The Relevance Talk

According to Webster’s, relevance is “having practical value or applicability.” The need to be relevant in today’s culture can be almost all-consuming. Who would want to be judged by the majority of one’s peers as being impractical and out of step with reality?

Putting it another way, why is preaching the relevance of Genesis so important, and why do creationists dare risk being labeled as divisive, impractical, and even irrelevant? The biblical view of creation argues that Genesis 1–11 is practical, relevant, historical narrative because it is vital to reality. Man is created in the image of God—whether as a Finlander or a New Zealander—and this “imago dei” is unchanging as the proverbial leopard’s spots.

Not understanding who we are and where we are going tends to “fragment reality, separating religion from history, which in turn de-unifies the God of history from the God of Redemption.” [SBC Journal 3, no. 4 (1999): 34.] Slowly but surely, creation and redemption become separated. So is this simply some philosophical mumbo-jumbo? Not at all. It is part of the tragic tale of a church losing its biblical compass.

Foundational to the life of a man or woman of faith is the biblical record, which reveals the heart and mind of our Creator on issues such as sexuality, marriage, right and wrong, sin, gender roles, life and death, good and evil, salvation, and a host of other things. When we ignore Genesis as inconsequential or non-essential, we pronounce judgment on the Word of God as being impractical and out of step with our modern scientific age. This is why at Answers in Genesis, we place great emphasis on the practicality and the relevance of the inspired word of God, especially as it is found in Genesis 1–11 and then proclaimed to men and women worldwide.

From Steve Fazekas.

P.S. Please pray for Steve Ham as he visits the UK to assist our sister AiG ministry there.