standards. This may help Christians to stop seeing science as the enemy of faith and to begin paying closer attention to how science actually works. I will say more about that in two weeks, when I talk specifically about creation and evolution.

Science is incomplete. Its knowledge is partial, and all true scientists acknowledge that. In fact, its incompleteness makes scientific pursuit fascinating. The frontiers of science today, as seen in chaos theory or string theory, can take your breath away. And when we remember that science explains what God made and has been there from the very beginning, it leads not to the worship of science but to the worship of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

All knowledge is partial, incomplete. This is just as true of science as it is of theology. The incompleteness of all human knowledge underscores the great apostle's teaching in 1 Corinthians 8:2: knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So, let us be people of knowledge, but above all, let us be people of love, compassion and respect.