Creation vs. Evolution—NOT!

Between watching the presidential candidates respond to questions concerning their views on evolution during the 2008 presidential debates, hearing the calls for a theocracy from Republican candidates for the presidency in 2012 and reading reviews of Gail Collins’ new book about battles on the Texas School Board, one could easily have forgotten that the Scopes “monkey” trial seemed to have settled the question back in 1925. That 87 years later Americans are still arguing over creation vs. evolution seems the ultimate anachronism.

But the battle is not really about creation vs. evolution. While the debate could be construed as part of a larger struggle between science and religion, even that is an inadequate framing of the issue. To talk about a struggle between science and religion would be like referring to a struggle between science and art, science and poetry, science and music. The fact is humans use a variety of intellectual tools and creative expressions to uncover and express profound truths about the world. Each approach provides a different lens through which the mysteries of origin, process, meaning and value in the world are discovered and explored.

The real battle is not between creation and evolution or between science and religion. What those presidential candidates were really voting for was a particular approach to understanding and interpreting scripture—in this case the opening chapters of bereshit, the Book of Genesis. That’s where the real battle line is drawn: the Bible as a scientific treatise vs. the Bible as a work of art.

Traditionally, Jews understand the Torah, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, as the word of God revealed to the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai. It contains narratives that portray the origins of the universe and of human civilization, as well as the Jewish people’s origins as a religious community living in a covenant relationship with God. It also contains mitzvot, “instructions” or “commandments,” that outline a pattern of life representing our fulfillment of the covenant relationship.

Modern Jews, not unlike other religious people in the modern world, confront a perplexing dissonance between the depiction of events in the Bible and the view of cosmology and history that we are all taught in school. Perhaps the most vivid example of this dissonance is the narrative describing the creation of the universe in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. The six-day process of creation--the emergence of plants and animals, including humans, instantly in a single day--stands in sharp contrast to the scientific view of a 15 billion-year-old universe, the Big Bang Theory and theories of the evolution of the species. What are we to believe?

We often hear that religious people must accept the Bible’s version of events--that these events actually occurred in actual space and in actual time. If we are scientific people, then we must reject the Bible as nothing but a collection of myths and fairy tales. Yet this apparent conflict between religion and science emerges from a misreading of the Bible and a misunderstanding of the power of narrative to reveal profound truths. Just as art, music, or poetry provide us with an awareness of reality otherwise imperceptible to our five senses, religious narrative has the ability to unveil the mystery of God’s presence in the universe, God’s relationship to the world and to humanity.

When we turn to the account of creation depicted in Genesis, we find that there are actually two stories, which, in certain details, contradict one another. In Chapter 1, adam, Adam, literally “the earth creature,” is the pinnacle of creation, the last act in an increasingly complex process of creation. In chapter 2, the human is created first. “There you have it,” gloats the rationalist scientific skeptic. “How can the Bible be true when it contradicts itself?”

In many of his so-called “studio paintings,” Picasso depicts the artist looking both into and out of his painting. Which is true? Can a person look in two opposite directions at once? The fact is both are true. The artist projects himself—his soul, his creativity—into the work of art, and is then affected by the art that he projects. The artist both creates the work of art and is created by it.

The first chapter of Genesis provides the cosmic view of creation—a drama seen from above. Here is a hierarchical universe with God as transcendent, omnipotent commander and organizer. God creates by word, by will, by design, by idea, the way an architect would create. The second chapter is naturalistic—a drama played out on earth. God is imminent, interacting directly with creation. God is the potter, fashioning the human creation; the surgeon/physician, matchmaker, companion, who walks in the garden and speaks to the creatures.

So which is true? Is God imminent or transcendent? Is God an architect or a potter? Does God command from on high, or does God walk in the garden? The fact is these two stories are told in order to reveal two concomitant aspects of God. God is both master of the universe and the healer of shattered hearts; creator of heavenly lights and one who remains faithful to those who sleep in the dust; enthroned on high, but concerned with those down below; in heaven and on earth. Two stories are required to propound this paradoxical but profound understanding of God as both imminent and transcendent.

But the insight that these two parallel narratives impart goes beyond the complex nature of divinity. They also provide us an important clue as to the manner in which God and humans interact. They offer an important bridge—a nexus—between the human and the divine.

In the first chapter of Genesis, not only space—the physical universe—is created. Time, too, is created. That is the function of the six-day format: not to tell us that the universe was created in six days, but to indicate that time is an aspect of the created order of the universe. Twice daily, Jews praise God as ha-mehaddesh betuvo bekhol yom tamid ma’aseh vereshit, “the one who, through the attribute of goodness, daily and continuously renews the act of creation.” The universe was not created in six days. The universe is recreated every day. What the six-day structure teaches us is that built into the universe is a sacred pattern of six days of creation.

Moreover, the creation of humanity does not conclude the act of creation in Chapter 1. Rather, the creation of humanity is followed by the pronouncement of Shabbat, the Sabbath, the seventh day. Indeed, this pronouncement forms a narrative bridge between the two creation stories—between the depictions of God as transcendent and imminent. Two powerful elements of religious vocabulary stand out in this short passage. “God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy.”

These two words—blessed and holy--hold the key to understanding our relationship to God. They form the bridge between God’s transcendence and God’s imminence, between heaven and earth. Just as God blessed the seventh day, humans also have the power to bless. Indeed, as popularized by the Rabbi in the Broadway play, “Fiddler on the Roof,” “there is a blessing for everything.” By reciting berakhot, “blessings, benedictions,” to accompany all of the mundane acts of living and experiencing the world, we become conscious of God’s presence in the world and in our lives.

But what about holiness? The same berakhot that express our awareness of God’s presence also tell us that God is the One asher kiddeshanu be-mitzvotav, “who sanctifies us, makes us holy by means of God’s mitzvot.” That is, by performing mitzvot, by living our lives in accordance with God’s will, God’s plan for us as members of a religious community, a covenant people, we serve as channels for the divine presence to flow through the world. Through our awareness of God’s presence and through our actions in accordance with the divine will and plan for humanity, the transcendent God becomes imminent.

These stories are not scientific. They have more in common with a Picasso painting than with a paper presented to the National Academies. They are not meant to tell us how many days it took God to create the world or even how the world came to be. Whether humans appeared in an instant or over hundreds of thousands of years; whether we appeared spontaneously as fully human or evolved from lower forms of life; whether we were created first or last, the stories tell us that humans have a unique and crucial role in bridging God’s transcendence and God’s imminence, thereby bringing God’s blessing and holiness into the world. That, for me, is the meaning of bereshit, Genesis.

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