What’s your view on creation?

My very first “speaking engagement” happened when I was 8 and was voted as “Counselor of the Day” for my cabin at First Presbyterian Church Camp in Ligonier, PA. I was assigned evening devotions and devoted that time to trying to reconcile evolution and the Bible. It went about as well as one might expect. Since that time I have come to embrace a rather ordinary and straightforward young earth creationism (YEC) position. I believe God made the universe and everything in it in the space of 6 ordinary days likely less than 10,000 years ago. The shift was as slow and steady as uniformitarian geology. My view, however, locked into place when my seminary Old Testament professor, Dr. Richard Pratt, taught the class that in order to understand what a text means you first must seek out what the original author intended to communicate to the original audience.

Imagine then, if you will, Moses telling the stories of the book of Genesis to the people of the Exodus. He says, “On the first day God…” all the way through that first week. I asked myself a simple question- what would his audience have heard? Would they have thought, “Cool, look at this poetic element in Moses’ story and that typological symbol. That must mean it didn’t happen the way he said.”? No. Would they have thought, “When he says ‘day’ he must mean age or epoch, because of the starlight.”? I don’t think so.

The idea that elements of poetry or typology cancel out historicity is, well, silly. It’s true, for instance, that the plagues God burdened Egypt with through Moses were polemical assaults of the false gods of the Egyptians. Does that mean the water didn’t turn red? Does it mean the frogs didn’t croak? Of course not. God puts all sorts of elements of story into His story. He is the master storyteller. What makes it all so amazing, however, is that He writes non-fiction. Every bit of His story is brought to you live, from planet earth.

I am grateful for the faithful work of faithful scientists who demonstrate scientific evidence for creation and a young earth. I’m grateful for the myriad ministries that produce such work. At the end of the day, however, I believe in young earth creationism because I believe the text demands it. I’m no scientist. Nor am I any sort of Hebrew scholar. Whatever my training might be I am at least this, an ordinary person with ordinary ears and eyes. I hear what I believe Joshua and Caleb and Miriam and Achan and all the rest, the good, the bad and the ugly, when Moses spoke, that God made the world in six days.

As with all secondary issues, this is not one that will determine a person’s ultimate eternity. Heaven will have plenty of saints who denied young earth creationism and hell plenty who affirmed it. There are trajectories and implications for all the errors in all our ideologies. And, as with all secondary issues, that it is not a gospel issue doesn’t mean it’s unimportant, the equivalent of debating how many cherubim can do the twist on a pin’s head. It is an issue worthy of careful study, robust conversation. It is not an issue worth dividing God’s people over.