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Which Faith Will You Hold?
Which Faith Will You Hold?
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, ESV).
This verse and the ones that follow it are among the most controversial of the whole Bible in our modern day. Some dismiss them entirely, as they do the rest of the Bible. They are convinced there is no God and there was no creation. What we see around us is merely the product of millennia of purposeless forces. The reigning theory is that a long, long time ago a golden egg exploded. Of course, because they are scientists, they have dispensed with the Hindu myth of golden egg. They call it an infinitely small, infinitely dense ball of matter. It didn’t merely crack. It exploded. Interesting that for all their science, they can’t seem to escape the mythological archetype of the egg (but that is for another article). They see an egg or ball of matter, but they don’t see God. And so they simply cannot see Genesis 1:1.
Others try to accept most of the Bible, but as they look at these verses, they also want to hold on to the modern supposedly scientific explanations of the universe’s origin. Therefore, they hold Genesis 1 at arm’s length. They try in numerous ways to make it mesh with the scientific theories of the day as best they can. But they struggle. Many like to say that Genesis 1:1 is right. God did create the heavens and the earth, but He used the means outlined by modern naturalistic (translate that “atheistic”) scientists, not those outlined in Genesis 1.
We are told by some that Genesis 1 is actually nothing more than a common creation myth of the day, dressed up to fit the Jewish mold of monotheism. God was just using the mythical constructs the people already believed and was telling the Jews through those constructs that He did it. He is responsible for the world being as it is. We, the enlightened 21st century scientific community, know better. God didn’t create what we see today out of nothingness. Rather, he used the Big Bang and then evolutionary processes. Everything that now exists can be explained through naturalistic and rational causes. There can never be any supernatural intervention anywhere.
Those who make these claims, while saying they believe the Bible and even believe it is from God, remove God from the picture of how to study the world. Even though they claim God is the one that got it here, they claim He simply didn’t use any “Godly” means to do so. He just let nature take its course.
Sometimes I’ve heard such good arguments for this position that I’ve been almost convinced. But for one verse in the Bible, I might have fallen in with this camp. After all, I want to be seen as intelligent. I don’t want to seem like some religious nut from the dark ages. But then I read Hebrews 11:3.
“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (ESV).
The writer of Hebrews proclaimed the faith he had about the universe. It was created by the word of God. This is a direct reference to the creation story of Genesis 1. “And God said…” If we are going to have the same faith that the inspired author of Hebrews had, we are going to believe God spoke the universe into existence. Not only that, we are going to believe He spoke it into existence from things that are not visible to us. This is not God’s way of saying “microscopic.” He isn’t saying there was once a bit of matter so small we couldn’t see it. No, He is saying that He created the universe out of things we can’t experience. It was not just a very small bit of the same matter we can see, handle, and touch today. It came from something we cannot even experience. It came from nothing.
How are we going to prove that? No doubt, we have all kinds of evidence around us. Not the least of which is the principle set forth in Hebrews 3:4—“For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God” (ESV). But in the end, it is our faith that confirms the story we have told from the evidence.
We fear that answer. But that is the answer of Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (ESV). This passage does not say, as many good-intentioned brethren have erroneously asserted, that our faith is based on evidence. While our faith is based on evidence, that is not what Hebrews 11:1 says. What that passage says is faith is the final conviction that causes us to accept something that we didn’t actually see. Noah had never seen a flood, but his faith in God convinced him it would happen. Abraham did not see the Promised Land inhabited with his descendants, but his faith convinced him it would happen. We did not see the universe come into existence, but our faith convinces us that it happened the way God said it did.
Why do we fear this answer? Because those who do not accept God mock us for basing our conviction on faith. However, we have nothing to fear from these hypocrites who mock the idea of faith. What we need to remember is that none of the modern atheistic, naturalistic, mocking scientists saw how the universe started either. None of them saw how life started on our planet. None of them saw how the diversity of life got here. They have seen the same evidence we have seen. They see the planet as it is. They see all kinds of bones in the ground. Then they tell a story. They tell a story of billions of years of minute progressive changes. But their story is always changing. Why? Because they simply do not know how it happened. Why then do they seem so certain? Faith. They are men and women of faith just like we are. They believe we got here by a Big Bang, abiogenesis, and evolution. They didn’t see it. They can’t prove it. They accept it on faith.
The real question for us is not whether we will be people of faith. Everyone is. The question is will we have the same faith as the Hebrew writer. Will we accept God’s word as He intended it? Or will we dismiss it in order to fit in with modern mockers and appear intelligent to them?
Which faith will you hold?
--Edwin L. Crozier
