The Beginning of What?

Heart failure. That's what. A book I read, called Adam and the Genome, nearly took the wind out of my sails. But instead of stranding me, it fueled a months-long journey in search of answers.

I love science. I always have. But science and religion have a long, albeit mythical, history of being at great odds with each other. In the ancient world, some cultures believed the world was flat. Sea travel was an abomination—until someone dared to venture out and not fall off the edge. It was also understood that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was heresy to think otherwise—until...

I perceive a pattern.

It seems to take two to three generations for scientific theories to mature and for religious cultures to adjust.

Okay. I guess.

Until it is my generation. And I am the one embittered in the middle of a troubling transition. I am not talking about the old Earth vs. new Earth transition. And not the Big Bang. No. My contention stems from the evolution of the human species.

It's about Adam and Eve.

I learned about Adam and Eve as a child. Just as I learned about faith in God as a child. But through much study, my understanding of God matured. Of beginnings, it seems, it did not. Throughout decades of exposure to Christian preaching and teaching, Adam was the first human, created by God from the dust of the ground, and Eve was made from his rib.

The end.

Or, should I say, the beginning?

When I first learned of the theory of evolution, it piqued my curiosity, of course. But I didn't take it seriously. Especially the evolution of humans from apes. I knew in my heart that Adam was the first human, created by God from the dust of the ground, and Eve was made from his rib. I wasn't alone in my doubt. My views were shared by many others. We knew that matter drifts toward disorder, not order. We presented the much-used illustration of a Swiss watch as an example. A Swiss watch cannot make itself, not even if given a billion years to do so.

Yada, yada, yada.

But, like I said, I was curious. So, I started reading what leading scientists who were also Christian had to say about it. I read The Language of God by Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project. I was inspired, but my heart was not affected. But then, I read Adam and the Genome by Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight.

I am fascinated by genetics. I studied genetics in college and use DNA and genealogy as a theme in many of my speculative stories. So, I was more than prepared to read and understand Dennis Venema's arguments from genomics research. But I didn't just understand them. I believed them. I found them to be irrefutable; the originating population of homo sapiens was at least 10,000 people, not two.

What?!! Did Adam and Eve ever exist?

I was shaken.

It was not my faith in God that was shaken. My faith stands on the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But my psyche was affected. I experienced an overwhelming sense of sorrow that I could not reconcile.

Where was my peace?

The writers must have foreseen how traumatic their findings would be. The 2nd half of the book was chapter after chapter of theological reflection. They were helpful.

But I was not comforted.

Photo by Maxime Horlaville on Unsplash

I desperately needed comfort. But where to find it? My prayers went unanswered. My self-study of the text was not revelatory. God was forcing me to look elsewhere, outside my traditional circle, for a different theological perspective.

The Bible Project Classroom.

I had taken classes through their website before. Exodus Overview by Dr. Carmen Imes. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and The Art of Biblical Words, both by Dr. Tim Mackie. All very good classes.

Maybe I could find some answers there.

I considered jumping right into the Adam to Noah class because that was the beginning of my contention. Instead, I started at the beginning of the text. 

In Heaven and Earth, we studied Genesis chapter 1.

26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Nothing in the text we studied contradicted the "new" Earth vs. "old" Earth, the Big Bang, or even the evolution of the human species.

As I suspected, the trouble doesn’t begin until Genesis chapter 2.

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Next Time On Earth as in Heaven

Reading Adam and the Genome was just the beginning. Next week, in part 2 of a 3 part journey, I want to tell you what I discovered in the Adam to Noah class.

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