There’s a poem I want to write

Yesterday I was sitting in church and started thinking about the Creation Story. Lately, every time I sit in church I think about it more. Maybe it is because I no longer go to church because I feel required to do so by the religion I was raised in. Now I go to church because I want to go to church, because I want to explore my faith, and travel my own spiritual path. Whatever the reason, I now find myself engaged in a conversation with my faith in a way I was never allowed to be before.

The old Catholic way was always “don’t ask questions, just believe.” For all intents and purposes, it is still this way. It seems the Catholics have not yet arrived at the conclusion that, when forced to do something, people react badly. It is only investigation (invest being the root word!) and engagement (questioning) that will keep people in the pews.

This is my belief now (and it is why L thinks I am a Jew somehow: Jews engage with their religion, and rarely take things at face value. Questioning is a part of growing in Judaism). I take nothing for granted: I must investigate everything. Perhaps this is because I have been hurt too many times to just accept without understanding, or coming around to the conclusions myself. Either way, it serves me now. (Please note: I do not have negative skepticism, or contempt prior to investigation; rather, I have a healthy engagement and desire for understanding – that goes for whatever it is: religion, a health fad, a route map, an annoying person.)

Since Holy Saturday Vigil, when they do readings from Genesis, Exodus, etc. I’ve been thinking about the Creation Story. Some call it Myth, some call it Doctrine. Those who call it Doctrine seem to want to kill or be killed in defense of it. Those who call it Myth (AKA Darwinists) think those who call it Doctrine are somehow fundamentalist and close minded. And I simply think they are both correct.

For isn’t the Creation Story just a metaphor: a way of answering the unanswerable question of “why are we here”? Why did god put us here? What is our purpose? Well, we’ll never know. It is not ours to know. It is God’s. I have a feeling if we did know, our little peabrains would explode.

1) A very basic part of the Creation Story says that God made Adam to rule over all the other creatures. This can’t be believed if you also believe in Jesus who preaches an “all God’s creatures are equal” kind of doctrine. Jesus believers, Adam can’t rule; we and the animals and plants all come from the same nugget of life.

2) Who is to say that a week of God’s time isn’t 100 billion earthly years anyway? We cannot conceive of God, nor his miraculous ways. God is the true definition of omnipotent. Therefore, these “seven days” and their resulting in “all of life” could have taken a very long, long time for us – seven short days on God’s clock.

3) If the abovementioned is true, then the simplest explanation, while it is the one we can most easily understand – that God spit into a mound of clay and Adam and everything else appeared in a quick seven days – is most likely not the one God would have chosen. It is way too easy. God would have done things the omnipotent, complicated way. But the smallness of the human mind prohibits us from being able to swallow difficult truths (which is why Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors: stories we can relate to, and understand).

4) So the Creation Story, then, could simply be a way we can understand the concept of evolution.

Imagining that we all – ALL GOD’S CREATURES – come from the same atom, the same cell, the same spark of God himself, the idea of evolution moves from being sacrilege to being a story of beauty – and truly of God. Evolution is such a near impossible occurrence it simply MUST be of God. There is simply no other way to explain it. But it does feel hard to wrap the mind around it. Science has claimed it so deeply as a way to explain God away that many of us greet a brick wall upon even considering reading about it.

But I see evolution differently. it is not explaining God away; rather, it is proving the existence of God by proving that the near impossible has actually happened! The miracle of life HAPPENED!

The Creation Story is our way of understanding that concept; how, over all this infinity of God, we came to be.

This is the poem I want to write.

Tags: evolution, creation myth, creation story, god, jesus, catholicism, judaism