The Genesis Focus

Yesterday, our pastor Adam Hamilton responded, in a Huffington Post article, to a congressman's statement about the Genesis account of creation. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The creation story is placed at the beginning of the Bible not because God felt we needed a science lesson as a preface to the rest of the Bible. Instead it is a lesson in theology. The story is archetypal -- it is intended to teach us that there is a Creator, that life is a gift and that we were created in God's image (with the capacity to love, to make conscious decisions, to transcend our instincts, to reason). In addition it teaches that human beings were created for companionship, that sex is a blessing from God, and, in the most tragically compelling part of the story, that we human beings are drawn to do the very things that separate us from God and others (we are drawn to eat the forbidden fruit). When we do this, paradise is lost.

The story likely drew upon the best thinking of the time regarding the origins of the physical universe, but that is not the point of the passages. It is not meant to teach cosmology, or biology, geology or physics. It is teaching theology and, one could argue, anthropology, sociology and psychology. But to suggest that the creation story was intended to teach science, and that any scientific theory that contradicts these accounts is a lie "straight from the pit of hell" is to misunderstand and misrepresent these chapters.

I do think that we trivialize the Genesis account a bit when we make it all about science and not about theology. I agree with Adam about how much we can learn from the Genesis account when we focus on theology instead of science.
I suggest that you read the whole article here and let me know what you think about it and the focus of Genesis.

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