The Least of The Reasons I Believe In Six Day Creation

Why would I write about the least of the reasons I believe in creation in six days?

Not because it's that important to how I approach that particular question, but because of how important it is to how I view my life, and all of life.

The least of the reasons I believe in six day creation is that I am not ashamed. Or better, I do not want to be ashamed.

Let us not speak of creation. Let's talk about Jericho, as in Joshua fit de battle of Jericho and the walls come tumbling down. God tells the people of God to march around the city walls for seven days, playing music and making a clamor. On the seventh day the city walls tumble down strictly through the power of trumpet blats and voice projection. Mirabile visu!

To an unbelieving mind, it's easy to see what happened. Joshua had sappers and miners working to undermine the wall. These were most likely Egyptian or Hittite mercenaries, since the traveling former slaves that were the Israelite people would have lacked the expertise. But how were the miners to get under the walls without being detected, since such work is noisy? Simple. Work under the cover provided by the Israelites, who were already surrounding the city and could disguise the work through tumult and clangor.

You might raise an objection. Such a work could not be completed in seven days, you say! No problem, Biblical exegetes to the rescue.  You're reading the story too literally. Six and seven are very significant numbers in Scripture. This was simply the Hebrew way of telling the story post facto. Certain historical events happened, and then were chronicled in the poetic Hebrew way.

So you say to yourself, well, no one's denying the legitimacy of the story here. God said he would bring the walls down, and if he did it by using agents expert in seige warfare instead of miracling them down, it's not really a big deal, is it? He still gets all the glory. No one's denying the truth of Scripture, or that God is active in history. That is probably what happened after all.

Besides, you don't want to be the one ridiculous guy who keeps insisting the God miracled the whole thing, as if you were a six-year-old in Sunday school. You're smart and sophisticated like the historian, the anthropologist, and the exegete.

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This process started several paragraphs back, you might recall, with an unbelieving mind. Then shame and embarrassment made us afraid to disagree with this spirit of unbelief. You heard that some crazy fundamentalists think the Devil took the time to walk around this green globe planting fossils to confound mankind, and you didn't want to be associated with that.

But it's important as a Christian to stand with God, not explain him away to the world. Which is why it's good practice to believe in miracles. It's good for your soul to believe in fantasy.

I believe that God stopped the sun, and that it's written in the book of Jasher, a book that we have no trace of but that Madeleine L'Engle has probably seen in a vision.

I believe that God stopped the sun, but I have no interest or patience for online articles explaining how scientists have lost track of a day, "proving" that God really did it.



And although I have very little to say about dinosaurs, I believe in dragons. Not as a way to explain dinosaurs away, but because dragons make sense.

It is good spiritual discipline to say out loud that you believe in dragons. That you believe in fairy tales. Let the mockers mock. It will help you stand close to God your Father. This world is a story. In many ways, it's a fairy story. Which means that if you don't believe in fairies, you're not seeing the world as it really is. You will think that suns are flaming balls of gas. You will think that the Earth is a ball of rock in space. And you might not feel silly now, but you will feel silly later, when all is put right.

Be willing to be silly now.

Denying evolution and espousing six day creation is, at the least, good spiritual discipline. Humble yourself.

Here endeth the post. Below please find a footnote.

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From G. K. Chesterton:

It seemed to me that he did not follow me with sufficient delicacy,
so I moderated my tone. "Can you not see," I said, "that fairy
tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward;
but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its
nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul
is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels.
Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that
the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is--
what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem
of the modern novel is--what will a madman do with a dull world?
In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad.
In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins,
and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.
In the excellent tale of 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' in all the other
tales of Grimm, it is assumed that the young man setting out on his
travels will have all substantial truths in him; that he will be brave,
full of faith, reasonable, that he will respect his parents,
keep his word, rescue one kind of people, defy another kind,
'parcere subjectis et debellare,' etc. Then, having assumed
this centre of sanity, the writer entertains himself by fancying
what would happen if the whole world went mad all round it,
if the sun turned green and the moon blue, if horses had six legs
and giants had two heads. But your modern literature takes insanity
as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of insanity.
A lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite serious;
that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is
a piece of glass is to himself as dull as a piece of glass.
A man who thinks he is a chicken is to himself as common as a chicken.
It is only sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity.
Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary and
the tale extraordinary. But you have made the hero extraordinary
and the tale ordinary--so ordinary--oh, so very ordinary."