Hebrews 11:1-3 (HCSB)
Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. For our ancestors won God’s approval by it.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by God’s command, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.
The definition of faith in the first verse of chapter 11, widely quoted but less widely understood, is profound. In the rest of chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews gives illustration after illustration from the lives of those included in the Old Testament history to show what this “reality of what is hoped for” and “proof of what is not seen” looks like in the real world.
A key aspect of this faith that is apparent in every illustration given is that true faith is not simply belief in something, and it is far more than just hope. The starting point for all true faith is a declaration, a promise, or a prophecy made by God. True faith then manifests itself when a person takes that declaration, that promise, or that prophecy, and proceeds to live out their lives as if it were absolutely true, allowing it to inform every thought, every belief, every action. And it is ultimately the actions of those people, the shift in their worldview that affects every aspect of their lives, their goals and their actions, that are highlighted in this chapter as real faith.
Interestingly, the starting point for true faith today, as it has been since the days of Adam, is a firm belief that God has given a true history of the universe and the world in the Scriptures from the very first verse: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Over the past nearly two hundred years it has become quite common for even Christians to disbelieve what is commonly called the “primeval history” presented in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and to consider Abraham the first true “historical figure” in the Bible. Instead of choosing to believe the historical account of Genesis, many choose to believe in what was originally conceived of as a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life, a way to explain things without God being necessary, and without any miraculous intervention being required.
This belief includes the creation of matter by a “Big Bang” followed by billions of years of expansion and aggregation, and the origin of life of out of inert matter through the operation of time and chance. And it includes the increasing complexity of life through mutation and natural selection over more billions of years. This process has been branded as ”science”, with belief in the biblical record of a six-day creation branded as “religion,” or even as “myth”.
However, both positions are actually matters of faith, since there is no convincing scientific explanation of how all the time space and matter in the universe could “naturally” spring into existence. Also, abiogenesis, the idea that life came from non-living chemicals through natural processes, has been proven impossible by repeated experimentation for as long as evolution has been taught. The few amino acids that have been produced in the laboratory under stringent conditions that can hardly be considered “natural” are simply chemical compounds formed by chemical reactions and are no more “life” than a riverbank of clay is a brick building.
And even though there are changes that occur in life forms over time, mutations and selections, experiments over many decades and tens of thousands of generations raised in laboratories show conclusively that, regardless of the changes that have been caused by genetic tinkering, bacteria remain bacteria, yeast remain yeast, fruit flies remain fruit flies, dogs remain dogs, and cats remain cats. No matter how we manipulate the genetic material, that fact remains.
Some have retreated to a theistic view of evolutionary principles, forgetting that the entire construct of the Big Bang and evolution were developed specifically as a purely naturalistic explanation of origins, a way to completely eliminate the need for God from the origins of the universe and from the origin and development of life. These people believe that God was actively involved at critical points in the process, causing the Big Bang, applying a miraculous touch to dead chemicals to start life, and providing an evolutionary “kick” from time to time to initiate the development of new species. The problem with that way of thinking is that that process is not the way God clearly states that He did things, not just in Genesis but in the text of the Ten Commandments, (Exodus 20:8-10), and even in the New Testament, such as in the current passage.
In the end, what one believes about the origin of the universe is purely a matter of faith. One either has faith in the words of Scripture, believing them to be divinely inspired in every detail, faithfully capturing the testimony of the only eyewitness to the origins of the universe: God. Or one has faith in the ever-shifting suppositions of mere human beings and their scientific apparatus, men and women who were not present at the beginning, and who try to peer back over what they claim are billions of years to discern what a beginning might have looked like. Both positions are a matter of faith. The only question is, what are we placing our faith in: God’s testimony or man’s suppositions?
Father, it’s interesting that the writer of Hebrews didn’t go straight to the life of a person for their first illustration of what true faith looks like. Instead, they went to Genesis 1 as the foundation for all faith that comes after. And, if we think about it, that makes perfect sense. After all, if we are unwilling to accept Your testimony of how You created the universe, how can we believe and have faith in anything else You say in Your word? If we don’t trust that our Bibles are your actual inspired word throughout, how do we determine which parts are and which parts are not inspired, other than our opinions, or the opinions of other mere human beings? Help us to trust Your word, Lord, from the very first page of Your Scriptures, all the way to the end. Amen.