Children are sometimes made to choose between what they are taught at school and what they are taught at home. That choice is not one the scriptures ask for, and this piece sets out why, with both sides of it stated honestly.
What is written
The Torah gives an order of making, spread over days: light, sky, dry land, plants, lights, sea creatures and birds, land animals, then the man (Genesis 1). The man is formed from the dust of the ground and breathed into (Genesis 2:7).
The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that the Heavens and the Earth were one thing and were separated, and that every living thing was made from water.
Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?
It says He created every creature from water, and lists them by how they move: on their bellies, on two legs, on four (The Recitation 24:45). It says He created you in stages (The Recitation 71:14).
And of the making of a man it gives a sequence: He began the creation of man from clay, then made his posterity from an extract of a liquid, then proportioned him and breathed into him (The Recitation 32:7–9). Elsewhere, clay from an altered black mud (The Recitation 15:26).
The Psalms describe the same making from inside the mother.
For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
The Psalm says the frame was not hidden from Him, and that the days were written before there were any of them (Psalm 139:15–16).
What is measured
The rocks are old. The best measurements we have put the Earth at something over four thousand million years, and they come from several independent methods that agree. Living things change over generations; we watch it happen in bacteria within a week and in finches within a lifetime, and the bones in the ground line up with it.
There is no reason to be frightened of saying this. The Lord God made what is measured as surely as He revealed what is written. He is called the Creator, the Inventor, the Fashioner (The Recitation 59:24), and a fashioner's work can be examined.
The Recitation repeatedly tells people to travel and look at how creation began (The Recitation 29:20) and to consider the Earth and the sky as signs (The Recitation 2:164). Looking is asked of us.
Where the quarrel actually is
Not between the Lord God and what He made. Between one reading of a text and another reading of the same text.
Some say the six days are six days of twenty-four hours, and they read Genesis 1 as it stands and Exodus 20:11. Others say a day is not our day when it is His, and they read Psalm 90:4, where a thousand years are as yesterday, and The Recitation 22:47 and 70:4, where a day of His is counted in thousands of our years.
Both of those are readings held by people who love the text. Both rest on verses. It is not for us to rule between them.
Notice also what neither scripture says. Neither gives a mechanism. In Genesis, the Lord God revealed that He formed. The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that He proportioned, and that it was in stages (The Recitation 71:14). How a thing is formed, and over how long, is not the subject at all.
What is not up for negotiation
- He made it. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
- He made it on purpose, and made us to be answerable (The Recitation 67:2).
- We are dust with His breath in us, and being dust is not an insult (Genesis 2:7, Genesis 3:19).
- Every one of us was formed by Him, individually, and He watched it happen (Psalm 139:13–16).
Those four claims do not depend on the age of a rock. Nothing a geologist finds can touch them, and nothing a geologist finds needs to be denied to keep them.
A word to whoever is worried
If you were taught that believing the Earth is old means losing Him, that was not taught to you from a verse. He made us with the wits to measure things, and He told us to look. He made us; how He did it is His, and He has not put us under any obligation to guess.
Questions people might ask
Do the scriptures say how old the Earth is?
They do not give a date. They give an order, and they give a Maker. The Psalms say a thousand years in His sight are like yesterday (Psalm 90:4).
Can a believer accept what is measured?
Yes. Measuring His work is not denying it. The quarrel is only where someone says there is no Maker, and that is a claim no measurement can make.
What should I tell a child who is worried?
That the Lord God made everything, that people are still finding out how, and that finding out is allowed. He taught Adam the names (The Recitation 2:31).
