Are We Misreading the Creation Story

Something to Make Us Think… :)

Country Roads, Take Me Home

Did it happen? Is one John Denver’s greatest songs stuck in your head now?

Yesterday, I was driving down an empty county road at sunset when I had to pull over. The western view overwhelmed me. The snow-capped mountains stood in all their beauty and majesty—ancient and immovable—framed by a pink and orange sky. I would have taken a photo, but pictures never capture the full awesomeness of real life.

I’ve lived here for over 16 years, but I still had to stop, get out of my truck, and take it in. I tried to imagine how it must have looked before the roads, before the buildings—when the landscape was untouched. These same mountains have stood for about 60 million years. The very same mountains. This beauty existed long before there was anyone here to stop and admire it.

Of course, that triggered my theology brain.¹ Traditional Christian thought holds to a young-earth view, suggesting creation is only about 6,000 years old, but the physical world tells a different story. You can see it, touch it, examine it. This kind of beauty takes time.

Lots of time.

A common response to this is "old earth creation"—the idea that God created the world with age built into it, much like Jesus turning water into wine that was instantly mature. It’s an attempt to reconcile faith with evidence, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Old Earth Creationism and the "Appearance of Age"

Old Earth Creationism suggests that God made the earth with the appearance of age—essentially planting false indicators of time. But why would God do that? Wouldn’t that be misleading and untrue?

My son, Landon, is a geology major in college. I love driving through the mountains with him because he can point out the different visible layers, explaining what they mean, what’s hidden within them, and how they formed over time.

Dinosaurs once roamed these very valleys. Their evidence is everywhere in the Rockies—fossils embedded in stone, footprints preserved in time.

It’s clear that the mountains near my home were once flat. There are fossils of tropical plants and sea life high up on tall peaks. Different colored rock layers reveal ancient atmospheric shifts—times when the earth contained more or less oxygen. Some rocks don’t belong here at all. They were thrown here by ancient, unimaginably violent eruptions hundreds of miles away.

Why would God create all of that just to give the illusion of age?

Why would He need to give the illusion of age at all?

What if it’s all just really old?

Was Moses Lying?

The obvious question then arises: What do we do with the biblical creation story?

When Moses wrote Genesis, he wasn’t drafting a science textbook. He wasn’t concerned with carbon dating or geological epochs. He was introducing the Israelites to their God.

For centuries, they had lived under Egyptian rule, surrounded by a culture that worshiped gods of the sun, the river, and the harvest. They had been slaves, their identity shaped by Pharaoh’s dominance. Now, freed from Egypt, they needed to know: Who is this God who rescued them? What kind of power does He hold?

After generations under the oppressive rule of Egypt—immersed in a pantheon of gods—Moses needed to make something clear: The God of Israel is the one true God and Creator.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." — Genesis 1:1

This was more than an origin story. It was a declaration of supremacy. The Egyptian gods each had their domain—Ra for the sun, Hapi for the Nile, Osiris for the underworld, Min for the harvest. But Moses was saying something radical: The one God of Israel is greater than all of them. He created everything.

There was no battle. No cosmic struggle for power. He simply speaks, and creation obeys. In fact, the first act of creation in the Bible is a direct affront to Ra, the Egyptian sun god.

"And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light." — Genesis 1:3

Forming a People, Not Just a Planet

The creation account in Genesis isn’t a play-by-play of the physics and biology of the universe. It’s the prologue to a much bigger story: God forming a people. The same God who orders light and darkness, sky and sea, land and vegetation, is the One who will order their lives. He speaks, and creation obeys. Later, He will speak at Sinai, and His people will be called to obey.

This is why Moses' retelling of creation isn’t a dry list of scientific mechanisms. It’s a structured, poetic declaration of God’s authority.

The same God who formed the world is the one who will form a people for Himself. This isn’t just about how the world began—it’s about how God rules the world and His people.

The Radical Claim of the Image of God

This newly independent group of people not only needed to discover their God’s identity, they needed to discover their own. For generations, the Israelites had been slaves—less than human, mere laborers for Pharaoh’s empire. But Moses makes a shocking claim…

"So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them." — Genesis 1:27

This was a radical identity shift. It’s not just about Adam and Eve. This was about Moses’ immediate audience as well.

In Egypt, Pharaoh alone was considered the image of the gods—divinely appointed to rule. No one else. Certainly not the Hebrew slaves. But Moses is saying, “You are all made in God’s image. You all have value.”

Their identity no longer came from Pharaoh or their work. Their identity came from God Himself.

What This Means for Us

Too often, the discussion about Genesis gets stuck in debates about science—young earth vs. old earth, literal days vs. figurative days, and questions about evolution. No matter where you land on those issues, Moses wasn’t writing Genesis to answer how God created. He was declaring who God is.

Genesis isn’t about geology. It’s about theology. And questions about creation don’t have to nullify faith. There is no link between faith and having to hold to a certain view of how the earth was formed.

At the heart of all this is a God who speaks, creates, and calls people to Himself.

The same God who formed the mountains I pulled over to admire at sunset is the God who formed us. The One who created the world still speaks into our lives, still calls us into His purposes, and still invites us to know Him.

Grace and peace to you.

1. Sometimes it’s really a curse. I can’t just admire a view. It has to spark a theological exercise in my brain! But to me, it makes the view all that more beautiful.