The lesson from Job

In Job 38, God said:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said:

"Who is it that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man: I will question you and you will answer me.
Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely, you know!"

And God goes on to point out, in somewhat harsh terms, His own dominance over all things and Job's relative ignorance. And yet, did not Job know his Scripture, did he not know the texts of what we now
call Genesis 1 and 2? He knew what God had told Man about the creation of the Heavens and the Earth. Yet, God points out to Job that he remains ignorant of the details of how God created and rules the universe. Job is humbled, and rightly so, and then made the following insightful reply:

"Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know."

Job 42:3 NIV

Those friends of Job who did *not* acknowledge these limits not only suffered rebuke, but had to make sacrifice to atone for their presumption without subsequent remorse.

To assert that any fallible human, based solely on what God chose to tell us about how He created all things, now knows and understands exactly how all this happened seems to smack of the same presumption for which Job got a well-deserved dressing-down.

I do not believe that what God chose to tell us about His creative work in Genesis 1 and 2 was meant to "educate" us about how it all happened (ie, to give us a detailed account of His creative process). While everything He told us there is true, it seems to me that the purpose of that Scripture is to tell us that God created, and is in control of, all things. That Man was created in His image and was given free will with the chance to fail God. That Man did fall, and earned separation from God's grace. This foundation message leads to the ultimate Truth of all Scripture: That God loved Man enough, regardless, to provide a redemption through His Son. So, what God told us in Genesis 1 and 2 was all true, but it was given only in detail sufficient to provide the foundation for Faith.

Beyond this, God seems to have left it for us to discover if we would. He
created the thirst for knowledge and understanding within us, and of course knew we would strive to understand the universe He created for us. And yet, He told us no more than He did, leaving so many questions unanswered. Why? For the same reason He did not attempt to explain photosynthesis, or gravity or any other of the natural processes He built into our universe. They were not essential for the one message of Salvation. Is it not possible that the development of our understanding of the universe is an important part of His plan?

So, to read Genesis 1 and 2 as if it is meant to provide a description of
the entire creation process in every detail is missing the point. More
importantly, you can possibly fall into serious error:

- First, you may read the Scriptures differently than God intended us to.
If this was meant by God to provide us with all knowledge about creation, you would argue, then it must contain all the essential facts as facts. As such, there is no room for any interpretation but the most simplistically literal.

- Second, you risk concluding that an absence of possible explanation
from the Scripture means that the possible explanation must contradict the Scripture. If it ain't there, it can't be true.

A classic example of the Church falling into this interpretive error is when
they stated in the late renaissance that the whole concept of the Earth
being one of many planets revolving around the Sun and the Sun being one of countless of stars in the universe (as was then being proposed by science) was completely and entirely contradictory to Genesis 1. IIRC, they made many of the same arguments now being made in opposition to an "Old Earth" and to the concept that evolution could have been part of God's creative process. Eventually, they came to realize that it was simply their interpretation of Genesis 1 that was faulty (although I think they refused to acknowledge this until about 1900 or so).

I am not advocating that we Christians necessarily form our beliefs based onwhat we learn from science, since science itself is fallible. But, I thinkit behooves us to let our interpretation of Scripture be informed by what welearn about the universe God gave us in some instances. If there is more than one possible interpretation of a Scripture and one of them completely "fits" with what we are learning about the natural world around us, I see no reason *not* to consider that interpretation.

In short, when you have fallible scientists striving to understand what Godgave us and fallible humans interpreting the Scripture, finding the truth is not as simple as it many Christians would like to make it.

Exactly, and even *he* got a dressing down for presuming, just because he knew the Scriptures, that he knew all about how God has worked in this world.

In particular, God tells Job: "Listen, Bub, just because you have read the Scriptures and are enlightened far beyond the people of your time.... and even though you are right on target with me, you still don't know how I created this world and all that is in it."

In short, God is talking to someone who knew the Scripture very well and is STILL telling him he knows nothing about God's creative process.

Unless you are more insightful about Scripture than Job, you are subject to the same rebuke if you presume to believe that you understand about God's creative process from Scripture alone.