Paul Poulton brings fresh perspective to Genesis 1

Paul Poulton

I recently watched a nature show on TV. The presenter was Steve Backshall who has become a hit with children and their parents who watch BBC's The Really Wild Show and most recently Deadly 60, which is a show about animals that are dangerous and yet endangered. It's a great show. What got me thinking was when Steve got some interesting footage of himself with chimpanzees, partly because I love to watch the chimps, (if I go to a nature reserve I could watch the apes all day and not bother with the other animals), and partly because we are told that chimps are our closest living relative who share about 98% of our DNA. Steve showed us some chimps who actually use tools, (after a manner of speaking), they got some wood and smashed it down on a nut to break the shell, they then ate the nut.

How God decided to create living beings has been a matter of hot debate for over 100 years. Some say God made everything fast in six days not very long ago. Others that God did plenty of ground work and laid foundations and brought everything together over a much longer period of time because God is very patient, (unlike us). Both stances claim biblical support. Is a 'day' in the biblical account of creation a 24 hour period, let us say, marked from sunset to sunset? Or is it a 'day' from some other view point in the universe because the sun didn't appear in Genesis 1 until day four and given the staggering distances in the universe to which time is intrinsically linked, is a 'day' in God's eyes different to 24 hours?

Debates over scriptures between Christians are not a bad thing unless they are done in the wrong spirit. I guess in this particular debate both groups of Christians may be in danger of taking a step too far. I've noticed that one group say the issue is about evolution or the Christian world view, as if there is no other view point held by Christians. The fact that they call themselves Creationists excludes the fact that there are Christians who believe that God used evolution to create life, and 'life' is only one area of what God did in creation. What the general public thinks they are saying is probably: you don't believe in creation if you don't believe the same as us about the way God created life. While there is also danger in that the other side can easily look down on what they see as simplistic notions of Christians who refuse to use the brains God has given them. People who refuse to accept the truth when it's placed before them on a plate and have little understanding of how the Bible teaches us.

To the casual observer there is merit on both sides. You have to admire the way one side holds onto their interpretation of Genesis 1 as being scientific fact. If we held onto other scriptures such as turning the cheek or giving to the poor or as Ephesians 4:2 tells us, 'Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love' with such tenacity we would do well.

Merits are also found from Christians who work in biological research. We are told that the vast majority of Christians who are active in biological research have no problem with incorporating evolutionary theory with their belief in God as Creator. All 'creative processes' are exactly that, a process. For instance when I am in the recording studio putting a song together I do it in many stages. At various points we run off a mix of the song up to that point to take home and have a listen to. Eventually we arrive at the finished product, a quality song. I still have all the earlier mixes around the house that I can still listen to at any time and they are still interesting in their own way. So I have a record of the creative process around my house, in a similar way those who believe God used evolution say we can see a record of God's process of creation with our own eyes as we look around us and see the lower forms of life all the way up to humans. They say Genesis 1 does a wonderful job of describing the evolutionary process.

My main point here is not to wade into the Genesis 1 debate, but to confirm that all Christians agree that God created the universe and life and secondly all Christians agree that humans beings are different to animals. The difference is that God, who is Spirit, breathed into our nostrils and we don't read of him doing that to the animals. The human spirit is what separates us from animals. We have creative thought, animals have instinct. That is the point where Christians differ to Naturalists. It's a warning to Christians not to get so entangled in debating about Genesis that we find it's actually the enemy of our souls who is making monkeys out of us.

Now going back to my TV programme about the monkeys and apes. All animals have instinct, it enables them to live and survive. We ourselves have instinct but we also have spirit and it's the mind of man that uses our brain to sometimes override our instinct, hence we curb our sexual instinct until the circumstances are right, or at least we ought to. However animals only have instinct; we could look on it as God's gift to them. Each animal seems to have a special instinct, one in which it excels. For instance I once went to my friends house, he went into the kitchen to make a drink and left me on the sofa listening to the weather forecast on the radio, I noticed the guy doing the weather report repeated something he said about 15 seconds before. Then my friend Steve came back in the room and I mentioned it to him and he said, 'it's not the radio it's my budgie'. Sure enough I went over to a bird cage in the corner of the room and there was a budgerigar repeating what he had heard earlier on the radio. I was fascinated and laughed; it was great. Such is the gift some animals have. Dogs are excellent at sniffing things out, very useful for law enforcement, some animals are strong, excellent for farming particularly before the industrial revolution. Foxes are cunning, cheetahs run fast, bees dance, birds build excellent nests, pigeons find their way home and apes ape. Apes copy things they see, it's deep inside them to do that. So saying that chimpanzees can paint or use tools is no different to saying budgies can tell us the weather forecast; it's done by the instinct that God placed within them. Naturalists like to make a point that chimps are really no different to us, just one step lower down the chain of life-forms. Christians point out that whatever views we have about the way God created life, he did create life and that humans are in fact a lot different to the ape family because God's breathed into us and we were made in the image of God. In fact God himself took on human form and for a while lived among us.