My first encounter happened with a new Sunday School teacher. I had just began serving as the youth pastor, and I figured I should visit the classes under my department right away. The teacher had a long history with our congregation, but had just moved back into town after a six year stint in a neighboring town. He had just started teaching Sunday School again after no involvement with the teens in his last congregation. He showed a video to the class that held absolutely no interest for me. I thought this was just one person and one class and did not think too much of it. My next memorable encounter came from another video. A member of the congregation had taken it upon himself to order dozens of copies of a DVD on this topic so that each teacher, pastor, and board member could own a copy and show it in their bible studies and classes. Sure enough, one by one, most of the adult and teen classes watched and discussed this 30 minute video. It rapidly became apparent that this issue was a really big deal here.
What was it? The atonement? The authority of Scripture? Alcohol? Homosexuality? How to be Christlike in a post-modern world? Perhaps even styles of worship? Nope. It was how the world was created - or rather, the world was created in six literal 24 hour days. Never before had I encountered such dogmatism on something so trivial.
You see, growing up, I never cared much about science. I found the easiest science classes I could in both high school and college, and did just enough work to keep up my GPA. When I read the two accounts of how God created the world in Genesis 1 and 2, I believed God created the world but never even thought about how God created it. That’s just not how my brain is wired.
I respect those who strive to understand how the universe works. We need people who ask hard questions and follow the evidence wherever it leads. I may not be asking these questions, but somebody needs to.
Furthermore, I understand the worry that many have that the subject of evolution is helping derail many young people’s faith. However, it doesn't have to contribute to the loss of faith for anybody. It all depends on how we approach the connection between science and faith.
So how can we approach Genesis 1 and 2 in our youth groups?
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1 NIV). Over and over again, the Book of Psalms poetically declares the beauty and majesty of God’s creation. It doesn’t stop there - the prophets join in the worship as well: “…the whole earth is full of God’s glory,” declares Isaiah (6:3), and, “But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom,” proclaimed Jeremiah (10:12). There is no doubt in the Bible that God created this wonderful world, and created it in such a way that it should inspire awe. The prophets remind us that our God is infinitely complex. We should never expect to understand everything that this God does or has created. We will be constantly discovering new things about creation. We will constantly be in awe of the God of the universe.
This is where we should always start - with worship of an incredible God who is bigger than anything we could ever face. When we read Genesis 1 and 2, we should stop everything and surrender our lives anew to a God who created life - even life to the fullest! This is what we have to be passing on to the youth of our congregations. If we fail at this, then we fail to pass on the Faith to the next generation.
What bothers me about the framework of this argument is the box within which we place God when say how God created the world. To insist that God had to create the world in six literal 24-hour days is like telling Leonardo Da Vinci that he can only use red, blue, and yellow. Even if you hold to the full inerrancy of Scripture along with reading it as a scientific document, you still have to believe that God’s power can be captured by human words. You have to believe that God’s creative, awe-inspiring power can be so fully expressed in two chapters that we can understand the intricacies of the universe from them. I will say the same about evolution. We can create theories, follow the science where it leads us, and learn more about our great God. But the moment we think we have it figured out, our hubris has gotten the better of us and we’ve fallen into idolatry of self.
How can we approach creation in our youth groups? We can learn about the world our God created from scientists, knowing that it only leads us to fall more and more in love with the Creator God. More importantly, we can read Scripture knowing that it tells a story about a God who created us and has given us the chance to be in relationship with God. It doesn’t matter how God created the world. What matters is that God has continually poured God’s self into God’s creation so that, by the grace of God, we can be in Christ.
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