God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

The connection between Genesis 1―4 and Skinwalker Ranch   Image by author using ChatGPT This is a connect-the-dots article. If you had asked me 20 years ago why there was suffering in the world, I’d have answered that it’s because we live in a fallen world. Meaning, Adam and Eve “fell,” or sinned, so death reigned from Adam to Moses, not just in human souls, but in all of nature; but God gave us a means of atonement through the Law. Meanwhile, we are all born with the stain of original sin, and we need the waters of baptism or the forgiveness of Jesus to cleanse sin away. Catholics and Protestants alike dub this Original Sin. All humanity is born with it. Dot number one, the Genesis serpent “Every source has a purpose,’ writes Lauren McCormick for Bible History Daily . “A document created by a government, ruler, or institution is not simply a neutral record of everything that happened. It reflects the concerns and priorities of the people who produced it. So the impor...

Image from pexels.com. I love posting about Genesis 1-4 because it’s a bottomless well of insights about the development of human cognition and our relationship with gods and God. I should mention, as I’ve done in previous posts, I believe the stories are divinely inspired and weighted with truths we should explore, but I don’t take Gen. 1-4 as an accurate historic account. Now, hold the cabbages just a minute my churchy friends. Let me explain. Not My Point, but Let’s Review Italics represent specific Hebrew words: in Genesis 1 God just speaks . The heavens and earth appear. Adam and Eve are created on the 6 th 24-hour day together , male and female, and it’s all good . In Gen. 2, the earth is not fully developed because mankind hasn’t appeared yet (2:5). God forms Adam out of the same dust/mud/dirt that he makes the animals. God makes him a living creature using the same Hebrew word for the animals (2:19), but not all is good yet. Something important is missing. Yahweh Elohi...

  Was it an instantaneous poof, a straight line, or a mass of squiggles? Blending common sense, science, and theology provides a solid answer.   Psalm 139:13-16 NKJV:  “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” We are designed. You could metaphorically say that King David was planned on a drawing board, put together in a secret vault, and came forth with a manual. We are a magnificent, brilliant reflection of God’s engineering genius and of His eternal character. With our efficient bodies, our intellect, and o...

In a recent Sunday School session, one of the attendees asked our Lutheran pastor what the Bible means when it says we are made in the image of God. This is a question that has bedeviled the church and synagogue for thousands of years. Our good pastor gave a credible and modern answer to the inquirer. It is certainly not our physical characteristics that make us in God’s image. After all, Jesus told us that “God is Spirit, and He seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.” It is our intellect, the pastor explained, our ability to know right from wrong, to dream, create, emote, and relate to God as our Father. I agree with all of that. After all, God the Father does not have genitalia. He does not need to pee after a drink of water. Only we do that. There are several ways to unpack the two creation accounts in Genesis 1-4. In Genesis one, “the Adam” is a title applied to both male and female. God speaks and things pop into existence, including man and woman, both at the sa...

  Setting the parameters of discussion All Bible verses are NKJV taken from biblegateway.com unless otherwise noted. First, the term antichrist is a biblical construct, so only the Bible can define it. It’s actually a Judeo-Christian meme, rooted deeply in the Old Testament as well the New. The fact that the title of Christ is in the word does not prevent us from searching out similar spiritual themes in the Hebrew Bible in which spiritual and cultural forces are horrifically anti-God. In the second half of the twentieth century there were many predictions about the immanent rise of the antichrist, but it came from people who were partly or totally into channeling spirits. The situations that I know of and have blogged about are Jeane Dixon, Ruth Montgomery, Vance David, and an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Bayside, New York. The NT does encourage gifts of the Holy Spirit like prophecy and word of knowledge in which God speaks to those imbued with the gift, but the Holy Spir...

When did Adam and Eve live? A friend of mine who was concerned about my soul and my call to teach sparked this post by sending me a flyer which advertises educational material published by a conservative organization called Answers in Genesis. They offer seminars, DVDs, and books, and have built a Creation Museum. My evangelical friends and I will never agree on the amount of time God spent in creating our beautiful and breathtaking earth, but one thing we have in common is that God’s hand was in all of it. For many reasons, including the fact that I've taken geology classes and I'm married to a geologist, I cannot accept a literal six-day creation. Here is just a few of them.  When Genesis 1 and 2 were written down, probably in the seventh century B.C.E. (although we really don’t know when), Hebrew was a well-established language, emerging from Canaanite, Eblaite, and Sumerian. The Israelites were already a coherent people and state unto themselves. In fact, given space and ...