Origins

Preface: Why Genesis?

Have you ever lost something really important and then tried to find it?  Maybe your car keys or your glasses?  The most frustrating part of the search is not knowing where to begin.  I can remember as a child hearing my mom say in the background, “Think of the last place you were before you lost it.”  Usually when we lose something we try to retrace our steps backwards in order to find that object of value.  We try to get back to the place where we misplaced that item or lost our way.  When you don’t know where to start it’s always a good idea to try the beginning.  

That’s really why understanding the book of Genesis is so important.  Genesis takes us back to the beginning of all things.  One of the reasons why our world is spiraling downward today is because people are ignorant of the beginning.  Humanity has lost sense of its origin. 

Without God, man’s predicament is hopeless.  Without a proper view of God there can be no proper view of origin, meaning, purpose, morality or destiny.  Without God we are an un-tethered ball spinning end-over-end through the cosmos.  Without a correct theology we cannot know how we got here, why we are here, or where we are going.

 Actually, to be more accurate, I should say that many people have come to believe an account of the beginning of all things—it’s just not the true story.  The Biblical account of the Genesis creation event has been replaced by another origin narrative.  In the place of God is Darwin.  The imago dei has been replaced by evolution.  Adam, the crown jewel of God’s creation, is better understood as just a mere collection of atoms and molecules.  Design has become randomness and chance better explains our arrival on this blue orb rather than “In the beginning God.”  

Satan, the Father of all lies (John 8:44), has carefully crafted a counterfeit cosmogony in opposition to God’s.  Situated right beside God’s account of how the universe came to be is Satan’s alternate account.  It is evident why the Devil has done this.  If Satan can remove God from the picture, then nothing created us and we are responsible only to ourselves.  Humanism—the doctrine that man is the measure of all things—is the logical conclusion of God-less beginning.  If Satan can remove Adam from the Garden, then he never fell and his progeny are not sinful.  If there is no sin, then ultimately there is no need for a Savior.  Satan has mounted a brilliant onslaught on the origin story in order to make the Cross irrelevant.  The Devil has bypassed the need for the cross by attacking its source, the ancient book of Genesis.  Consider the words of the prominent atheist thinker Richard G. Bozart on the importance of Genesis:

Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God…and if Jesus was not the redeemer who dies for our sins and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing. 

In many ways the Church has bought into Satan’s clever story.  The Christian mind has been hijacked by the lies of evolution.  Christians try to reconcile and even accommodate evolution with creationism.  This is where we get mutant forms of thinking such as theistic evolution.  However, these worldviews are incompatible.  The purpose of this work is to not only exegete the text of Genesis but to deal with many of the apologetic questions that arise from this battle of worldviews.  Can we really believe in the biblical text in our world of modern science?  My contention is “Yes we can.”  It is my hope that the Christian mind be reclaimed and to do this we will start at the beginning, where the battle is the hottest, where Satan has concentrated much attention.  The world and the church have lost their way.  The best way to find our way back to the truth is to go back to the beginning, back to Genesis.