Creation: Miracle or Anomaly?

             It seems that Christians feel threatened by the theory of evolution along with the commonly lumped-together theories about the origins of the universe and the origins of life.  The reasoning seems to be that the Bible presents a particular story of creation and, if evolution is shown to be true, then it negates the Bible and undermines the Christian faith.  But this seems like a misguided approach and does not follow the general pattern of the Christian view of some other differences between science and faith.

             Even before science became known as science, there were key "naturalistic theories" that directly contradicted the very foundational beliefs of Christianity.  Here's one:  every person dies, and when they die, they decay into dust and they never ever come back to life!  They are gone.  Here's another one:  a human female who is a virgin can never become pregnant without being physically impregnated in some way!  It has never happened in the history of mankind and it will never happen.  These events are physical impossibilities.  In fact, these issues are so fundamental that they aren't usually explicitly taught - they are just assumed.

             Christians claim that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, died, and rose again after being dead for three days.  These claims are not just one set of a wide range of beliefs in the Christian religion.  They are not incidental to the Christian faith.  They are the central claims of the Christian faith.  These claims establish the divine nature of Jesus.  If someone rejects these claims then they cannot claim to be a Christian.  If these claims are false, Christianity is false.  These claims cannot be more fundamental and critical to Christians.

             And yet...Christians never try to attack the basic scientific claims regarding the impossibility of a virgin birth and the impossibility of rising from the dead.  Christians do not feel threatened when scientists, atheists, or anyone else, claim that these things cannot happen.  Christians are not up in arms, trying to get these principles taught in the science classes in public schools.  Why?  The answer is obvious to all:  the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are miracles.  They are supernatural events, not natural events.  In fact, the more it is shown and demonstrated that these events could never happen in a natural world, the stronger is the case for Christianity.  If these events could happen naturally, it would significantly weaken Christian faith.  It is actually important that these events be shown to be miracles - supernatural events - and not unusual but natural events.  Science is helpful to the Christian faith here because it can help to establish why these events are impossible in a purely natural world.

             Somehow, the Christian view of creation seems to have escaped classification as a miracle.  Why is that?  Actually, the basic concept of creation has been clearly demonstrated to be supernatural to some extent, based on the scientific demonstration that spontaneous generation does not occur in the natural world.  Of course, even Christians do not claim that creation is necessarily continuous to the present day.  Also, science has to uncomfortably backtrack on this issue a bit because obviously, at some point, some form of "spontaneous generation" did occur in history.  Science is stuck claiming that life only spontaneously appeared under some specific conditions in the past that have not been duplicated since.  I think it is hard for scientists not to refer to the spontaneous generation of life as a miracle - instead they have to say it is an "anomaly" - but that is not the main point here. 

             I think the reason that creation isn't typically lumped in with other miracles is that the creation of the universe by an all-powerful God does seem like a logical possible explanation of how the natural world came into being.  It is one of many possible explanations, of course, and one that science tries to avoid.  However, because it could be considered logical or rational, it seems like Christians kind of adopted the sense that the creation story of Genesis was a rational natural explanation of creation.  Unlike miracles, which depend on being classified as supernatural, and thus are never threatened by natural proofs that they could not happen, but are rather strengthened by such proofs, the Christian view of creation seems to have been placed in the "natural occurrence" category.   I think Christians liked the fact that the existence of the natural world seemed to "prove" that a Creator God must exist.  The idea was comforting.  The idea is, in fact, rational.  But that does not mean that it is natural. 

             Here's my suggested view:  Creation of the universe, starting with nothing and wrapping up the work in six days, is a miracle.  It is a supernatural event.  It might correlate well with some natural observations, but that does not negate the fact that the creation story in Genesis is, at it's very core, a description of a truly miraculous event.  In fact, the idea that God created in six days what scientists claim the natural universe would take 5 trillion days to create establishes the immeasurable creative power of God.  What God did in creation is definitely not natural!  It is a Class A-1 miracle!

             Some may be uncomfortable calling creation a miracle because they are vested in the idea that Genesis relates real human history and worry that "relegating" creation to the category of a miracle somehow negates the "realness" of it.  They worry that it somehow makes it less of an account of history and more of a fable or myth.  But that is not at all what is meant by creation being a miracle.  The four gospels are clearly meant to relate real human history, yet it is within the gospels that we find the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Recognizing an event as a miracle does not negate its historical nature.  A miracle is something that should not have ever happened based on the principles of the natural world, but did actually happen.  A fable is something that never happened but maybe could have.  The virgin birth is a miracle.  The resurrection is a miracle.  And creation is a miracle.

             Maybe, in some odd way, it would have been nice if, as science delved further and further into the age of the universe, they would have kept honing in closer and closer to exactly 6,024 years for the age of the earth and then found that the "void" was exactly two days older.  Such a finding would have "proven Christianity beyond a reasonable doubt."  But, of course, there was never a reason to think that that was going to happen.  There are plenty of ways that God could use to prove his existence beyond a reasonable doubt.  He does not avail Himself of any of them.  He leaves room for doubt.  He leaves room for choice.  He leaves room for belief.  It makes us uncomfortable as Christians because belief can be so hard sometimes.  We think it would be so easy if the belief part of Christianity was done away with.  We want to see, not believe.  We want to see the nail marks in His hands and thrust our hand into His side.  That would make everything so easy, we think!  But it is not to be so.  Not yet anyway.

             I strongly encourage Christians to see creation for what it is and was always meant to be:  a miracle.  Stop degrading this miraculous event by trying to force fit it into a naturalistic explanation.  Instead, celebrate every time science makes the idea of creation harder and harder to imagine.  All that does is demonstrate, in more and more certain terms, the omnipotence of our Creator God.  Revel in that fact that your God, the God you believe in, was born of a virgin and rose from the dead...and created the universe out of nothing, apparently in one trillionth the time it should have taken!  And He still cares about you.  That is a miracle!