(043) The Big Story: Why Creation-Science Debates are Missing the Point - a podcast by Tania Harris

How could God have created the world in 6 days when geological data shows the earth is over four billion years old?

How does the Bible’s description of human creation align with scientific evidence supporting evolution?If Adam and Eve were the first couple, where did their son Cain's wife come from?

These are the kinds of questions that come up today when Bible-believing Christians read the story of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis. The various answers are often fuel for furious and acrimonious debate that has led to an artificial division between faith and science. While these questions may be important in our progressive world, our pre-occupation with them has meant we’ve actually missed the main point of the story.The problem lies in the questions themselves. Genesis was written at a time when people were not asking the same kind of questions we’re asking today. Theirs was a world where science hadn’t even been invented - when there was no such thing as the “scientific method”. Understandings about the world was simple - the earth was a flat disc separating the waters below and the waters above. All of it originated at some point of time with the gods.

In the Genesis story of creation, God didn’t bother taking time to correct readers’ cosmology and explain that water isn’t held up by a dome with windows that allow the rain to fall through. Genesis 1-3 is not a scientific account given to explain how the world was created. Far more important issues were at stake. Genesis was written to show us who we are, why we're here and what we’re supposed to do. The answers it gives have framed the foundation of Christianity and have become the bedrock of Western civilisation.

Listen to the podcast!The Creation Story is about Who We Are
To begin with, the creation account tells us who we are, but you’re unlikely to notice it without an appreciation of the ancient context. In the time of Genesis, religion was an integral part of life, but it was nothing like the religious world we know today. Worship was polytheistic, meaning people worshipped many gods with each deity closely tied to some aspect of natural phenomena. In this world, the gods acted like over-inflated humans. They were male or female; they fell in love, fought each other and got into bad moods. Thus the aim of worship for the ancients was to keep the gods happy - particularly the ones whose help you needed at the time. If you wanted a good crop, you made sacrifices to the rain god; if you wanted a relationship, you appeased the deity of love, if you wanted to have a baby, you went to the fertility god. To do that, you would visit a temple where the presence of the god was said to dwell. There you would make an offering, bowing to the image of the god whose favour you wished togarner.

It is against this backdrop that the truths of Genesis shine most brightly. In the biblical account, the scene is a garden temple where the presence of the one true God dwells and where his only ‘image” is the flesh and blood he created (Genesis 1:26-28). Unlike the inanimate statues furnishing the rooms of ancient temples, this image represented his/her creator and was made in his likeness. Thus humanity becomes the pinnacle of all creation, exalted above all other living things. As Genesis portrays it, men and women have God-like qualities and are fearfully wonderfully made (Psalm 139). They come from the dust of the earth, yet are destined for glory and honour (Ps.8:5-6). The big story of Genesis tells us who we are.
The Creation Story is about What We’re Purposed to DoBut more than this, the creation story also tells us what we’re designed to do. Images in ancient temples always represented the god in whose name the temple was built. In the Genesis account, humanity - the image in God’s garden temple - has been tasked with God-like activity. They have been given domain over all of the earth (Genesis 1:28). Like the owners of a house,

Further episodes of God Conversations with Tania Harris

Further podcasts by Tania Harris

Website of Tania Harris