Creation Museum Created

to ensure kids are taught by the Book

as opposed to pedagogically trained professionals

In the Chronicle this morning I read my third review of the new $27 million dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Created to battle the propoganda producing secular museums of our nation which treat evolution as fact, and the evolutionary infected teaching strategies of our public schools, the new museum will teach the correct version of not only the Bible but all biological/ecological knowledge. All this for a $20 ticket! Turns out it's not the only creation museum in the US, there's another one - the Museum of Creation and Earth History in Santee, CA.

As I read the article in SF Gate I was struck by one of the comments of the movers-n-shakers of this movement who said, "many modern Christians have strayed from the basic tenets of their faith because they learned in school that evolution, not Genesis, provided the best blueprint for the story of creation."

Now I might sound like some bitter progressive, complaining and criticizing the more fundamentalistic and literal branches of the faith that I profess...which I guess I am...but the point for me it WHY? Why is this museum needed? Why is there a need to justify the creationist worldview through political investment (or divestment of local school boards in order to purge the schools of Darwin-related literature) or through expensive museums all in order to "fix" the worldviews of our children?

First of all - seems to me like you should educate your children at home, or in your faith community, if you really want them to believe first and foremost in creation.

Second, we all have a choice in belief - that's what makes faith belief as opposed to propoganda - so if your kids choose something else...seems better to spend the money on trying to convince your own kids to see the light than to move on to other's children.

Third, such a museum completely misses the boat. The creations stories in Genesis 1 and 2 aren't about visualization, but about dialogue, interdependence, community and mutuality. God doesn't create by showing Adam and Eve a diarama made in an old shoe box of what God's about to do. Rather God creates by speaking, by directing God's word to another, to another subject, inviting the universe to a dialogue, speaking humanity into being in order to invite them into a relational discussion, a life in community. In every dialogue choice is inherent. I'm not talking about a woman's choice, but the choice that all of us have when we're spoken to. We can choose to respond, or to play deaf mute and refuse to return any word.

To me that's the beauty of the Judeo-Creation vision of creation. It's not about the historical timeline or possibilty of a true creationist-scientific process hidden within this words of Genesis. It's about the worldview that we were created - back through the story of the garden - that we are created - today - for a dialogue with the living God, to live in community together based upon this dialogue, to live as stewards of the earth - not so much because it's commanded but because that's our purpose, it's one of the ways through which we can respond to God's Word - spoken in creation, born in Nazareth, and present among us by the Spirit. Why is it that there is such a need to make everything justifiable, quantifiable, and undeniable. Rather than trying to fight unbelief with a museum...seems like you should do it over a latte at Peet's or dinner at your own home. Seems to me like such a museum will only preach to the creationist choir, and their captive children dragged their on vacation as opposed to the day at 6 Flags that they dream of.