Certain biblical passages and phrases are difficult to decipher. We tend to gloss over them when we do not understand them, or we focus in on them with a skeptic’s eye, depending on our inclinations. Sometimes those passages are illuminated for us from unusual sources.
Consider the phrase “fountain of the deep” or “fountains of the great deep” Continue reading “The Fountains of the Deep & Science”
Sometimes we get lost in the forest and miss the trees. Below is a take on Genesis from 30,000 feet as told by some creative folks at www.http://jointhebibleproject.com/ I enjoyed and the fresh look at age old stories put together in an overview. Below is my breakdown. At the end of this article is a link to the entertaining video.
God & the World
God made the world and declared it is good
God made man in God’s image: Adam is the Hebrew word for humanity; and Eve is the Hebrew word for life. Representative of God’s character in the world God made.
God sends them out into the world to be creative, as God was, but he gives them a moral choice about how they do it.
The moral choice is what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is all about
God tells them not to eat of it or they will die.
Up to that point God provided and defined what is good (His creation)
God has the knowledge of good and evil and made it attainable for humans (the choice)
The tree represents that choice: will humans accept God’s definition of what is good, or will they define what is good for themselves.
This sets the stage for sin – the desire and act of defining and controlling what is good for me and my tribe, even at the expense of you and your tribe
People are not good at defining good and evil without God – Genesis 3-11
Downward spiral
Adam & Eve can no longer trust each other – they were naked and felt fine about it before, but now they feel shameful after eating the forbidden fruit and hide from God and each other
Cain becomes jealous of Abel and kills him
Lemak accumulates wives, property and sings songs of being more violent than Cain and is proud of it
Things get so bad that God proceeds to wipe out humanity except for Noah and his family
We think of God as angry, but he is sad and grief stricken; to save the world He washes it clean with the flood
But even Noah takes a turn – he plants a vineyard, gets wasted and things get sketchy
Babel ends this portion of Genesis – God knows that men, if unified, will seize the opportunity to seek to become like God and that will be bad
God scatters them so they can not wreak anymore havoc
When humans seize autonomy from God and define good and evil themselves it results in corruption, tragedy and death
Abraham & His Family
Begins God’s mission to rescue and restore humanity
Before the video link, I want to make a few comments. First, it seems elemental to me that God creative Adam and Eve to be creative beings like God (in the image of God), but the link between that and the tree of knowledge of good and evil I find interesting. God gave them a choice to accept what God provided them and defined as good or to eat of the tree and define what is good for themselves. I have not heard things put exactly that way before.
Building on that, the choices that humanity makes are awful. Cain kills Abel. The strong become boastful of violence and domination over others. Even after the flood “cleanses” the world for a fresh start, Noah, himself, stumbles into weirdness. And when humankind repopulates, they become unified in an endeavor to reach the heavens for themselves, which will only allow them to cause more trouble and damage than they would otherwise be able to do; so God divides them by language and scatters them. In doing that, He creates some checks and balances that minimize the trouble they can cause.
The beginning of Genesis is the story of the moral choice that humanity made, to seize control of defining good and evil for themselves, and rejecting God’s definition. It does not go well. We do not do well with the choices we make.
While the video ends here, the next portion of Genesis is summarized as the beginning of God’s rescue mission to save and restore humanity through Abraham and his family. We will have to wait for the summary of the rest of Genesis.
I am certain that the overview can be done in different ways and emphasize different aspects of the Big Picture. I think this overview is compelling. The fundamental choice that we all make is whether we will “do it my way” or submit ourselves to God’s way. Will define good and bad for ourselves or accept how God has defined it?
Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOUV7mWDI34
What is your take? Is this a good overview?
While, Nye would never admit the Bible as evidence, Ham came off as stubbornly refusing to accept the proof of science.
How many people watched the Bill Nye v. Ken Ham, young earth/old earth debate the other night? Apparently, Pat Robertson did, and he thinks that Ken Ham is full of water (as reported by many, including Patheos).
I have to say that I wanted to believe Ham, but it was hard to do. Of course, I do not buy Nye either. Just because one person of faith may not have it right, does not mean the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater (or Noah for that matter).
What is it about people that we want to know everything? We want everything to be tied up in neat bows and make perfect sense. But life is not like that. It just isn’t.
It seems to me, in my imperfect opinion, that we tend to get ourselves in trouble when we insist on knowing. Not that there is anything wrong with knowledge or with wanting to know things. But wanting to know everything and for all of it to make perfect sense is just asking too much this side of heaven. It also plays in to pride that is the root of all sin.
We are finite, limited beings. That we know as much as we do is, indeed, remarkable. That we should expect to know it all is something else altogether. (Interestingly, it was the temptation of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, that led Adam and Eve into sin.) Not that either Bill Nye or Ken Ham professed to know it all in the debate; they did not.
Let me say this though: I get Ken Ham: he takes the Bible for what it says, and he stands on faith that it is true. I get Ken Ham more than I get Bill Nye. Without faith, we can’t please God.
But the Bible does not say “the earth is 6000 years old”. It could be 10,000. It could be 10,000,000. I, personally, do not think that any of those scenarios matter much in the big scheme of things. The exercise of considering what if the world is only 6000 years old is interesting. It’s kind of fun, but only in a “what if” kind of way. My faith surely does not depend on it. Continue reading “Debriefing the Nye v. Ham Debate”
Take a few minutes to slow down and think about what's going on in your world...
Letters on my journey of rediscovering hope
"The LONG VIEW ON THE HIGH ROAD" -- Intriguing perspectives on life
Using the wisdom of the past to enhance your future event
Science, Faith, and Spaniels
Navigating by Faith 