“My Science Teacher is Going to Hell!”  Those were actual words muttered to my mom by yours truly.  In my defense, it was my 8th grade self.  And after all, she did have an evolution poster hanging in her classroom.  What other conclusion could I have come to?  And I couldn’t even imagine why my mom reacted so strongly to me, I mean, wasn’t I on God’s side?

According to Genesis, creation took 6 days. You know: separating light and dark, spreading out the waters, causing plants to grow, the sun, moon and stars, and finally, animals and people.  Boom.  Six days...then a day of rest.  The world was “very good”.  And this sat well with me...until it didn’t.  As a kid, I heard rousing debates and interesting defenses for a 6-day creation--all the while, learning more about animals and adaptations, rock formations and fossils, not to mention our ever-expanding universe. As a young adult, I could stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and read about how the Colorado River gently formed the canyon over millions of years but then wonder: “Who’s wrong here--the Bible?  Or science?”  And clearly, since I believed the Bible was correct (it had to be for everything to fit neatly!), science was wrong.  So then what do I do?  Explain to my children how the park rangers were lying?  How scientists were agents of the devil?

That is a very sad way to live, you know?  I almost felt like I had to stop learning and reading and wondering about things...because I was constantly confronted with the question:  science?  Or the Bible?  

In my effort to understand God (a good thing), I had created parameters for Him to operate in.  I had created a box.  And you know what they say about boxes…

For all those with a penchant for boxing God up nice and tight, we’d do well to remember that the God of the Scriptures is not a being who will endure such blasphemous reductionisms…. That is why in Scripture he is revealed as Spirit and Fire--whoever approaches God approaches the uncontainable fire of a holy love that cannot and will not be contained.  This holy life will upend a life obsessed with safety and security.  God is not safe, nor containable… (Hirsch and Nelson, Reframation)

One evening, in my very early 30’s, I was walking and looking up at the stars and moon.  I was overcome with awe--imagine all of those universes and solar systems and stars and planets--incomprehensible!  And the God who created it all--Eternal!  Powerful!  Good!  I had the teeniest thought that night, that maybe I was being a bit inflexible.  What if God--GOD--decided to create the world slowly?  What if it was His good pleasure to create simple life forms and guide them to developing into more and more complex life until it became “Very Good!”  Who was I to say He couldn’t?  

Instead of that being a scary thought--it actually freed me up to imagine a God much larger and more creative than I had ever considered.  As I would imagine millions of years of Earth taking shape under His hovering Presence, I began to realize that that had an incredible beauty in itself. To quote Hirsh and Nelson again,

...God is not safe, nor containable, and he claims us, body and soul, but this is what we are made for.  In acknowledging God as a consuming fire, we recognize he can never fit in any box we try to place him in.  He is always the ever-greater God, and the Seducer of our hearts.

At this point, I can say that I think evolution is most likely part of the way God created our world.  It just seems to make sense.  And Genesis 1 poses no problems to that view…but that’s another story for another day.  I have never been more in awe of God.  And that’s partly because I am a science teacher.