I honestly don’t know what I think regarding evolution and how God created the earth. I’ve never voiced that, partly because conservative evangelicals enthralled with this subject are quick to hurl charges of “He doesn’t believe the Bible.” Such charges make me want to, uh, hurl. However, much to my delight (and possibly to my detriment), this doesn’t threaten me anymore, which is why I’m outing myself from the evolutionary cave. So feel free to hurl away.

The honest truth is that none of the creation explanations work for me. In all intellectual honesty, I cannot ignore the fossil and geological and glacier record, continental drift, carbon dating, the new findings in genome research, and so many other things that point to a very old earth. So all of the “young earth” explanations don’t click with me, though people do make some incredibly acrobatic jumps through chaotically twirling hoops. This is very entertaining to watch and well worth the cost of admission.

The literal seven-day creation approach doesn’t satisfy me. Creation science doesn’t cut it, either. Theistic evolution actually strikes some positive cords with me, but it also strikes some resoundingly dissonant cords which I cannot reconcile with scripture. I like a lot of stuff in the Intelligent Design field, though those arguments don’t necessarily rely on a particular understanding of Genesis–just the realization that the complexity of the universe and of earth’s ecosystem required some god-sized thought. But how and when God did it–beats me.

So, accuse me of being a person who doesn’t “believe the Bible.” But I don’t think any of the explanations advanced so far have got it right. This will probably be one of those things that will have to wait for heaven, just as Job never received an explanation for why he underwent his trials. Or consider Jesus. The Jews knew all the Scripture about the Messiah, but never dreamed the Messiah would look and act anything like Jesus did–and yet, in retrospect, those very same verses fit Jesus, and the Bible’s integrity is reaffirmed. You just have to put the puzzle together in a whole different way.

In heaven, when someone asks God how he created the heavens and earth, he’ll probably say, “None of you were even close to getting it right.” Then he’ll explain it, and it’ll all make sense and be perfectly consistent with Scripture. That’s what I think.