For some of you, this post will be blasphemy, so read no further.  For others of you, it might be laughable.  But for right now, if you can suspend judgment for a few moments, you might crack open your mind just slightly, to allow your thinking neurons to fire in different ways.

[Remember, doubt is a healthy and vital part of learning about something.  It’s necessary, I think.  If you’re interested in the role of doubt, check out Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith podcast for this week, called “A History of Doubt.” [Update on 10.1.10: Speaking of Faith has been renamed.  It’s now known as Being.]

If you’ve read the lovely account of the creation in the very first chapter of Genesis, one question you might have is: Why are the lights created on the first day, and on the fourth day, the sun and the moon and the stars are made?  How can that be–the lights coming before the sun and the moon?

Okay, that’s just one question.  The creationists are right in that, if you believe in a literal 6-day creation, you cannot mesh what you believe with what evolutionists believe, in that the sequence of creation (for a creationist) would not match how life would have come to pass (for an evolutionist).

Here’s a thought.  Imagine the scribe scrawling down his account.  Perhaps he loves words.  Perhaps he’s just trying to get something down.  I don’t think anyone would contest that the story is like a poem (and as beautiful).  In reality, the scribe can’t know what happened.  He wasn’t there.

Can we at least come to a point of saying that we don’t know how it all happened.  What if God chose to create the world with the Big Bang?  Why does it matter how many years passed before man was created?  What if God chose to fashion creatures who would change over time (or chose to create everything in a different order)?  Let’s take that last sentence for a minute.  Could it be that God would have “breathed” life into one of those creatures along the way, so that he or she had a soul, or an understanding of greater things than him- or herself, and an awareness of something bigger than him- or herself?

And for those of you who think I’m joking, I’m not.  I’ve done enough research to know that there is a creation account dated earlier than Adam and Eve’s story.  [We can determine when Adam and Eve would have lived, approximately, by using the lists of generations in the Bible.]  How could this be?  Were there people before Adam and Eve?

The older story is remarkably similar to the one in the Bible and the Torah.  My guess is that the scribe re-wrote it for the Hebrew people to refer to–their own “In the Beginning” story.  He made two changes: he made the gods into a monotheistic God, and he made it moral (to teach a lesson).

But that leads to my husband’s next question, which is: If there were other people, then why weren’t they “enough” for God?  Why the separate account of God originating humankind with Adam and Eve?  Or did God create many people, across the globe, at the same time, and the Adam and Eve story is just one story?

Aha.  You thought you’d get answers, right?  Nope.  These are just my wonderings–about how it all happened.

I’m just elated God likes stories just as much as I.  The method and manner of creation doesn’t matter to me.  I just think there’s so much about God we don’t know, because God is allowing us to learn about him through humans writing His story, and don’t you think there will be a little bias there?  Even as there is in my Eve.

[Post image: The Moon by cybersb on stock.xchng]