If Evolution Be True and Genesis 1-3 Be Myth…
Following an essay I submitted yesterday, this is the first of four things which the Christian faith teaches which must be true—or I renounce my faith and walk away from the Church. I do this because I demand that my faith be true and not invention. Here is number one.
If evolution be true—if what it teaches about the origin of both the world and man be the way it all happened—if Genesis 1-3 be myth—if there were no direct creation of the world by the word of God—and not just any world, mind you, but a Paradise—and if in this Paradise there were not an original pair and such that she was formed from him—and if they were not created without sin to begin, such that they were completely innocent to start—and if there were no first and original transgression that defiled both themselves, their posterity, and the world, indeed, subjecting the world to the destructive forces and decay which we see daily in it, which theologians call, “the Fall”—all of which I just described being negated if evolution be true since evolution teaches that the world was “fallen” to begin, having been blown out into space with planetary disturbances aplenty, man evolving through numerous stages and having his beginning from primordial sludge (or “stardust” for those evolutionists who prefer a nobler birth)—if, I say, what evolution teaches about origins and beginnings be true, then I renounce the Christian faith and walk away as integrity requires.
Now why do I say this? What does it matter? After all, could not God have created the world in this manner, indeed, any manner He wished? Does not evolution weave an intricate tapestry with so many interlocking threads that it surpass Genesis 1-3 for depth and beauty?
I demand truth, not aesthetics, though I duly believe Genesis 1-3 a more beautiful account of creation than evolution. And of course God could have created the world any way He wished. The issue is not what God could have done (a discussion without end) but what God said He did. And here is the problem: When you mythologize the doctrine of creation as revealed in Genesis 1-3, you overthrow the doctrine of redemption as explained throughout the New Testament. Here’s what I mean. If God created a world fallen to begin and if man were a sinner at the start, THEN EVERYTHING IS GOD’S FAULT! Man can no more be blamed for his sin than a dog be culpable for barking because he was CREATED (or EVOLVED from lower forms into) a sinner—a state of being which was never his choice.
Quite the opposite, the Christian faith teaches that man was created in God’s image possessing a moral nature and freedom of will such that he was able to sin IF HE SO CHOSE. He was given what we might call a “probationary period” to test whether he would keep the law of God given in the simple command to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This law, he, at the beckoning of his wife, transgressed, and introduced sin into the world and into man’s progeny as our representative. Thus, man is wholly responsible for his sin and worthy of death as God warned him when He gave the command.
And this is why salvation is wholly of grace. Since man alone sinned and thereby earned death and eternal separation, then God’s sending His Son to assume our humanity, live our life without sin, offer himself on the cross in man’s place, and rise for our justification—this is all of grace! God was under no obligation to do this for us. He could just as well have started over or just left us to our miserable selves. But in His love and mercy, He prepared a way of salvation for those who would believe.
But this is not the case if evolution be true, for if so, THEN GOD IS OBLIGATED TO SAVE US. After all, He is the One who created us such that we have no choice but to sin as we evolved with this sinful nature. Salvation is then not of grace as Scripture teaches (Ephesians 2:8-10) but of obligation on God’s part. Indeed, if God save us not, we have a demon for a God as He was the One who created the world and man in their broken state in the first place. So you see that it is actually Christian theology that is an intricate and beautiful tapestry such that if you pull one strand (the doctrine of creation), you yank another (the doctrine of redemption) with the result that you “dis-grace” the whole.
I know there are some who try to reconcile the two. I’m sure they are smarter than I (or more clever, anyway). Whatever they do, they must hold to an original unfallen world (a Paradise that did not yield thistles and thorns before the introduction of sin) and an original unfallen, innocent pair. I don’t see how this can be done in an evolutionary framework and to do so (it seems) would have all the appearance of ugly manufacture.
