christmas and creation

In various parts of the country people are arguing about what they call creationism and evolution. There’s a new movement called Intelligent Design which is interpreted by some (hard-core scientific evolutionists) as old school creationism and by others (old school creationists) as theistic evolution. The truth, as usual, is probably in neither camp.
The Intelligent Design guys, as far as I can tell, are not really proposing a theory of origins per se. Instead, they’re pointing to holes in the theory of evolution, holes like the irreducible complexity certain organic systems. It’s an interesting problem, and one that should obviously be presented to school kids who are able to grasp the complexities. Michael Behe, a biochemist, described irreducible complexity like this:

“a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (michael behe, molecular machines: experimental support for the design inference).

Intelligent Design proponents say they’re not making any attempt to identify a designer or to prove anything found in the Hebrew Scriptures (OK. They’re definitely inferring a creative source, one they likely privately identify as the God of the Bible). I can only see two problems with their ideas. First, they might feed the desire among certain kinds of Christians to “prove” the existence of God, as though God needs that kind of help. I’m also nervous about the demand for equal time in the classroom, since the conclusions drawn by intelligent design proponents are well outside the purview of science, and begin to creep into supernaturalism. That, I think, is asking intelligent design to do more than it can.
People sometimes ask me if our church is “really hard core” or “serious” or “do you take the Bible literally?” After we talk for a while, what they’re asking is a) “are you judgmental?” b) “are you boring?” and c) “do you fit into a small camp of people who claim to take the Bible literally, except when it doesn’t serve their purposes?”
I usually answer these questions by saying no, we try not to judge, and, yes, we are boring, but so are you. I tell them that we do indeed take the Bible literally. When it says there is indeed a God, we believe it. When it says we need to love that God, we believe it. When it says Jesus is the Son of God, divine and human, that he died-died-died and was resurrected, we believe it. When it says that we need to love our neighbors like we love ourselves and would like to be loved, we believe it. When it says repeatedly that God is a God of justice for each person, we believe it.
Then I confess that I’m a creationist. I say I believe God created the entire cosmos (that’s my new term. I like it better than universe. It has a fullness and a warm power you just don’t get with the cold universe). They ask me about the “literal six days of creation” and I say I didn’t know the Bible taught anything about a literal six days. I didn’t know that believing in such a thing was a prerequisite for following Jesus. They say, “You know, the thing in Genesis.” Then I tell them that there are two very different accounts of creation in Genesis, and that such differences (some of which cannot be reconciled even by the most limber mental gymnast) seem to imply that those who assembled the scriptures were comfortable with the differences and obviously thought there was another point to the stories. Why shouldn’t we be as generous with these texts? Genesis seems to have a very different agenda that that of so-called creation scientists. Genesis cares nothing for epochs, periods, timelines, Big Bangs, or anything else modern science is so fascinated with.
I don’t mean to imply that there is no value in the work of geologists, biologists, paleontologists, or cosmologists (I myself studied anthropology in college). I just wonder why the discussion of God as creator has been reduced to questions God doesn’t seem to care to answer. For instance, someone once asked me why there were no dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible. Giraffes don’t score a mention, either, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
As a creationist, I take seriously (even literally!) the command given the man and the woman to “have dominion” over the creatures of the earth and their habitats. To have dominion does not mean, as was once supposed, to ride roughshod over plants, animals, and geologic formations that stand in the way of a modern Western ideas of human progress. It means instead to exercise the kind of authority God exercises over us: to take responsibility for, to be merciful toward, and to surrender our own rights for the sake of God’s creation.
In this way, I think of myself as a true creationist. To believe in an intelligent designer means to believe that intelligence is beyond my own and is not random. Whatever means the Creator used to get the results we now see and argue over, those results must matter to the Creator. But I never heard creationists asking us to strengthen pollution laws, or to recycle, or to use more renewable energy.
Some of that is changing. Both the National Council of Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals routinely put environmental concerns near the top of their agendas. Such wisdom.
So, what does any of this have to do with Christmas, you’re probably asking. Just this: the Creator spoke the cosmos into being through the Logos, the Word (proverbs 8:17 and following speaks of wisdom in very similar ways). That “Word became flesh and set his tent in the midst of us, full of truth and grace.” Jesus, the Word of God, spoken into the void on nothingness, creating the cosmos, was spoken into the cosmos. His presence in the world of decaying matter transformed the material world. Now, in St Paul’s words, “with eager hope” (sounds almost alive, doesn’t it? Maybe it is) the entire creation groans for redemption. Nothing can be the same. The cosmos, infused with glory and purpose by its mere creation, is now infused with even more. We are not moving to ultimate destruction (as some “creationists” and all evolutionists believe) but toward glory, Glory, GLORY.
All this because of the little baby and Mary and Joseph and the animals and the shepherds and the wise men and the water and the disciples and the bread and the wind and the Romans and the cross and the nails and the last breath and the spices and the stone and the empty tomb. But especially the baby.