Which to Believe-Dinosaurs or 7 Days

June 28, 2009
The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Pastor Brad Davick
Genesis 1:1-2:3

Which to Believe-Dinosaurs or 7 Days?

Let me ask you...who believes that dinosaurs once roamed the earth? Most of us. Who believes the creation stories in the book of Genesis? As Christians, is it possible for us to believe both?

Many people would argue that the answer is no; stating that a Christian must choose. Creation Science Evangelicals (bet you didn’t even know there was such a classification of Christians!) who read the bible through a literal lens, would argue the only acceptable belief is that God created the universe in six (6) days, and as we all know, one day equals 24 hours. In other words, what’s written in the Bible is exactly how creation happened. For creation science evangelicals, the whole notion of Darwinian Evolution is as unthinkable as it is laughable.

What do we, as ELCA Lutheran Christians have to say? If you noticed, I raised my hand for both questions; I believe dinosaurs lived and roamed the face of the earth and I believe the creation stories in the book of Genesis. How can I do this? Because of the manner in which we read and interpret the scriptures.

We believe the bible was not dictated word-for-word, thus it cannot be read literally. Instead, we believe that God inspired the Bible’s many writers, editors, and compilers. As they heard God speaking and discerned God’s activity in events around them in their own times and places, the Bible’s content took shape.

Since God inspired the Bible and didn’t dictate it, its writings include human emotion, testimony, opinion, cultural limitation and bias. What separates us from some of the other Christian denominations is that, as ELCA Lutherans, we recognize that human testimony and writing are related to and often limited by a person’s culture, customs and worldview. Reading the bible in this manner, we don’t have to choose between creation and evolution, or whether dinosaurs are factious because they’re not mentioned in the bible, or if the Big Bang theory contradicts the seven days of creation. We don’t have to struggle to prove that God created the world in six twenty-four hour days because we believe that wasn’t important to the biblical writers in their time, place, and historical-cultural context. They weren’t interested in the science; the how and why. They were interested in the relationship; the who. This is why we can believe in dinosaurs and the 7 days of creation. Science and theology ask different questions about the universe and the world in which we live:

The bible is a book about who; it’s not a book about how. The bible is history...his-story; the story of God and God’s relationship with all that God creates. The bible is a collection of stories, stories that began as oral traditions, passed from generation to generation before they were written down. The story of the book of Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in it in six days. Why six days? Because that is what the writers of God’s story knew at the time. They put together a story that made sense in their time and place.

The bible as story is really the only way to read the ancient writing. One doesn’t have to read too far into the book of Genesis to see why. The reading we heard this morning is traditionally known as the creation story;“in the beginning, God created and there was evening and morning, the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh day. A mere half verse after the conclusion of the seventh day, another creation story is told; no days, no specifics, simply an acknowledgement that, God did create;“In the day that Lord God made the earth and the heavens...” (Genesis 2: 4b) So, which story is the correct story? How would be choose?

When we read the two creation stories as stories, we can see how they fit together. The first creation story with its lists of things God creates on separate days sets the stage for deepening the relationship God desires with humankind. The second story uses names and places and settings and conversations; literary techniques that draw us, the reader, into the story. That’s the intent of the Bible, a collection of stories inspired by God and written by people to draw us into God’s history; God’s relationship with humanity.

Likewise, we can see how both creation stories and evolution, how science and theology can fit together. From a theological perspective, then, here’s what the ELCA’s website says:

“The ELCA does not have an official position on creation vs. evolution, but we subscribe to the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation, so we believe God created the universe and all that is herein, only not necessarily in six 24 hour days, and that God actually may have used evolution in the process of creation. In fact, to deny the possibility that evolutionary processes were used is seen by some as an attempt to limit God’s power.”

From scientific perspective, here’s what Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer, the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia and recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world, has to say about these things:

"The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."

Evolution versus creation. Science versus theology. They need not and perhaps cannot be mutually exclusive. For in the end, as we live a life of faith, don’t we all want know how God did it and understand a little piece of God’s?