At the same time, I am actually encouraged by those results because it proves that the case is far from closed and shows that there is room for disagreement and healthy debate within the church regarding this issue. Even in a Bible church that is largely conservative theologically there is wide diversity in perspectives, so this clearly is not a liberal/conservative issue.

I grew up in a largely young earth environment and was consistently taught one side of the debate, which led to my presuming that there really was only one biblical view on this issue, at least for those Christians who consider the Scriptures to be inerrant. Like others in my circle, I was fairly dogmatic about this belief because I didn’t know any different.

So, I was genuinely surprised when I later learned that there are actually several other views held by evangelical Christians who maintain a high view of Scripture and are sincerely conservative in their theology. I eventually came to realize that the only difference between them and those in my tradition was the way that they interpret the same infallible Scripture.

This realization led me to look into the other views and read a host of literature from disparate perspectives, and the net result of that investigation for me is a high regard for the different views and deep respect for those who hold them. I now understand more fully that there are legitimate arguments for different views and that they are held by God-fearing, Bible-believing, highly intelligent Christians.

Admittedly, I still favor a young earth view, but my reasons are more theological and exegetical than they are geologic and scientific. I have read equally compelling arguments for and against a young earth based upon geology, but being a pastor and not a geologist I understandably and hopefully appropriately give more weight to special revelation than to natural.

Given that bias, I let Scripture become the ultimate arbiter of the issue. And, for that reason, I actually do prefer the common understanding of “yom” (day) in the Genesis account, which is the 24-hour day. And, I have found that the theological problem of suffering and death in the world before Adam’s sin though not insurmountable is quite difficult to reconcile with the rest of Scripture.

Nevertheless, I hold my personal leanings loosely knowing that I could be wrong. The truth is that the Scripture is not clearly explicit on this issue and there must be room for charitable disagreement in the church. We ought to permit and even encourage healthy dialogue and investigation to occur within the church and be tolerant of and comfortable with a diversity of views.

That being said, I am really concerned about two things regarding this emotionally charged debate in the church today. First, it bothers me how Christians treat each other while fighting over this issue. Young Earth Creationists accuse Old Earth Creationists of being unbiblical compromisers and Old Earth Creationists return the favor by calling Young Earth Creationists narrow-minded simpletons.

When I first read Hugh Ross’s A Matter of Days, I was stunned to hear how alienated and persecuted he felt by the evangelical church for his old earth views. In fact, he laments for several pages the unmitigated anger that was directed his way by pastors and evangelical leaders when he went public with his arguments.

In the same way, I was equally shocked to learn that Ken Hamm was being panned and ridiculed for his young earth views at Answers in Genesis. It seems many in the old earth community actually mock him and his peers for holding what they deem an outdated and narrow minded perspective.

Having grown up among young earth proponents that I respect, I am equally concerned by the childish panning directed their way as I am by the angry condemning that is returned. As a pastor who values diversity in lesser debates, I really am embarrassed by the lack of charity shown by both sides.

The other thing that bothers me about this issue is that I believe the church is fighting the wrong war. Jesus told us to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” as we live and minister in the midst of wolves, and being wise means that we must know where to draw the battle lines. As Christians, we too often draw lines where they shouldn’t be. And, the age of the earth need not be a battle line in the church.

Being wise as a snake is about knowing where the true war is, and the true battlefront is not whether the earth is young or old but whether the earth is created or not. You see, the real war today is whether God created the world or whether it evolved by blind chance. This means that we are fighting in the wrong place and wasting our energy and resources on the wrong things.

While the church is busy bickering about whether the earth is thousands or millions of years old, the culture is more interested in deciding whether there is any need for a Creator in the first place. In case you haven’t noticed, atheism is growing at unprecedented rates in America and around the world because more people think that God is basically unnecessary.

When we divide our forces and fight on the wrong battlefronts, we are spinning our wheels and wasting precious time in the real war over the creation story. People have forgotten that there is a God who created them and has plans for them because evolutionary naturalism tells them something different.

From a young age, we are taught that we are nothing more than an accident in the grand scheme of unfolding evolutionary events. Our culture believes more every day in blind chance as the parent for all things including us, and we lose more ground each year because we aren’t mounting efforts to show them otherwise.

Instead of fighting with each other about WHEN and HOW God created the earth, we ought to be fighting together for the truth THAT God created the earth and the people on it. The when and how are secondary. What is primary is the fact that there is a Creator who made all things, and that Creator is the God of the Bible.

People today need to hear one common message from the Church, and that message is that there is a Creator who made them, loves them, and has plans for them. They need to see that there is undeniable evidence that our world is carefully designed and personally superintended by an all powerful God, and they need to know that they are not an accident and that people have value, dignity and purpose because God gave it to them.

For this reason, I want to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ to stop wasting emotional energy and spiritual resources on the when and how of creation and instead start spending it on the “that” of creation. Let’s invest ourselves in one common cause and unite in one shared message that the God of the universe made everything and He made it all for a purpose.

The infinity symbol has been around for 2,000 years. In the first century the Romans used it to represent the number 1,000, which was a substantial number to them. Much later in 1650, however, the English mathematician John Wallis proposed that it stand for infinity, and that is the meaning that stuck then and still remains.

The word “infinity” is most popular today. We use it as a brand name for everything from cars to music speakers. We talk about how teachers have “infinite patience,” how kids have “infinite energy” and how the rich have “infinite resources,” but those statements are really inaccurate. The truth is infinity is a word that actually can only apply to God because only God is inherently infinite! That symbol must be exclusively associated with and attached to God alone because nothing else in the universe is infinite like Him.

The Scriptures tell us that God is both eternal and infinite, and these terms describe different aspects of God’s nature. Eternity is more about time while infinity is more about space. So, perhaps we can think of it this way…eternity would be represented by a line that runs east and west while infinity would be represented by two perpendicular lines with the other running north and south.

When we say God is eternal, we are saying that He transcends time, and when we say God is infinite, we are saying that He transcends space. Therefore, God is not only timeless but also endless, boundless or limitless. And, because He is without end, God is not measurable or quantifiable. Therefore, neither science or math can account for Him and must resort to a symbol as an attempt to capture the evasive concept.

For many centuries, our church fathers had a statement that they regularly invoked in discussions of matters like these. Their default assessment of mind blowing ideas was to declare “Deus Semper Maior”, which translated from the Latin means “God is always greater”. In other words, they resorted to declaring that no matter how hard we try to fathom and sum up the nature of God’s immensity, we will forever fall short of comprehension and description and must therefore surrender to profound mystery.

Interestingly, a scientist named Charles Meisner once had this to say about it: “I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. It’s very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he had run across did not have a proper respect for the Author of the universe.”

So, the real question when it comes to God’s immensity is do we really have a proper respect for the majesty of the Author of the Universe? The Scriptures tell us clearly that we worship a God who is larger and more vast than the entire universe and that awesome truth ought to overwhelm and humble us.

In 1 Kings 8:27 we read “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built?” And, in Jeremiah 23:23-24 it says “‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the LORD, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the LORD. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the LORD.” Further in Eph. 4:10 it says “He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe.”

So, if it is indeed true that God fills the entire universe, then how big does that make Him? Consider this simple but amazing fact…You can fit one million earths inside of the sun, and the sun is actually a small star. There are other stars in our galaxy that are 800 times larger than the sun. The next closest star beyond the sun is Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. That means that if you were to drive your car at 60 miles per hour (96 kilometers per hour) to Alpha Centauri, it would take you 30 million years to get there! And get this…There are 200 billion stars in our own Galaxy and there are a 100 billion other galaxies!

The fact is that the universe is so big and our God even bigger that we just cannot even comprehend it. We simply cannot get our limited minds around this limitless concept, and that is why so many bright Christians through the centuries who have dared to contemplate this have willingly surrendered their pride.

Augustine, the ancient scholar and theologian, for example, while puzzling over the immensity of God one day when walking along the beach observed a young boy with a bucket running back and forth pouring water into a little hole. Augustine asked, “What are you doing?” The boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.” And it was then that Augustine suddenly realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind, which was an impossible and futile task.

My response to my own contemplation of this overwhelming concept has been to wonder a couple of things. First, if God is that big, then how small does that make us? And, second, if God is that big, then why does He care so much about people who are so small? The honest truth is that God’s immensity makes me feel tiny, but at the same time, God’s immensity also makes me feel loved. Let me explain why.

When I read King David’s words in Psalm 8, I gain an appreciation for what God’s size has to say about my own. David apparently had the same appreciation and asked the same question when he wrote: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

And God’s answer to David’s profound query? “Yet you have made him a little lower that the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; and you have put all things under his feet.” So, the answer to the question about the relative worth of tiny people like us is that we have value because God gave it to us. He made us valuable when he created us and gave us glory, honor and dominion.

And, why did God do this? I mean, why in the world would God be so generous with us? Well, the answer to that question is born out of His immensity. You see, God cares for us because just as He is infinite in his size, God is also infinite in his character. Because God is infinite, whatever God is, He is infinitely. Therefore, this means that just as God is infinitely large He is also infinitely just, generous, merciful and loving!

Therefore, I have found that God’s immensity, though profound and humbling, has much to say about Him and about us. Though it’s very humbling to be contemplating such things, I have also found a great sense of significance in understanding that God’s character is truly as infinite as his stature. And, because of this realization, I can honestly say this particular mathematical symbol definitely speaks my language.