In not so many words

In not so many words
I told the pastor of my church that as a man of faith and a biology teacher I teach creation in the public school. But I just don't mention the God part.
He informed me, in not so many words, that as a man of the cloth who looks like Mr. Clean, with biceps to match, that he. Didn’t. buy it.

Genesis begins:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

I believe this. All that matter had to come from Somewhere.

I know you’re an evolutionist, (he spits it out as though the mere word has left a sour taste on his tongue), You teach men coming from monkeys and an earth that’s 4 billion years old.

Men from monkeys? 4 billion years old? I assured him that such blasphemy would never be spoken in MY classroom, quietly adding that it was because the earth is thought to be well over 6 billion years old, and that monkeys and humans are both at two different ends of two different branches in a genetic lineage that stem, eventually, from a single. Primate. ancestor.

Not amused, he reminded me he believes, like I do, that the Bible is the inspired word of God, and when it says God made something in a day, He made it in one. twenty-four hour. day. **Only it doesn’t. exactly. SAY that.

Verse 3 - And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Even before God creates the sun, Genesis concludes each creation event with an evening, and a morning of the next day. There is creation, and then a pause, creation, and a pause. In biology I teach the same phenomenon, punctuated equilibrium, supported by the fossil record. During times of major global change there are many new species. Created. Evolving. Coming about as less fit species lose hold of their niche, and then… a pause… as a new age commences and ecology works to balance the new puzzle of interlocking populations until the next. Major. Disruption.

And look, the first things God creates are earth and light, matter and energy, each with its own set of complex physical laws, particles, forces and gravity, charges and attractions. No sun yet – that comes later. But there is light. The Bible tells us - One minute the universe is dark without form, and suddenly BOOM we have light and matter. I teach this, only instead of a Boom I call it more of a big… bang.

And now, with matter and energy and laws of physics up and running, the Earth takes shape. God forms the seas and the sky. An atmosphere on the earth. The continents take shape, and only then does God create life. Ask any of my students if this Biblical account fits their geological timeline, and they’ll tell you it does. The first life mentioned just happens to be an autotroph, kind of like those those microscopic algae, the photosynthetic organisms that made their own food and pumped our atmosphere full of sweet, sweet Oxygen, as they continue to do today. And look here in these next verses: No sooner has life formed than those living things are governed by the sun and moon. All Species of plants and animals, even those microscopic algae build their lives: Their feeding, their respiration, their reproduction: around the tides, and the 24 hour day, and the phases of the moon, just to survive. If this doesn’t line up with my biology curriculum, I don’t know what does.

And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures”

Here come the animals, spreading through the oceans long before any of them had feet to crawl onto land. The Bible’s sequence, again, supported by the fossil record, first in the oceans, then on land, and finally at the very end, man shows up, Homo sapiens after all of the other groups of living things have already been established. Funny thing is, all the evidence collected by us science types point to life appearing in just. That. order. Evolution and creation here. Whether I tell my students God did it or not, the results speak for themselves. Two sides. One coin. No doubt.

There are those that call creation a “myth,” a story told to children. But if you were God, how else would you explain to a largely illiterate, unschooled, nomadic people with no concept of cells, photons, quarks, and DNA exactly how you made everything from nothing? I think a chapter or two in Genesis is about all you'd really need.

Had I ever worked up the courage to explain this in my church, I would be in no one’s good favor. When Genesis tells us God said “Let there be…” they assume he waved a magic wand, creating something else from nothing, violating his own law of conservation of matter, which we otherwise assume has been held in place since He created the heavens and earth, matter and non-matter. Where does the Bible say it was instantaneous? Or that it took a second? Or a minute? Or a full 24 hours? Or could it have been an epoch? How would God have explained the concept of a billion to a nomadic people who never went to school, or things as microscopic and abstract as cells and organelles or molecules of DNA, or the evolutionary development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex that gives us the capacity to understand the concept of sin?

But I dare not speak the name Darwin within the sanctuary, for they all know what the pastor told them the Bible says, and though not one of them has ever laid eyes on The Origin of Species, or know that he left for the Galapagos having trained for the clergy, or know how many times the word “Creator” with a capital C appears in the volume, or that the term “evolution” does not, they all know one thing. They know that they were driving in their car, and they saw on the bumper in front of them a DARWIN fish eating something that looked like their JESUS fish, and they decided then and there that they didn’t like it.

So I told my pastor that as a man of faith I teach creation in the public schools, and that my conscience was clear about it, and then we let it drop.