Read the New Chapter Below
Watch the Video
The Revelation of God
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). Genesis begins with creation as a magnificent act of God that reveals God to us as the creator of everything that exists.
The world God created consists of personal and impersonal beings and things. Humans are personal beings with names. Impersonal things include matter, space, time, motion, energy, the law of gravity, thunderstorms, oranges, and bicycles.
Many believe that humans are ultimately just impersonal matter that has come into being through a mysterious and random convergence of mass and energy over billions of years for no apparent reason and for no purpose.
The Bible teaches that humans are created by God in his image with intrinsic worth and dignity (Gen 1:28). All matter, space, time, motion, and energy are tools created and used by God to organize and rule over his creation and humanity to accomplish his purposes.
But how can we know all this? How can we really know what God is like?
We can’t think or reason our way to God
First, we can’t merely think or reason our way to God. When Moses writes the first verse of the first book of the Bible, he begins with a faith statement: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1).” Moses does not first prove scientifically that God exists.
Instead, he makes a huge theoretical assumption with the full knowledge that everyone who reads this verse may not share this assumption. Saying that our beliefs about God are based on a faith premise, however, does not in any way mean our beliefs are not scientifically and intellectually credible.
But we must be on our guard against anyone who claims to know the answer to how the world and humanity began without having a faith basis. Even the most atheistic scientists have at the core of their strongest beliefs about the origins of the universe—a faith premise. And it’s a very religious faith premise no matter how non-religious they may consider their premises to be.
This is because it takes religious faith to believe that the origins of the universe and humanity somehow mysteriously came into being through a “big bang” followed by even more mysterious processes over billions of years.
It takes as much, or more, religious faith to believe that everything that exists is only material or energy that has existed forever in some form and has been mysteriously shaped into all of its present complex forms, including humanity, only by pure chance—than to believe the historic Judeo-Christian account that it’s all the work of a personal, infinite, creator God.
It is dishonest to present a view of the origins of the universe and humanity and to claim that this view does not have a deeply rooted faith premise at its very core. And it’s even more dishonest to somehow try to position one view of origins as being scientific and not faith-based and others as being faith-based and religious.
So our faith premise is that there is an infinite, eternal, unchangeable God who exists and has created everything that exists. This means that reality is not limited to the physical but expands into the metaphysical, the spiritual. We do not live in a closed system but an open system.
Sign up for the New
Perspectives Course!
