My friend and I had read a number of Christian-oriented books that I suggested:  The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator, the Gospel of Mark in the Bible, and Christianity Explored.   Now we are looking at a book that he suggested – Undeniable; Evolution and the Science of Creation.  As we starting reading the latest book, I was struck by three things immediately.

First, the author seems a bit dismissive, referring to “Creationists and other uniformed people” or the “kooky ideas that Creationists teach their children.”  Second, our definitions are not in sync on the term Creationist.  The author uses the word to describe those who hold to a literal six 24 hour days as the timeline of the biblical creation story.  I view myself as a Creationist, believing that God created the universe and all that is in it. But I would be more in tune with one of the other four common interpretations of the Genesis text, as explained in the ESV Study Bible  (I gravitate toward the geological-age idea).   And third, the author assumes too much about my knowledge on things that are obvious to him, like the multiple species of finches on the Galapagos Islands as recounted in Darwin’s initial work.

As I described these things to my friend, he related to them, because he felt the same way about the Christian books we read.  We were both in tune with phrases like “obviously” or “apparently” which were used to make points that were not so clear from the supporting information.

One thing we do agree on is the starting point – there must be a God behind creation. I like the explanation in the words of Romans 1.20: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”  My friend says a “creator” makes sense to him because the Big Bang has scientific support and there must have been some force behind that event.  But we both stand in awe of the enormous, varied, and seemingly infinite universe that we live in.  And maybe we should collaborate on our own book.