Genesis 2:7, Adam is Formed

Posted on Monday, December 27, 2010 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Many Christians continue to hold to the idea of a young earth, and of God creating Adam and Eve at the beginning of creation. That is, I suppose, alright. But what is not alright is for these well-meaning Christians to push this understanding upon their children, as if rejecting evolution is somehow a necessary prerequisite to being a Christian. You do both yourself and your child a disservice by insisting he or she continue to embrace such antiquated bible interpretations, for at least two reasons:

1. You severely restrict the growth of your child in the sciences, even preventing certain fields of study. For example, it’s nearly impossible to acquire even a basic understanding of biology or the medical sciences without embracing what we have learned in the last 150 years about DNA and the development of species.

2. You are likely to steer your child away from Christianity, because the day will likely come when he or she cannot any longer believe your interpretation of Genesis.

For this reason, I present the above verse, and a simple reconciliation that does not require discarding all that we have learned about this 5-billion-year-old earth. This does not necessarily describe my own beliefs, but merely the beliefs of many Christians who have been forced to reconcile science with their religion.

First, accept that when the Bible says man was formed “of the dust of the ground,” perhaps it describes the development of life from single-celled beings to the unimaginatively complex beings we humans have become. Second, do not imagine that there were no hominoids before “man”; thus when the day finally arrived when God breathed His breath into His creation, implanting within hominoids a living soul, in that moment Adam and mankind were born.

You may even find it easier to answer embarrasing questions such as, “where did Cain find a wife?”