Chapter 4: The Author, Not the Clock

I’ve watched Christians argue about the age of the earth. And I’ve watched them do it with a ferocity that would make you think the Gospel itself depended on the answer. Young earth creationists insist on six literal twenty-four-hour days and treat anyone who disagrees as a compromiser of biblical authority. Old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists insist on billions of years and treat the young earthers as anti-intellectual. And both sides are so consumed with the argument about the mechanism that they’ve almost entirely lost sight of the Person.

God created. That’s the point. That’s what Genesis 1 is about. Not the clock. The Author.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Bereshith bara Elohim. In the beginning, God created. And everything that follows in the creation account is the Author telling you how He told His story. The question isn’t whether God did it. The question the world fights about is how fast He did it. And in the framework of this book, that question is far less important than either side thinks it is.

The Timeline Doesn’t Matter

Let me say that clearly, because I know it will frustrate people on both sides. I believe the timeline of creation is not a primary issue. It’s a secondary issue at best. And I’m going to explain why.

If God is outside of time, as we established in Chapter 2, then the question “how long did creation take?” is a question about the rendering, not about the Author. It’s like asking a filmmaker how many frames per second he used. The answer might be interesting. It might even be technically important. But it doesn’t tell you anything about the story he was telling or why he told it. The frames-per-second question is a question about the medium. The story is about the message.

The Hebrew word yom, translated “day” in Genesis 1, can mean a literal twenty-four-hour period, or it can mean a period of time of unspecified length. Both usages appear throughout the Old Testament. The word itself doesn’t settle the debate. And the reason the word doesn’t settle the debate is because, I believe, God didn’t intend it to. He used a word with range. He wrote the creation account in language that allows for both readings. And I think He did that on purpose.

Whether God created the universe in six twenty-four-hour days or in six ages spanning billions of years, the creation is the same. The Author is the same. The purpose is the same. The fact that God spoke and it was doesn’t change based on how long the speaking took. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6). That’s true whether the breath took a day or an eon.

The Author Writes with Depth

Now here’s where my position will bother the young earth crowd specifically, and I want to be fair about it.

The fossil record is real. The geological layers are real. The light from distant stars is real. The evidence that the universe has significant age is real. I don’t deny any of that. But I interpret it differently than both sides of the debate.

The typical young earth response to this evidence is that God created the universe with the appearance of age. And the typical atheist retort is that this makes God a deceiver, planting fake evidence to mislead honest investigators. And the old earth Christian tries to split the difference by accepting the evidence at face value and harmonizing it with Scripture.

I take a different approach. God didn’t create the appearance of age as a trick. He created the reality of depth, because that’s how stories work.

When a novelist writes “it was a dark and stormy night,” the novelist isn’t lying about the weather. The story has a context. The world of the novel has a history that precedes page one. Characters have backstories. Landscapes have geology. The novelist doesn’t build every detail from scratch in front of the reader. He writes a world with depth, because depth is what makes a story feel real.

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. The Author didn’t promise you a transparent timeline. He promised beauty and depth. God is the Author. And He wrote a universe with depth. The fossil record isn’t a trick. It’s the backstory. The geological layers aren’t fake evidence. They’re the context of the narrative. The light from distant stars isn’t a deception. It’s the Author painting a backdrop that extends beyond the edges of the stage.

This doesn’t mean the backstory is fictional. In a novel, the backstory is part of the truth of the novel. It’s consistent with the story. It holds together. It can be investigated and explored. And it serves the narrative. The same is true of the physical universe. The fossils are there because the Author put them there. The layers are there because the Author put them there. And they’re consistent with each other and with the world God is sustaining, because God doesn’t do sloppy work.

Both Camps Miss the Person

What bothers me about the creation debate isn’t that people have strong opinions. It’s that the debate has become an idol. For the young earth movement, the mechanism of creation has become a test of faith. If you don’t hold to six literal days, your commitment to biblical inerrancy is questioned. For the theistic evolution camp, the mechanism of creation has become a test of intellectual credibility. If you don’t accept the scientific consensus, you’re an anti-intellectual embarrassment to the faith.

Both sides are arguing about HOW God created. Neither side spends nearly enough time on the fact THAT God created. And the “that” is where the glory is.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” (Psalm 19:1)

The heavens declare the glory of God. Not the mechanism. The glory. The creation exists to point to the Creator. And when we spend more time arguing about the clock than we spend worshipping the Author, we’ve missed it.

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

The invisible things are clearly seen through the things that are made. The creation points to the Creator. I say this as someone who has opinions on the mechanism. I believe God created directly and intentionally. I believe DNA is authored code, as I argued in the previous chapter. I believe the evidence for design in the natural world is overwhelming. But I refuse to make the mechanism a test of fellowship or a primary article of faith, because the Bible doesn’t make it one. Genesis 1 is not a science textbook. It’s a declaration of authorship. And the Author deserves more than our arguments about His methods.

DNA Revisited

I addressed this in the previous chapter, but it bears repeating in the context of creation specifically. DNA is not the product of random processes. It is authored code. And the Author is not a “designer” in the intelligent design sense, standing outside the machine and tinkering with it. The Author is a Mind actively thinking the code into existence at every moment.

The difference matters. If God is a designer, then DNA is a machine that runs independently once built. If God is an Author, then DNA is a thought He is currently thinking. Remove the thought, and the code doesn’t just stop running. It vanishes. Every cell in your body, every nucleotide in every strand of DNA, is being sustained right now by a God who hasn’t stopped thinking about it.

And this applies to the whole of creation. Not just the living things. “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names” (Psalm 147:4). The stars are thoughts. The mountains are thoughts. The laws of physics are thoughts. Gravity is not an impersonal force operating by its own authority. Gravity is a pattern in God’s thinking, as reliable as He is, as consistent as His character, and as dependent on His mind as the words on this page are dependent on the mind that wrote them.

Objections and Answers

For Further Study

The following passages speak to the themes of this chapter and are commended to the reader for independent study.