In the Beginning, Part I: Why Genesis Matters
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
- Genesis 1:1
“Republicans and Evangelicals are stupid.” So proclaimed a work colleague of mine one day, seemingly out of the blue.
Since I fell into both groups and was a bit curious as to what prompted his outburst, I asked him, “Why do you say that?”
My colleague pointed me to an article he was reading in a newspaper he had brought with him – yes this was way back in 2007 before everyone had smartphones and still read physical newspapers. The article was about the opening of the Creation Museum here in the Cincinnati area.
Having lived in Cincinnati, I was well aware of the Creation Museum project. Several years in the making, the museum had garnered extensive press coverage both locally and nationally. Most of it was negative. Denunciations galore poured forth from various mainstream news organizations about the mass enstupification of the of the American public that was nigh upon our doorstep because of museum’s opening.
One example of that hostility is a Los Angeles Times editorial from May 24, 2007 title “Yabba-dabba science,” which, as you may gather from the title, makes great fun of the Creation Museum, likening it to an episode of “The Flintstones.”
Apparently, my work colleague bought the propaganda.
Science, we are told by the L.A. Times and other voices of “reason,” is all about hard facts and logic. All which, we are confidently told, militate against any possibility that the earth is a mere 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and men walked the terra firma at the same time.
But is science so-called really the arbiter of truth? Think about just the past year and all the contradictory science we’ve heard. Some of the most blatantly contradictory statements have come from the same supposed scientific experts. For example, in a March 2020 interview with 60 Minutes, Dr. Anthony Fauci said,
Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks….there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.
Now, this same Dr. Fauci is out there saying that we may have to wear masks until 2022. And not only that, he’s stated on the record that double-masking makes “common sense”! And all this despite a great deal of scientific evidence that mask mandates do nothing to slow the spread of Covid.
Clearly, Dr. Fauci has contradicted himself. In fact, his statements often seem to be driven by some hidden political agenda rather than the scientific facts at hand. Yet we are told that he is a coolly rational scientific mind and that anyone who doubts him is, in the words of Joe Biden, a Neanderthal.
Or take the matter of the uber trendy cause of Transgenderism. Facebook offers members a palette of 58 gender options. Fifty-eight! Supporters of transgenderism are often the same people who loudly announce their love of science and are quick to denigrate those who disagree with them as “science deniers.” Yet it is the progressives themselves who are the science deniers.
If we consider the most up-to-date scientific opinion, the most reasonable conclusion is that there are only two sexes, and that the notion that there can be 58 genders is an absurdity. Yet, the transgender folks will argue that one’s gender identity is not tied to one’s biological sex, and that a biological man really can reasonably identify as a woman and a biological woman really can identify as a man. And yet, even if a man successfully “transitions” to a woman, every cell in his body is still genetically coded as male, with a both an X and a Y chromosome. This seems like a hard case of science denialism on the part of transgender activists, but it’s rare for anyone to point this out.
As Christians, we don’t rest our argument that there are only two sexes, male and female, on the findings of geneticists. We believe this, because it’s revealed in the Word of God. But it is interesting that today’s ideologically confused progressives will, on the one hand, lecture Christians about their supposed “science denialism,” while on the other hand, denying the science they claim to love so they can indulge their transgender fantasies.
The Reason for This Series
I think of this series on Genesis as an example of root cause analysis.
When I was in business school a few years back, they brought in a couple of speakers from Toyota to talk about the Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota, of course, is famous the world over for producing consistently high-quality cars are reasonable prices.
One of the secrets of TPS is what the speakers called root cause analysis. That is, to really address a quality problem in the manufacturing process, it’s necessary to determine the root cause of the problem. There’s always a temptation to fix things ad hoc. But if you really want to permanently solve a recurring quality issue, you have to pursue the problem to find its source. Once you’ve traced the problem back to its source, you can then fix whatever the issue is. Doing this will correct the downstream quality problems.
It is my conviction that moral, political, and economic confusion we face in the 21st century is that we, like the me of Judah in Isaiah’s time, have turned away backwards from the revealed truth of God. Even many Christians confused about these things. And the root of much of this confusion is that they are confused about Genesis. Either they have never been explicitly taught Genesis as history or have been instructed by modern misinterpretations of the book that present it as something other than what it is, history.
Genesis – and by Genesis, I’m referring to the whole book, including the first eleven chapters - is not myth. It is not metaphor. It is history revealed to us by God himself.
It is my intention in this series to apply the revealed history found in Genesis to the current moral, political, scientific, and economic problems of our day, refuting the contemporary confusion and setting forth the mind of God on these issues.
The Scope of This Series
It is my intention to focus on the first eleven chapters of Genesis in this series. Not because the remaining chapters are not worthwhile studying, but in an effort to limit the length of this study to something manageable.
A second reason for focusing on the first eleven chapters is that in them are found the origins of, and the answers to, many of the most vexing problems we face here in the early 21st century.
A third reason for focusing on Genesis 1-11 is that these are the chapters that are the most controversial and the ones most likely to be explained away, even by professing Christians. Genesis, we are told by many serious Bible scholars, really doesn’t require that we believe the world was created in 6 literal twenty-four-hour periods. This is foolishness. Very clearly, that is exactly what Genesis teaches. And if we deny this. If we soft peddle this. We’re falling into the trap that Eve fell into when the serpent tempted her by asking, “Yea, hath God said?”
God indeed hath said! He has revealed to us the creation of the universe, and of all things in it, including man himself. As the Shorter Catechism puts it, "God's work or creation is his making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six [literal 24 hour] days, and all very good."
A fourth reason for focusing on the first eleven chapters of Genesis is that they are absolutely fascinating. If we take God at his word and understand these chapters as history, we become the wisest people on the face of the earth. As the psalmist wrote, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.” The smartest scientists strain and yearn to understand the origin of the universe. But in the end, the most they can say is this or that may be true, but we can’t know for sure. But you and I can know for sure. For while science never can furnish us with knowledge, the Christian understands knowledge is a gift of God, freely given to those who trust in him.
One last item regarding scope. It is not my intention that this series exhaust all important implications of Genesis chapters 1-11. Such is the depth of the Word of God that, I suppose, a lifetime of dedicated study would not exhaust everything from even a small portion of Scripture. With that said, it is my prayer that in this series I can bring to the surface at least a few of the treasures found in this portion of Scripture and to impart them to my readers.