Thoughts on Creation

Haitian Mountains, Photo by Robbie Pruitt, © February 2012

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” –Hebrews 11:3

God created everything ex nihilo, or "out of nothing" in seven literal days. This “out of nothing” does not exclude a design in God’s “heart and mind” of creation and humanity. God Himself embarked on creating from within God’s own being. While God creates within His own power and resources, He exists completely outside of His creation. Only God is capable of making something out of nothing. God creates out of His love and out of the essence of His being and nature.

Within this process of creation, see Genesis 1:1-2, God possibly begins His seven-day creation with an existing form that He has already created, and to which He is already relating. As it says in Genesis 1:1-2, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” In these verses, it appears that God is at work before He begins His seven-day creation and ordering of His world. This can account for the Earth seeming older than it is; contingent upon how God has created and ordered His world, and contingent on what is a product of the fall, and what is not a product of the fall.

This view of God creating in the six days from existing matter already formed by God’s Self before creation is supported by The New Bible Commentary. The commentary states the following about Genesis 1:1-2: “The New International Version accepts the traditional understanding of these verses, namely that they describe the very first act of creation, when God created all matter (the heavens and the earth) out of nothing But the earth immediately after creation was formless and empty, i.e. unproductive and uninhabited. So the narrative then proceeds to relate how in six days God organized this chaos into the well-ordered world we now see.”

People are unique to God’s creation. People did not evolve from a lesser species. Human beings were created unique, and in God’s image. We are special and superior to the rest of creation. Creation was intended to be good, was good, and was created for man. Humankind was created for God, to worship God, to bring God glory, and to enjoy God. As the Westminster Catechism states,” Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.” While humanity is unique, superior, and special in creation, God does not need us for His own existence and well-being. God desires us and we were created out of His own Trinitarian love. God wants us.

In the theology of creation, one can hold a “day age theory” of creation and still be a believer. This “day age theory” holds that the Hebrew word for day, Yome, can mean “a period of time,” as well as a 24-hour day, according to the definition from Strong’s, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. This “day age theory” is not a viable rationale to support time for evolution, however. Nor should we see this added time as an invitation to embrace macroevolution, or its possibility. It seems impossible to reconcile macroevolution with Christianity, given the importance and uniqueness of humankind in God’s creation.

It is vital to note that God exists as Trinity before the foundations of the world and that Jesus and The Holy Spirit were co-creators with the Father. They were not created beings. We have already noted The Spirit of God hovering over the waters of the deep in Genesis 1:1-2. We can also see Jesus in creation from John 1:1-5:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

Jesus was in the beginning with God as the great “I Am” before creation. Through Him, Jesus, all things were made, and without Jesus, nothing was made. The Nicene Creed restates this Biblical truth from John beautifully as it speaks of creation:

“We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation” –Nicene Creed

In looking at creation, it is important to recognize all the creation accounts in scripture, not just the ones in Genesis, or in the Gospel of John. Colossians 1 and Job 38-42 also have creation accounts and Revelation 21 and 22 presents us with the ultimate re-creation account in the restoration of all things to come. Hebrews 11:3 speaks of creation, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”

Colossians 1:15-17 also speaks of Christ’s role in creation and in the sustaining of the created order when Paul says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” Without Jesus, there is no creation, or order of any existing thing.

Bibliography

Carson, D. A.: New Bible Commentary : 21st Century Edition. 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill., USA : Inter-Varsity Press, 1994, S. Ge 1:1

Strong, James: The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible : Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order. electronic ed. Ontario : Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996, S. H3117

The New King James Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1982, S. Jn 1:1-5

Yearbook Interview: Mr. Pruitt, High School Bible Teacher

Mr. Pruitt’s Classroom, Photo by Robbie Pruitt, © August 2011

The students, and the teacher, of the yearbook class asked the following questions as part of an interview series on teachers, which will published in the 2011-2012 Quisqueya Christian School yearbook. Here is their interview of me:

Yearbook Interview: Mr. Pruitt, High School Bible Teacher
Name: Robbie Pruitt (Mr. Pruitt)
Grades: Bible 10, 11A, 11B, and 12

What is your favorite subject to teach? Why?

My favorite subject to teach is Bible. I cannot imagine teaching any other subject, except for maybe theology, literature, or poetry, but I would rather teach the Bible. I am passionate about God’s word. I feel like I know the Bible pretty well, or well enough to begin teaching it, but there is so much more to learn and know. This is part of why I love God’s Word so much. You can spend a lifetime learning and teaching it and never grow tired or bored of all that is there. Within the pages of scripture, we discover the God of the universe. How awesome is that?

What do you enjoy the most about teaching? Why?

What I enjoy the most about teaching is being a part of the process of someone coming to know Jesus through His Word. I like watching the “light bulbs” go on when someone learns something new. It is very gratifying. To think that someone can have God illuminated for them through my teaching is an amazing thing; it is a monumental opportunity and a tremendous responsibility. I love it!

What did your students enjoy the most? What was their favorite part of class?

This is a great question, and I am not too sure that I am the one who should answer it. I imagine some students would say that they enjoyed when my class was over, while others would say that they enjoyed how they came to know the Bible and the God of the Bible and that this profoundly transformed their lives. Some students would say they enjoyed learning “The Happy Dance,” or my jokes, or my singing. Some students may have enjoyed the music I played before class, or the stellar Power Points. Many students may have appreciated that I seemed to have a YouTube illustration for everything. It depends on the student, I imagine, and it depends on the class. In all seriousness, these are amazing and bright students at Quisqueya Christian School, who love Jesus. They genuinely enjoy learning, coming to know Jesus, and growing in their faith. It is a blessing to teach them!

Why did you come to Haiti?

I came to Haiti, because my wife, Irene, and I felt that God was calling us to come here. It has always been a desire of mine to teach, and I love the Bible. I also love youth ministry and have spent most of my life in youth ministry. Teaching Bible to High School Students in an amazing, dynamic, and culturally rich country, like Haiti, is like a dream job come true for me.

Why did you become a teacher?

I became a teacher for many reasons. God commands us all to teach in The Great Commission, see Matthew 28:18-20. I love to learn. I like to watch other people come to understand information that they previously never understood before. I am passionate about seeing transformation occur in people’s lives through learning. One of my spiritual gifts is teaching; see Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Corinthians 12. Finally, many teachers have helped introduce me to Jesus, and have helped me to grow in Him. These teachers have influenced my life for the better and I want to be a teacher like that.

Love Your God with All Your Mind

While Christianity may have been known for its intellectual contributions in the past, the word intellectual hardly describes popular Christianity, as we know it today. It especially does not describe North American Christianity. The intellect, the mind, seems to have been abandoned for a “fragmented Christianity” that does not consider the whole Christian. A Christianity that does not consider the whole person or the intellect, does not consider the all the commands of our Lord Jesus. Specifically, it does not consider Jesus’ command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).” What we are left with, in neglecting the mind, is less than holistic Christianity that considers all of the scriptures, all of God’s commands, and the whole Christian. What we end up with instead, is a disintegrated and fragmented Christianity that does not resemble what God intended for His followers to have.

J.P. Moreland addresses this concern of loving God with our minds in his book, Love Your God with All Your Mind. In this book, Moreland asserts that we have lost a major premise of Christianity by losing sight of our intellectual properties, which is a product of being created in the very image of God. Without exercising our intellect, and reason, we cannot fully worship God, know God, or serve Him well. Our intellect and our reasoning reflect our being created in God’s image and is what makes our humanity unique in God’s creation. We have been given stewardship over this intellect and over creation, and we must be good stewards of what God has given. We cannot honor, or glorify, God apart from fully exercising our capacities for thinking and reasoning. We cannot, and must not, divorce our thinking from our faith and reasoning.

In Love Your God with All Your Mind, by J.P. Moreland, Moreland addresses loving God with our minds in four parts in his book: Part One: Why The Mind Matters in Christianity; Part Two: How to Develop a Mature Christian Mind; Part Three: What a Mature Christian Mind Looks Like; and Part Four: Guaranteeing a Future for the Christian Mind. J. P. Moreland explores these themes through the following chapters: How We Lost the Christian Mind and Why We Must Recover It; Sketching a Biblical Portrait of the Life of the Mind; The Mind’s Role in Spiritual Transformation; Harassing the Hobgoblins of the Christian Mind; Clearing the Cobwebs from My Mental Attic; Evangelism and the Christian Mind; Apologetic Reasoning and the Christian Mind; Worship, Fellowship, and the Christian Mind; Vocation and an Integrated Christian Worldview; and Recapturing the Intellectual Life in the Church.

Moreland asserts, in Love Your God with All Your Mind, that Christianity in our modern day is more concerned with emotions than intellect. “Our culture is in serious trouble,” says Moreland. This trouble, according to Moreland, is coming from anti-intellectualism in today’s evangelical Christianity, which asserts that faith is “blind,” and not based on reason. Most Christians have been taught from a young age not to question their faith and that our beliefs as Christians are based solely on faith and not on rational thought, or reason. This could not be further from the truth. Our faith is based on reason and we can know why we believe what we believe. There are evidences that can be explored, and we must explore them and encourage thought and reasoning in our faith.

In “Christian education,” this becomes hugely important in our living, learning, planning, and teaching, and in our approach to integrating our faith and reasoning within every area of our lives. As Christians, we must be a thinking people who honor God with our minds, our being, and our doing, as Paul commands us in Colossians 3:17, “do all to the Glory of God.” Integrating our beliefs will encompass our entire beings, including our minds, or we are practicing something less than Christianity. Jesus Himself declares, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40).” If Christians are to reflect the image of their maker, then we will reflect and resemble Jesus, the very Wisdom of God, and we will, as Paul puts it, “We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).”

The Evangelical Christianity of today seems to neglect an integrated view of faith and life and Moreland addresses this concern when he speaks of the false divide between the secular and the sacred. Nowhere in the scriptures do we see this divide between faith and the world, or the divide between the sacred and the secular. We are called to live in this world and to bring our beliefs in God, our knowledge of scripture, and our intellect to bear on the world, just as we find it, in hopes that we will not leave the world unchanged. There is very real danger in ant-intellectualism and false divisions between our faith and our lives in this world. These false dichotomies leave the Christian fragmented, and they leave the Christian as a fraction of who they are supposed to be in Christ.

Many Christians wrongly assume that being a Christian means to be “not of this world,” and they take this to the extreme by divorcing their thinking from their faith, as if these two aspects of our being were mutually exclusive. This false belief is actually a reinstallation of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which claims that we are somehow trapped in this evil world and that matter is evil, and is to be transcended by secret knowledge, or escape from “the flesh.” This idea that this material world is evil, including our minds, is not a Christian idea or doctrine. Though now fallen, the mind and the body were created good, and they were created to be used for God’s Glory. We are not to be seeking to transcend the “evil matter” of our flesh, or “this world.” We are, however, called to reclaim the world and to integrate our faith into every area of our lives and integrate our faith into this world to take part in God’s restoration of the world. It is wrong for us to abandon the mind, as some have, for fear of Gnosticism. For in doing so, we may find ourselves in the very throes of Gnosticism despite of, and because of, our very efforts to avoid it.

Dallas Willard describes, beautifully, this idea of integrating our Christian faith in every area of our lives in the introduction of Love Your God with All Your Mind:

“If I am a plumber, clerk, bank manager, homemaker, elected official, senior Citizen, or migrant worker, I am in ‘full-time’ Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically Christian role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all that I do to live in God’s world. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His-His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s world everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil (John 8:31-32). We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God (p. 12).”

In effect, if we “loose our minds” as Christians, we will also lose our concept of the reality of God, we will lose our concept of reality, we will lose our freedom, and we will lose our testimony to a lost world, who just so happens to be a thinking world. We have an obligation as Christians to be a thinking and teaching people. Our Lord Jesus commands this in Matthew 28: 18-20 saying, “’All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ Amen.” God has called us to teach and to make everything that He has taught us known to the world.

J.P. Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind is a fantastic book that all Christians should read so we can recapture our minds for the sake of the Kingdom of God, for the sake of the gospel being proclaimed in the world, and for our own sakes. We must close the false chasm between the secular and the sacred and we must not “check our brains at the door” as it pertains to our faith. As Christians, we are obligated, even commanded, to integrate our faith into all of our lives. We must not live fragmented lives where we do not love God with all our minds. Christians must assert their stewardship over creation and over their thinking. We must live lives of intellect and reasoning, offering all of ourselves up to God in worship, including our thinking and reasoning. Only then will we be able to worship holistically, and in a God honoring manner as God calls us to, like Paul mentions in Romans 12:1-2, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Bibliography

Moreland, James Porter. Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul. NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO., ©1997

The New King James Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1982.

On the Rampart

Old City Walls...from the outside, Photo by Chad Rosenthal, Chadica, © July 21, 2008

On the Rampart
(Habakkuk Chapters 1-3)

“I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected.” – Habakkuk 2:1

Habakkuk is an Old Testament Minor Prophet, but he is no ordinary prophet. Habakkuk is known as “The People's Prophet.” While most prophets intermediate oracles, or words from the Lord, to His people, Habakkuk seems to take the people’s concerns, and his own concerns, to God. This prophet is full of the questions that we all seem to have deep within us, but we hesitate, or dare even, to ask. In our sufferings and in this fallen world filled with sin, injustice, pride, corruption, and falsehoods of all kinds, we have the “Why?” and the “What?” questions. “Why is this happening to us? Why is God allowing this? What is God doing? What good, if any, can come of this?”

Habakkuk was a prophet as well as a watchman responsible for warning the people of coming danger and judgment. If he failed at his job as watchman, he would be guilty and would have the people’s blood on his hands. The watchman was also responsible for announcing the morning, the dawn of a new day, and the returning of the people to the land. This position held a high responsibility, and exposure and vulnerability to danger. From the ramparts, the defensive walls, the watchman would be the first to see the danger coming and would be the first to be in danger’s path. In Habakkuk’s case, he was watching for the coming judgment and he recognized that he himself deserved what was coming Israel’s way. He was well aware of what was on the horizon at the dawning of a new day, The Judgment Day of the Lord.

This “Day of Judgment” would not be the last word; however, because God had promised Habakkuk that he would do an unbelievable work. God said to Habakkuk in chapter one verse five, “Look among the nations and watch—Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.” God was promising judgment. We know this from the verses that follow, but there was going to be more to come, so much more. Habakkuk assumed that God was being unjust for allowing a pagan nation to judge a “more righteous” nation, Israel, but God would ultimately judge both nations. All people would be judged, and no sin would go unaccounted for or un-atoned for.

As Habakkuk looks at the sins of his people, the sins of the pagan nations, and God’s coming judgment, he dares to ask the hard questions. He dares to seek God out. He bravely goes for the answers and risks what he may find. In Habakkuk 2:1, Habakkuk stands at his watch on the rampart, waits, and watches for what God may say to him about all his inquiries. He wonders what he may say to God in response to what he may hear when he is corrected. When he is corrected? At the first glance at Habakkuk 2:1, we may miss this, but he does say, “When I am corrected.” It looks as if Habakkuk is taking responsibility for the coming judgment that God is sending, or at least he is taking responsibility for his part in it. It is at the judgment of the Israelite people by the Babylonians that Habakkuk begins questioning God, and now he waits for God’s response and owns what may be coming his way as well.

God assured Habakkuk that no sin would be overlooked, not the sins from the pagan Babylonians who would judge Israel, not Israel’s sins, and not even Habakkuk’s own sins. God promised that he would judge. Habakkuk pleaded with God in Habakkuk chapter three verse two: “O Lord, I have heard Your speech and was afraid; O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.”

God did extend His mercy in the midst of His wrath and judgment. His mercy would indeed come in the person of His own Son Jesus Christ who would ultimately take on the wrath and judgment, which we all deserve because of our sin. God took our judgment in our place. If we are willing and able to see what God has done, we will indeed “be utterly astounded!” God has exercised His wrath and judgment, and in His mercy, God has taken it in our stead; setting us free from our sin; setting us free from ourselves; and setting us free from hiding behind our “defensive walls.”

Having received such forgiveness and freedom, we are able to say with Habakkuk from on top of the rampart, "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, and He will make me walk on my high hills (Habakkuk 3:18-19).”

Bibliography

Elwell, Walter A. ; Comfort, Philip Wesley: Tyndale Bible Dictionary. Wheaton, Ill. : Tyndale House Publishers, 2001 (Tyndale Reference Library), S. 1296

Jamieson, Robert ; Fausset, A. R. ; Fausset, A. R. ; Brown, David ; Brown, David: A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. Oak Harbor, WA : Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997, S. Hab 2:2

The New King James Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1982, S. Hab 2:1

Walvoord, John F. ; Zuck, Roy B. ; Dallas Theological Seminary: The Bible Knowledge Commentary : An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, IL : Victor Books, 1983-c1985, S. 1:1512