Devotionals For Darwinists II

New Creation

The human understanding of the universe has changed radically over the past 2,000 years in a variety of ways. But perhaps the biggest shift in this understanding has come from science’s gradual revelation that the universe is not a very stable place. Not only do we now know that the universe has a beginning, but we know it continues to physically expand today, taking over more and more empty space. Similarly, whereas we used to think of forms of life on earth have always existed in more or less their present forms, we now know that life is dynamic, that species change over time, differentiating into new forms of life. A recent study even shows that in humans evolution has sped up over the past 10,000 years: groups of humans are more genetically differentiated now than ever before.*

For many, this unstable nature of reality, matter, and life itself can be frightening since it opens us to the vast stretches of past and future reality that are largely unknown. Some even find this understanding threatening to their ideas of God’s sovereignty and divine providence. But others have found that this modern scientific view of reality is actually highly reflective of the nature of God as talked about in the Bible. In the Bible, God is rightly described as the creator of the universe. But this creation does not only take place at the beginning of the world as described in Genesis. Rather, God is depicted as a Creator who continues to create the cosmos throughout history and into the future. God is continually bringing new things into being. Consider Isaiah 43:18-19: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you perceive it? Similarly, in Revelation 21:5, God is depicted as sitting on a throne, saying Behold, I make all things new. God is not just the Creator in the past sense, but in the present and future senses as well. Modern science has now told us that nature actually reflects this understanding directly. History has been an expanding of existing creation as well as an unfolding of new creation as new planets, stars, and forms of life have come into being.

As exciting as this may be, it gets more exciting still as God invites us to participate in his ongoing acts of creation, inviting us to become ‘new creations’ in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). When we do that, we can not only stand in admiration of God’s continual creative nature, but we can take part in it as well.

Lord, show me what it means to be a new creation and a reflection of your continually creative power. Thank you that you turn the same power that continues to bring the whole universe into new being to bring me into new being as well.

*John Hawks, Eric Wang, Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending, Robert Moyzis. Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (52), 20753-20758.