The creation stories are hotly debated in evangelical culture, in schools and in universities. "Science vs Religion" arguments are bandied about and, in my opinion, as someone who studied a scientific discipline at one of the world's leading universities and someone who loves Jesus and upholds scripture as the ultimate truth, I think it is the wrong debate to be having. Here's why:

Science is the discovery and exploration of God's amazing world. It is not inherently against a Christian world view at all. Many leading scientists are Christians and it is often their belief that the universe was made by a God of design and order that makes it such a joy to search out.

The Bible was written in a culture and time in which the questions of modern science would have been completely foreign. When you look at the creation stories of other ancient cultures, they are not so much interested in where matter comes from, as in modern science, they were interested in how it gained its order and function. In the ancient world view, matter that had no function or order was the chaotic, non-existent state that gave no opportunity for life and flourishing. In the modern scientific world view, matter needs only to have a physical property to exist. It is at this fundamental assumption of what existence is that our wires get crossed. 

In the modern debate, an assumption tends to be made that the biblical creation accounts are trying to explain what is most interesting to the scientist, which is the production of physical matter from "nothingness". The concept of "nothingness", no material thing, is one that is of interest to the modern western scientific world,  shaped by Greek philosophy, in a way that it did not interest the ancient world.  The creation accounts in the Bible, consistent with others of the ancient world, explain the ordering of chaos and the bringing of function and purpose, rather than material coming from nothingness.

Essentially, a modern scientific account of how the world came to be and the two biblical accounts of creation are written in different storytelling ways (literary styles), for different purposes, to answer a different set of questions. To be a scientist, you do not have to abandon scripture. To be a Christian, you do not have to abandon science. Whatever you are reading, in order to understand it, you need some understanding of the genre it was written in and the purpose for which it was written. Let's take a closer look at the two creation stories to see this in more detail...

The account in Genesis 1-2:3, the 7 day account, starts with the world being "formless and void" or "chaotic and empty" like the waters of a raging sea. It does not begin with their being no physical matter.

The picture is of a raging sea. As an ancient Israelite looking out over the sea, perhaps in a small fishing vessel, the ocean would appear to you as this uncontrollable and formidable desert of water in which no plant can grow and no animal can live, except the creatures of the deep. For this reason, the sea was associated with chaos and death in the ancient world view. The creatures of the deep were also associated with death. Take, for example, Jonah's fish that swallowed him up for three days before he was resurrected onto dry land. In the 7 days of creation, the Spirit of God begins by hovering over the chaos and then His words begin to bring order.

The first kind of sorting or ordering that God does is to sort light from dark on Day 1. The second in Day 2 is to sort the water into the sky and the sea. The third in Day 3 is to part the waters, bringing up dry land that can be planted with all kinds of trees and plants. The first three days are days of ordering the chaos.

The following three days fill those spaces with beings. The sun, moon and stars that rule over time fill the light and dark space in Day 4. (I think it is worth mentioning that the sun, moon and stars have a double meaning in the Bible. They refer to the lights in the sky, but also other created spiritual beings such as angels. It is possible both are in view here.) In Day 5, the sea and sky are filled with swarming creatures of the sea and birds of the air. In Day 6, the land is filled with animals and people.

On the seventh day, which conspicuously has no morning or evening and instead the sense of an unending period of time, God rested and blessed. It is like all the work of sorting the cosmos and filling it with life was for the purpose of settling in and enjoying this beautiful creation with His creatures and especially His image bearers, human beings.

So, having sorted the spaces in Days 1, 2 and 3, God fills them with life in Days 4, 5 and 6, which leads to rest and blessing on Day 7. This form of writing is a type of ancient poetry, taking the structural form A (Day 1), B (Day 2), C (Day 3), A (Day 4), B (Day 5), C (Day 6), D (Day 7). It is certainly not a scientific textbook, that would never have been in the minds of the ancient authors, but just because something is not written like a textbook, does not mean it is not true. To gain the truth and wisdom of any kind of writing, we need to understand what kind of genre we are reading and ask questions appropriate to that genre. We will come to this after looking at the second story.

A quick note about the use of the word "Day" in this account of creation. It is the Hebrew word "yom", which can refer to a day, a year or a time period. The three biggest reasons that I personally do not think this refers to 24 hours as we would measure them in Genesis 1-2:3, is that 1) this is a poetic account of creation and therefore the meaning is likely to be far more symbolic and profound than it is literal; 2) the sun is created in Day 4 according to this account and we measure days by the sun, so it is difficult to reason how days 1 to 3 could be literal without a sun governing the time; 3) in this account of creation, the plants are created on Day 3 and people created on Day 6, whereas in the next account of creation, the Eden narrative, the plants do not appear because there are no people to work the ground. The Eden narrative cannot fit neatly into Day 6 of the 7 day narrative and so it would suggest that there is some other story-telling device going on rather than a strictly chronological and scientific account of events. 

The second creation account, Genesis 2:4-25, Eden. In this account of creation, the starting state is a desert, a dusty wasteland rather than a watery wasteland. "No shrub had appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground," (Gen 2:5 NIV)

As an ancient Israelite, a dusty desert would be the other state of lifelessness in the world around you. Uncontrollable salt water (as in the 7 day account) or no water at all (as in the Eden account) were both viewed as lifeless wilderness. God is pictured as the one who brings the life-giving water on the ground and makes the human beings, breathing  life into their nostrils. The metaphor in this account is of God as a potter sculpting clay. With His words, He ordered the cosmos in Genesis 1, but with His hands, He makes people and animals out of the clay of the ground. Then He comes as close as possible and breathes life into the nostrils of these creatures so that they become living beings made of dust and the spirit of God. God plants a garden in the middle of this "pleasant" ("Eden" = "pleasant") land and plants the "adam", the "human" there. Then He creates woman out of the human, brings male and female together and they become one flesh.

There is so much in these narratives that we could talk about, including how they related to the creation accounts of the ancient cultures around them, but for now I will just make a couple of comments related to the "science vs religion" debate. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend listening to the BibleProject.com podcast series on ancient cosmology.

Genre and purpose of a story

With any story we tell, we make a choice about the type of story-telling device we use (i.e. the genre - poem, song, article, text book, essay, letter, short novel, blog post, saga, children's story, academic paper, news report etc.). The reason we choose a genre is usually because there are specific people we are telling the story to and we have a particular purpose or questions in mind. If we are to understand the Bible well, it is good to understand what genre a story is written in, who the audience was when it was first written and what questions, emotions, thoughts they might be bringing to the story. This can take some guess work, but is still a worthwhile exercise.

In the case of a scientific textbook on the big bang, for example, it might be written to a modern western world, which desires to understand the beginning of physical matter and particle interactions, perhaps with the thought of harnessing this knowledge for space travel, understanding climate change, understanding where we are in the physical history of our galaxy and multitudes of other potential scientific advances. 

For the two creation stories in Genesis, they would have been passed on in oral storytelling form in Ancient Mesopotamia and are likely to have been written down at some point by Moses during the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. The people at that time would have been rescued by Yahweh from Egypt with signs and wonders, but then had the challenge of trusting Him to take care of them through the difficulties of the desert with hostile tribes around them as a constant threat. There minds would not be struggling with the possibilities of space travel, but the questions that might be in their minds are things like "Is this God we're following good? Will He bring us to a place of rest? Is He more powerful than the gods of the nations around us? Can He bring life in a wilderness? Does He desire to look after us and provide for us? Are we just slaves to Him, like some of the nations around us think they are to their gods, or does He love us and have a special purpose for us? Why are we here and what is our purpose on this earth?"

If you have a think about some of those questions and the accounts of creation in Genesis, I think you will see that the author is likely to be addressing these sorts of questions. These questions about who Yahweh is and how He relates to people are going to be much more important to a rag-tag group of ex-slaves wandering through a wilderness than whether or not there was a massive explosion billions of years before! But how do you get the concept that you can tell stories in different ways, with different purposes to different people and the stories all be true across to children?

Well, I had a little inspiration!

Mr Freeze illustration

I used a made up person called Mr Freeze, who created an ice cream shop (kids always love ice cream!), and wrote 4 very short stories about how he answered four friends when asked by them how he made his ice cream shop. To his builder friend, he talked about the physical building (in the science debate, this could be analogous to the scientist), to the cook, he talked about the dairy suppliers and menu, to the teacher, he talked about working hard at school and college, to the businesswoman he talked about money and marketing. The 4 stories are all very different, but they could all be true. He tells them differently, because the people he is talking to have different interests and questions in mind. In the same way, there are two creation accounts in scripture and these are different to the accounts in school science. They are told in particular ways to answer particular questions.

We used this with the children in our local church last week and they seemed to grasp it! I am hoping this will serve them well to equip them as they enter the fray in secondary school and university where this debate and the subsequent objections to Christianity are likely to keep going for decades to come.