I think I know what the problem is when it comes to Genesis, creation, and my faith. The difference between myself and others is that I’m not static in my understanding and I’m not afraid to explore the possibilities presented by alternate points of view and interpretation. I’m not afraid to be challenged even if I happen to put up a good fight along the way. I blog because I want to learn not because I believe I have anything particularly thoughtful or original to say. I’m writing this post not as a lesson on creation or origins or hermeneutics (even though I know some will invariably go that direction and thereby miss the greater point); I am writing this post as a thought or two about faith.

“We know in part,” Paul wrote, “then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

I know what I believe; I do not know completely what I do not believe. The possibilities are endless, but I also recognize that a large part of my problem is that I graduated from Bible college nearly fifteen years ago and, to a large extent, I never quite treating the Bible like a textbook. I know how I feel about textbooks—they disseminate information, present information on beautifully illustrated pages, and give us enough giddy-up in our heads that we can create pie-charts, graphs, and systematic manuals all day long, all night long, till we are puking out information to our classmates or writing blog posts or research papers just to get it out of our minds.

One of my classes is Introduction to Special Education (ESE 500). Every week we have a 20 question test over the chapter material. Maybe we feel that way about the Bible sometimes—like there’s going to be a test at the end and if we do not get all the answers right then we will not get the credit we feel we so richly deserve after having diligently studied for the test, read the chapter, and memorized countless charts, graphs, and graphic organizers. I’m not a test taker so if there is a test, an entrance exam, I’m out for sure. I’d rather write a paper.

Scripture is not a textbook; it is a story.

I hate charts, graphs, and graphic organizers. Even in Special Education, how can I justify my making a person’s disability into a spread sheet? People are not pie charts; furthermore, passing a test is not necessarily an indicator of whether or not I know the material or whether I can do the job or whether or not I care. Conversely, the Bible is not a textbook that we should study as if there will be an exam. Nor, for that matter, is our particular knowledge or understanding of the Bible the badge determining whether or not we ‘can do the job’ (live by faith), love God (in Jesus), or love our neighbors as ourselves.

Scripture is a story, not a textbook we study for an examination.

I cannot believe I’m writing this, let alone that I believe it. I have based my entire existence on the glory of being able to properly expound a passage of Scripture and using a proper hermeneutic to do so. God have mercy; I am slipping and sliding my way towards oblivion.

So I cling to my belief that Genesis 1 gives me a picture of what happened: “In the beginning, God created.”

Let me be honest: I don’t want it to be any different than that.

I’ll say it out loud and deal with all of your sticks and rocks and incredulity that someone clearly as bright as I am (*smiles*) would believe such a naïve interpretation of such an ancient text and slack-jawed-stupid-stares and headshakes: I’m terribly afraid that if ‘in the beginning God (didn’t) create’ and the ‘E’ word had some value that it would, in fact, be terribly upsetting to my faith. There, I said it; out loud. I said it for the whole world to hear and for all the atheists, liberals, theistic-evolutionists, lovers of Francis Collins’, and anyone within a hair’s width of doubt to see, read, and comment upon: I fear the implications that would befall my faith if, on that day, God said, “And how did you interpret Genesis 1” and I was forced to answer, in order to maintain my Job-like integrity, “Well, I followed a strictly poetic reading of the text and mixed in a little Francis Collins, new world science, mixed it with a stick and about 3 billion years, and just for good measure, threw in the word ‘theistic’ before ‘evolution’ so that I would not be considered a complete agnostic.”

Then God would look back at me and say, “Oh, yeah. About that. Uh, well…” as he points to the red steps heading south to a hell that I had also quit believing in because, after all, that’s poetry too in an apocalyptic book.

Oy vey!

Fox Mulder used to have a sign hanging in his office that read: I want to believe.

I’m the same way. I don’t want Darwin to be right. I don’t want Dawkins to be within a shadow of near right. I don’t want those enemies of the Gospel to have any credibility whatsoever.

My faith, the way I understand Scripture, would be upset if that skeleton were ever to come traipsing out of God’s closet. I want to be created in the image of God in the thirteenth hour, twenty-sixth minute, and forty-fourth second, on the sixth day of the first week. I was trained in a Biblical theology that counts God as, first, Creator. I know what you’ll say: “I’m not arguing differently.”

OK. I’m not arguing with you.

And what I feel inside of me is that if my understanding of Genesis 1 were turned upside down then my faith would be too. I have said, “If I can’t trust that God made the first world, then how can I have confidence he will make a new one?” Maybe that is to conflate the issue. I always hear, “No one is saying God didn’t create; we just don’t know about the mechanisms he used.” Fair enough.

But I still do not want to be the end, or the middle, of some mindless evolutionary ‘process.’

Do you understand that torment? Do you understand that disturbance in the force of my soul? And there are many folks who believe such things about many other aspects of their belief too: KJV, Millenialism, etc. So I am reluctant not only to give ground, but, and here’s the scary part, to even listen at times to those points of view that are opposed to mine. I struggle this way with a lot of things. ‘Origins’ is just one of the areas where I wrestle. Prayer is another one of them. Why God doesn’t answer some prayers is another of them. Why God let’s rebels continue ruling the roost is still another.

His ways are beyond understanding. (Job 36:26; Job 37:5).

So I am reluctant to let go of the things I believe I understand in favor of some bit of mystery or wild blowing of the Spirit. My wife reminded me this morning, when I was feeling sorry for myself, that some people are very much in tune with a God they know, understand, and control and that we do not serve a God we know, understand, and control. I know what some of you will say, “Oh, but we do know God because we know Jesus and that is all we need to know. We know God precisely because we know Jesus.”

And to that I say, “Pshaw!”

Because, think about it for a minute, isn’t that what those people in Nazareth said too? Ha! It is! Consider:

“Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? (Matthew 13:54-56)

It was their very knowledge of Jesus that became the very basis for their unbelief! That scares me. Don’t take this too far because if you do you will not understand what I’m saying and why I’m saying it. I’m not saying we should be stupid and claim ignorance about Jesus. We do know a lot, but we probably know a lot more less about him and a lot less more about him than we think. That probably doesn’t make sense.

So let me bring this home to the point I’m trying to make which is not, I assure you, about Genesis, creation, origins, Darwin, or Rob Bell, hermeneutics, or how we read the Bible, but faith. Or grace. One of the two; I’m not sure which; maybe both.

It is about going on every single day and believing not in something, but someone. It’s about having faith, trust, in a God I cannot see, who doesn’t answer my prayers; who allows me to suffer; who allows other people to obfuscate my simple-minded understanding of Scripture with their fine sounding arguments about poetry, justice, wars, hermeneutics, theology, macro/micro evolution; who allows me to wonder what justification really means; who allows debates about justification from this side and that side to rage without declaring a victor (I wonder if God ever lets out a huge belly laugh at our ‘debates’ and declarations of victory?); who allows Job to maintain his integrity and then bursts out with a ‘Hey Job who the hell are you to question me?’ and points to the creation (ironic, I know) as justification for Job’s suffering; who allows injustice to exist when he could so easily wipe it out; who allows for so much variation in understanding of Genesis 1 without batting his massive eye; who allows the Jesus Seminar to exist; who allows me to question without slapping me silly; who loves me even though he knows me; who loves me even when I hate him—yeah; we know God.

And the fact there is room for faith in the midst of all that is confounding. The fact that all he asks for is faith is even worse.

And the fact that sometimes even our faith is beside the point nearly strangles me.

This is a post about faith. Life is about faith.

I’m glad that, on that day, God won’t ask me what I believe about Genesis 1.

I’m glad that he won’t have to.