After a service a visitor came to me. Someone had mentioned to him, that I am a physicist, so he had an urgent question. How old do you believe the earth is? He was even so nice to give me possible answers. 6,000 or 4.5 billion years.

I know about this discussion. I participated in it. When I was like 14 or so. But since then I have settled on an answer. For those, who don’t know it, the basic question is this. Do we trust those, who used scientific methods to calculate the age of our planet (approximately 4.5 billion years) or rather the lists of names and ages in the Bible (those never ending family trees) which go all the way back to paradise (approximately 6,000 years)? The Jews used the latter method. Their calendar starts in the fall of the year 3761 b.c. So it’s the year 5779 for them. (Most Jews only use the Jewish calendar to determine the dates of their holy days. In daily life they use the Gregorian calendar. Just like us.)

The question confused me a bit. I new, people were still discussing that. I just haven’t heard it for a while. And for me, as a Bible loving and obeying Christian, the answer is a no brainer. So I don’t really have a reason to bring it up. But it touches a somewhat fundamental problem in the Church. And hey, sometimes I need a story to illustrate, what I want to talk about.

But before you cannot concentrate anymore, because you can’t wait to know my opinion, here it is. I believe the world to be 4.5 billion years old. A lot of people have worked for a long time and gathered a lot of evidence. They took different approaches, checked and rechecked everything, just to come to that conclusion. The primary goal of the Bible on the other hand is to show God. It is written to make Him known. To glorify Him. It is just not a science book. Often enough the Bible is fairly and sometimes surprisingly in line with our scientific understanding nowadays. For example it never says the earth would be flat. Nor that it is in the center of our solar system or the universe. For God is (metaphorically and literally). That is, what even the family trees point out. And at the most, we can calculate all the way back to Paradise. Not to creation. The arguments go on and on. So I answered your question. Can we now return to my main point please?

When you have kids, you watch a lot of movies you usually wouldn’t. Like Madagascar. And Madagascar 2. In the second movie the zebra Marty has a problem. He is not the only Zebra anymore. That is great, because he is no longer alone. But it is also awful, because he is no longer unique. In a nutshell that is the tension we humans find ourselves in time and time again. And here the movie does, what we love to do also. We ditch the herd and focus on the individual. What makes me special? Where am I different from all the others? Unfortunately that leads to the search for differences. And on the scale of groups that leads to forming boundaries. This is us and this is them. And we start defining ourselves by what makes us different rather then looking at what we have in common. It seems like we need being different in order to justify our existence. Marty cannot be just another zebra. Alex the lion would have no reason to be friends with him. But do we really want to be friends with someone just because we are different? Can we only be loved because we are not only different but maybe even better?

As Christians this attitude leaves us focusing on the thinks we disagree with. You know, god can only love us, when we are different. So we have to show him and everybody else, where we are not like the world. We have to be in everybody’s face about all the thinks we disagree with. Because then god can love us. And we can bring his love into the world… When I put it like that, it is obvious nonsense. But that doesn’t keep us from acting like it.

Now let’s go to the other extreme. What would we tell the people around us, when we assume, that God loves us anyway and we don’t need to be different at any cost? We could tell them, that even we have sinned and are in need of God’s redemption. We could tell them how much we want to be loved. By God for example. We could show them, that we are like them, when it comes to those issues. And then we could tell them about the never ending Love of the Heavenly Father who was willing to kill His Son in order to redeem us. And we could even love them just like we have been loved. Doesn’t that sound better?

Borders are always difficult to cross. Especially when the one who set up the border feels the need to make it clear, that the two sides are very different. So the more we try to distinguish ourselves from the world, the harder it is for outsiders to come in. But leading them in is the great commission. So shouldn’t we get rid of the border then? (No, I am not talking about the Church becoming like the world. On the contrary. The world needs to focus on the differences to justify their existence. We can focus on the common things, for we are justified already.)

And when it comes to scientists. I don’t get, why we try to hold up the idea, that faith and science are mutually exclusive. God gave us a brain. We use it and come up with science. Which we then call ungodly. So God gave us a brain, we are not allowed to use?! That sounds about wrong. And no, science did not disprove the existence of God. That is impossible. So why can’t we accept, that even scientists are doing the best they can? They are not out to get us. They look at us, because even they want to be loved by God. Just like us.