Genesis: Truth for Understanding Our World (Part 1) – Genesis 1:1-3
September 13, 2015Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
How are we to understand Genesis 1? Genesis 1, for that matter the whole book of Genesis, is given to help us understand the world we live in. To explain to us why things are the way they are, why they were made and what they were made to do. It is given to give us a proper worldview, a proper way of sifting through and understanding all the data our minds take in about the world around us. But in order for its purpose to be accomplished we must first understand what it is saying.
Before Genesis can help us make sense out of things, we have to read it for what it intended to communicate. Instead, all of us far too easily read it through our existing worldview, our existing way of understanding the world around us, and try to see how it fits into that. It doesn’t. It has a different message and a different worldview.
We tend to approach Genesis 1 as if it were titled Physics 101, but in reality a better title might be, The Purpose Driven World. When a young student arrives in an actual Physics 101 classroom they try to force what they are hearing to fit with what they thought Genesis 1 was saying. It is like growing up thinking you came from Europe or Africa, and then landing in a biology class only to discover there is a whole other set of facts that explain where you come from. We are only disillusioned if we don’t understand we are talking about two different things. Both are true. For instance, I did come from Hawaii; and yet what I learned in science is also true (which explains why I don’t look very Hawaiian).
Join us tomorrow morning as we begin a new series, Genesis: Truth for Understanding Our World. This is also a great opportunity to invite anyone you know who is wrestling through issues of faith or trying to understand how to make sense of the world in which we live.