Light Contradictions

In an episode of season 2 of the Amazon Prime series Fleabag, the main character (I think her name is “Fleabag” or maybe that’s her nickname … I’m not good with names) has a conversation with a priest she is trying to seduce. He has given her a Bible to read and marked certain passages. In the conversation he asks her what she thinks and after a little hemming and hawing she says,
Fleabag: “So, the world was made in seven days and on the first day light came and a few days later the sun came …”
Priest: “Yeah, that’s ridiculous.”
     This is just the reflection and musings of the folks who wrote this show but I’ve actually heard a similar (exact even!) sentiment from a seminary trained fella I know. Now, THAT IS ridiculous! Nothing against the guy who is nice enough but he likely paid a considerable amount of money to go to seminary and left it thinking there was a contradiction on the first page of Scripture. There isn’t.
     There is a lot of consternation within Christianity to figure out how to reconcile “science” (so-called) with the Bible and often it ends with the Bible being tweaked for the sake of current scientific understanding. I have read a fair enough share of these attempts at reconciling these two contradictory worldviews: one that of secular materialistic science which HAS TO (by definition!) find non-theistic answers to ALL of life’s questions, particularly the scientific ones, and one that says that there is a Creator God Who made the heavens, the earth, the seas and all that is in them AND that gave us verbal revelation to enable us to begin the task of rightly understanding His creation. For the former view it INDEED would be ridiculous to say that everything  evolved from nothing (or next to it) in a few thousand years. Absurd! How can the latter view, which says there is a Creator God Who is there and is not silent match that of the former, which says there is no creator god or, if there is, he is irrelevant to understanding the thing that he created? Clearly, using the scientific method can help us to understand an astounding amount about the current way in which the creation functions. What it can’t do is travel back in time to know for certain the way in which the creation functioned at its beginning. Just as an example, there was a recent headline saying that a time measuring constant was off by around 9 percent resulting in the universe being a BILLION years younger than previously estimated.
     So, regarding light. Part of the problem with having a problem with the creation account of Genesis 1 is that it takes the creation as the given. There is a sun, there is a moon, the sun gives us light, etc. Given that that is how we get light, how could there be light without the sun? Well, folks, the Genesis account says there is a Divine Being Who created the sun! “He made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16 [NIV]). If He CREATED the sun, is it just possible He could provide light in a non-sun manner? There is!
     Psalm 19:1 says “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork” [ESV]. The creation of the celestial bodies are said to be the work of God’s hand! (Just as a side note, the creation of the heavenly bodies are said to be the work of God’s hand while that of Him bringing salvation is said to be the work of His arm (Isaiah 63:5)–God put forth more effort, as it were, in bringing salvation than in creating the sun.) If such a Being exists (and He does), then it is HE Who is the given, not the creation. He is the provider of life and light and all that there is. The sun is just a temporary placeholder (cf. Rev. 21:23). While there is PLENTY of contradiction between the origin account of creation and the origin account found in most science textbooks, there is no contradiction between God being able to “let there be light” in the beginning and then creating a big orange ball a few days later to take the place of the original light source, which was possibly provided by the same glory of God that will provide light in the new Jerusalem.
     One other thing: the article referenced above about the age of the universe says something about the universe being both a billion years younger and NOT a billion years younger. And it’s kind of funny, there is a PhD young earth creationist named Russell Humpreys who has spent something like the last twenty years (good science takes time!) developing an hypothesis (still a work in progress, not #settledscience) that the universe is BOTH billions of years old AND was created roughly six thousand earth years ago. https://vimeo.com/349389279