This may come as a surprise to many, but the Bible is not a science book! Even further than that, while it is a history book, of sorts, it is not a history of the world, as in the entire creation. It is a covenantal history of a peculiar ( particular ) people, one through whom the Creator God choose to reveal Himself to His Creation. I've said it before & I'll say it again, 'the Story of Scripture is the Story of Israel!' Much as we'd like to think it's all about us, it's not; it speaks to us, resonates with us, yes, but first & foremost, it's solely about a certain group of people in the Ancient Near East ( ANE ); furthermore, it's written in a way that is quite unfamiliar & fairly strange to our western mindset!
Strange as it may seem, Abraham, contrary to our reading of Genesis 22:1-19, need not necessarily have tried to kill his own son in order for the account to shadow the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, some millenia later. This is not to say the story in Genesis is not true & factual, only that stories like this have been fashioned to foreshadow the coming of the Messiah of Israel. There are many other such accounts, or occurrences, in Israel's history which serve to point to the Messiah, for example, the Law itself, as stated by the apostle Paul, 'was our tutor [ to bring us ] to Christ' ( Galatians 3:24 ). Here too, we must understand that Paul spoke, not to us, but to his fellow Israelites, in the 1st century!
It is without doubt & beyond question that this Creation, this universe ( multiverse? ), is the product of Intelligent Design! Much as many scientists would like to prove to the contrary, beauty & symbiosis like we witness on a daily basis does not just happen; it HAS to have been orchestrated & engineered by Someone or Something 'smarter than the average bear', so to speak! The theory of evolution as put forth most famously by Charles Darwin, the notion that mankind evolved from a single-celled organism & that the universe ( stars, planets & such ) is simply the manifestation of a random event known as 'The Big Bang' is not totally without merit. Though we know, as Darwin & others like him fail to ascribe to, that this was all the work of the Creator God, it is not outside the realm of genuine possibility that these are the means that were used to bring about all this beauty. Science has made great strides, in fact, toward this end, though maybe inadvertently!
The discovery of subatomic particles like the Higgs boson, the development of things like 'string theory', Quantum Mechanics & such have given scientists a boost in their search for understanding! Though many seek this knowledge in the vain hope of denying the Creator, many more, through these findings, have no doubt developed an even greater respect for the Master Builder. The fact that all of these things work together to orchestrate the symphony of Life should be enough to convince even the most ignorant & stubborn of us yet falls on blind ears!
Even with such great leaps forward, mankind knows fairly little about how the universe ( or multiverse? ) was formed, much less, the intricacies of its clockworks, so to speak! By means of the Large Hadron Collider, a multi-million ( or is that 'billion'?? ) dollar project over in Switzerland, scientists have 'created' one of the subatomic particles they believe may be responsible for the 'Big Bang', or the formation of the universe.as we know it. It may very well be that this process, or one very like it, is indeed responsible for the glories of 'the heavens', but, as I would love to ask of any Darwinian Evolutionist, 'where did the particle come from?'
Was there an actual Man named Jesus who was in fact the Creator God incarnate? Did He indeed suffer on a literal cross for the sins of His People? We have faith that He did & now lives within us, leading us in the Way of Righteousness, to love the Creator God with all our heart, mind & strength, to love our neighbor as ourselves & to treat others as we would have others treat us! However, much of what we read in Scripture is related in such a way, through metaphor, similitude & allegory, as to represent a certain truth, a truth that might not be plainly accepted if plainly told. The Gospel accounts all serve to witness to the fact that the Creator God did indeed love His Creation so much that He sent His only ( begotten ) Son, that whoever belives in Him should never die, but have eternal life!
The Scriptures, as many Christians have begun to discover, were not written to us, though they are for us, being applicable to our own situations in many areas! Even reading the Bible with our Western mindset & particular point of view, humanity has made great leaps towards discovering the true nature of the Creator God & our relationship with & to Him/Her/It. As mankind continues to work out the implications of the fact that our Western thought-processes might not cut it, so to speak, we will continue to grow in the knowledge that we are indeed One with the Creator God, being of the same Essence!
May we ever use that Knowlege for good & not for evil,
Charles Haddon Shank
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