I'm currently ambiguous on how the interpretation of Gen. 1 ought to be interpreted. My church leans more towards young earth creationism, but I am having trouble believing certain aspects of it as I also do with Old Earth Creationism.
I'm looking for theological answers not so much scientific ones. This isn't hostile at all, I just want to understand you guys better.
I just wanted to ask some of my most heavy questions:
1. I understand with the day age theory, each "day" supposedly represents an age, and that the word "yom" has multiple meanings. My trouble comes when it says "there was evening and there was the morning: the first day/day one." It seems like the author is defining the word yom as some sort of daylight cycle. How would a day age theorist handle this?
2. Death before sin, and probably disease before sin. How can it be that misery could have existed before Adam and Eve sinned?
3. What do you believe about the Flood? Do you believe it was a universal Flood? Or do you believe it was a local Flood, and how can you justify it Scripturally?
I believe that "then there was evening and morning" means the end of one age/stage of creation and beginning of another. In the first 3 "days" the phrase "there was evening and then morning" was already used, but the sun and moon were only created on the 4th day, so evening and morning does not mean the sunset evening or sunrise morning because
I am sure the creation did not just happen in six days. I believe God took much time and interests to create the ecology and varieties of trees and vegetation , then design the multitude of living creatures and animals. The word "day" means "stage" or "age", But the Scripture use the word "day" because "day" fit the prose of writing in religious manuscript, but "day" in Genesis 1 and 2 certainly does not mean a 24-hour day. In other words, "day" is figurative, not literal.
The real creation might have taken years, decades or 100s or 1000s of years. Humans are finite, we live one generation - usually less than 90 years - and we think short term. But God is timeless and HE is not rushed by time. Why would HE create millions of fauna and creatures in 6x24 hours?
Instead God take interests and pleasure to plan out and create the many varieties of fauna and vegetation. Then He designed the multitude of creatures - He took much interests and pleasure in their appearance and characteristics.
An analogy: Think of people who love to assemble models of planes, tans or figures. They wouldn't want to buy a ready all-finished models -- instead, they enjoy the processing of putting the pieces together, then paint them. Same for people that enjoy assembling a 1000-pieces jigsaw puzzle - the process takes time, it is slow, but to them it is interesting and intriguing.