In the 19th century, the Evangelicals and Lutherans faced the issue of Creation versus Evolution with boldness. The LCMS faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, has caught up with them - only a century or two later.
This scientific age creates a problem for churches - we cannot expect people to go along with Creation in six 24-hour days. Thus a solution developed in the 19th century - one so good that it is still being used today. A day could be any length of time, so God could have created over a vast space of time. When the going gets tough, reconsider and compromise.
Demi-Semi-Hemi-Creation Works out This Way
- "Let us create the earthworm to mix, fertilize, and aerate soil."
- Millions of years later, "Let us create bacteria to digest the food in the earthworm gut."
- The earthworms are all dead, because they were able to swallow soil and leafy material, but they could not digest their own food by themselves.
- The created bacteria are dead, because they had no place to do their work and multiply.
I could go on with many more examples. No, this does not prove Creation, because Creation is revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Word. Like the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ, Creation is a mystery revealed, not a debating point.
However, the field-workers who raise roses, hostas, berries, and Joe Pye realize something. Creation by the Word explains why multiple layers of plant and animal life work and thrive together in many ways at once.
They were created and engineered together, with far more complexity than we can imagine. The "simple" plant cell is more like a complex miniature factory, with many different engines working to move water, obtain food, grow, differentiate, and reproduce.
If that were not enough, the timing of the natural world is exquisitely precise.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Earl of Oxford, As You Like it.
Our Crepe Myrtle mother ship leafed out late this spring, so the cardinals did not build their love nest in it. Instead, robins came, built, and raised their young, which were on the ground testing their wings the other day.
Now I am wondering if the Japanese beetles aka June bugs are making their appearance at night.
We have enough problems staging a play or passing a bill in the legislature. A wedding is a series of panic attacks, but God's Creation is managed around us, with few thinking about how endless complexities and dependencies are all organized together.
- If a thoughtless gardener makes a mistake, and plants or animals are harmed,
- If he gets a 10 horsepower tiller for Father's Day and uses it to wreck the soil,
- If by chance, a finger gets in the way of the rose shears, and blood drips onto the garden,
- Creation will eventually heal the damage.
If so much can take place without our anxious thoughts, how much more does the Creator mend, heal, and guide us.
