What does it mean to be a creationist? Does it mean that one is determined to undermine the efforts of evolution doctrine in our culture? Does it mean that we make every effort to set forth plausible scientific explanation for observable phenomena in the world and beyond that remains faithful to the formula of a six day creation and a world-wide flood? Perhaps we should be active in engaging the scientific community in debate on the discoveries and theories of science that they should themselves question their assumptions and become more objective and considerate of other theories? Being a creationist may be any and all of the above. But primarily to be a creationist one must first be a new creationist.

It is not surprising that the world holds the account of creation in Genesis to be foolish. For the account itself relates how humanity lost its communion with God, the source of all wisdom and knowledge, and became lost in the confusion of sin, albeit still functioning with a measure of reason for his life on this earth, but not in possession with a transcendent understanding of the origin of all things and the plan for all time.

How then can one know of these things? God created for his good pleasure. He did so because he had a plan for the fullness of time: to unite all things in himself, making peace. Certainly peace only had to be ‘made’ when discord was brought into the earth through sin, right? Not necessarily. For by nature of God being the Creator, he is always creating. Primarily he is creating relationship. This creation in essence is a giving of himself and his life that is reciprocated by the creation. In other words, He gives himself out of love for this is his nature; God is love. His nature is also to consume; that is part of the love, to receive and enjoy. So he creates a creation that is after his own image; that is, he gives out of love to humanity and receives back from humanity that which he has given. As humanity gives back what God gives in love, this is called worship.

How do we know this? It is revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ. In Christ the nature of God is shown to us; we see that God is three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and yet he is one, for each of the three are relations in himself. Jesus came that he might give to us the fullness of divine life on the cross. He poured out his blood, not just as a man, but as God, so that he might create a perfect and holy relationship between people and God. This is the new creation. This relationship is created, and yet it is being created, or ‘renewed.’ For Paul writes to the Colossians to “put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” This renewal is by the gift of the life of Jesus to us continually. For Jesus said that he would send his spirit as a helper to us and that he is with us to the end of the age. Paul also writes to the Galatians: “Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” a rhetorical question to which the answer is a resounding no! The relationship that was created in our hearts by God’s spirit through faith, continues in the same way; by the creation in our hearts of God’s spirit through faith!

So we see that the nature of God’s creation is that he creates and continues to create in us the same relationship that he created in the beginning. What kind of relationship is this? It must be a relationship in sacrificial love. For Jesus said to his disciples “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you, abide in my love.” And Jesus explains in numerous passages that the nature of the relationship of love between him and his Father is that the Father has placed all authority into his hands and that the Father sustains him in his very life. The Son also responds in doing nothing but what the Father tells him to do and saying nothing but what the Father tells him to say. It is a reciprocal giving.

So it also is with us and Christ. As he gives to us his life in the resurrection from death, so he gives us the will and ability to worship him in spirit and in truth, that is, give back to him the things he has given and continues to give to us, his spirit according to his truth. This is the new creation, it is life, and it is done through the creation of the word incarnate, Jesus, who received his life from the father and gave it back on the cross for our sake, that uniting us both with the death and the resurrection we also might participate in this life.

Now this informs us as to the first creation. For we are told that the actions of God are foretastes of things to come. That is, the way that God works in the physical creation shows how he works in spiritual things. All creation and God’s actions in creation are a parable of his spiritual actions with humanity; they are parallel and the physical relationship points to the spiritual. And the spiritual relationship, once it is know, makes clear all that God was doing in the physical relationship.

For this reason God created in six days, rested on the seventh, and commanded his people to do likewise. The nature of God’s spiritual relationship with humanity as seen in Christ is that our entire life be a continual creation of his life in us, being breathed into us as his word is spoken and as his spirit acts in our lives, with the reoccurring theme of resting, that is, faith in his goodness and the rightness of his work that dispels all fear, anxiety and doubt. Because God didn’t just rest by his one self; firstly he is a relationship of three in one, and this relationship is seen to be dynamic and interpersonal even in himself, and secondly man and woman had already been created on day six. So God’s rest was in fact all about his relationship as it was in himself and created with his people. He provided for his people and his people rested in his provision by enjoying it. In this way they gave back to him the life that he gave–the life of love.

What then? Does it matter that Jesus died, was in the tomb for three days and then rose to give life to all people? Does it matter that God was at work six days creating and on the seventh he rested? If he is God, why did he take so long? Why wasn’t Jesus raised immediately after he died? These questions indicate a lack of understanding of the relationship. How long did it take for such thoughts to run through your head? If this is truth we are discovering why didn’t it happen immediately as God zapped it into you? Because God’s love isn’t static or machinal, it is personal and relational. What do we know of God that is not communicated to us in some way through physical things, things that are a part of the first creation? So it is important to uphold the very physical, and by nature of their physicality, time related, aspect of our relationship with God through the incarnate Christ, not letting the arrogance of our preoccupation with the human spirit to allow a theology of escapism that seeks to flee the body and only commune with that which is spirit. In this is the loss of God himself, for his is related in spirit but through creation, both the new and the old.

On the same token we cannot allow those who do not have the eyes of the spirit and can only feel as far out as they can stretch their hand, to create doubt in our minds concerning the fact that the world was created in as little as six days. In this is to also lose God himself, for he is spirit and the things of the spirit are only discerned through the eyes of the spirit. When the physical and finitely ‘certain’ is grasped to stable uncertainty concerning the nature of absolute things, we reenact the first sin of taking the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

Do I advocate scientific agnosticism for the preservation of spirituality? (Well, why not? for some plead spiritual agnosticism for the doubts raised by science.) No, but I advocate a humility that allows for uncertainty both in the spiritual and scientific realms without feeling under obligation to expain it all in a way that answers every doubters fear.

For that is in fact what motives much tedious debate; fear that one’s identity may be compromised if one’s belief is proven wrong. But in the new creation we see that our identity as sinful humans has not only been compromised, it has been crucified! So now we are in Christ and he is seated at the right hand of God, so we are also. This is our security. Let the doubter doubt and the scoffer scoff. But let the seeker come and if he truly desires to know from whence he came, and how, and why, then teach him the new creation and the answers given there to the true questions that plague his heart, those which seek to understand death and life, sin and love, dissention and unity, will answer the former. Then the first creation will be learned through the renewed eyes of its creator