Genesis

“Let there be light” in the flip of a switch.

We have a deep-seated human discomfort with things that take a long time. We want moments to work like a light switch—flip it, and the room is instantly bright.

God might have a profound preference for process over magic tricks.

WEBKJV

²The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Genesis 1:2 (WEB)

²And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:2 (KJV)

Genesis and science both describe a world that builds toward complexity in stages. There is a shared shape to the story: darkness gives way to light, oceans give way to land, and life in the sea eventually moves toward the shore.

Both accounts are focused on an unfolding reality rather than a sudden event.

St. Augustine saw the value of this non-literal approach in the early fifth century. In his work De Genesi ad Litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), he argued that God didn’t just drop a finished, static world into place.

To explain how living things appeared over time, Augustine introduces “seminal reasons”. God implanted hidden, potential “seeds” of all future creation into the fabric of the universe, allowing things to naturally develop and unfold over time by design.

Another proposal comes from P.J. Wiseman in Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis. He suggested the “revelatory-day hypothesis.”

Wiseman argued the “days” weren’t the time it took to build the world, but the time it took for the author to receive the vision. In this reading, the “evening and morning” marks the end of a session of narration, not a day of construction.

Swapping one “correct” answer for another doesn’t change our underlying approach. If we use these ideas just to make the text fit what we know about the world today, we’re still looking for a manual instead of a story.

The real question isn’t about the duration. It’s about why we insist on literal facts for these specific pages while we’re constantly looking for deeper meaning everywhere else.

A literal reading offers a clear, grounded anchor—it gives us something solid to hold onto. But if these “days” are a human frame for an infinite reality, the text was never meant to be a simple shortcut to certainty. It isn’t a replacement for doing the hard work of seeking truth ourselves.

Accepting what we are handed is where most of us start, and there’s value in that foundation. But taking time to examine what we’ve been given isn’t a sign of rebellion—it’s how an inherited belief becomes something genuinely your own.