There are many answers to that question, ranging from “Yesterday.” to “It always was.” Each indicates how politically correct a person is on this, and most other issues. The more politically correct the person, the farther back he will think the earth came into being. The slightly brighter realize that something can’t come from nothing, and prefer the popular “Twenty billion years ago.” answer. The less politically incorrect, called a wide variety of uncomplimentary names, believe that the earth was created ten or twelve thousand years ago.
If we were to graph the answers, we would find that people who don’t think God is real, or, if He is, He’s not that important, tend to believe the “twenty billion year” response. That, after all, is what most of them have been taught by any number of people who believe themselves to be particularly enlightened and are not bashful about letting others know.
Catholic Fundamentalists make another reply. We believe that God can program in three dimensions, and that He programmed particles, compiled them into systems and beings, and downloaded the whole thing fairly quickly. He probably programmed sub-programmers, whom the Iron Age founders of our religion called “angels”, to help in the process. Some handled minerals, some specializing in the various solids, liquids, gases. Others programmed the different energies that keep things going. Still others programmed plants and animals. The Unprogrammed Programmer, Himself, programmed Adam and Eve.
We believe that He decided to do so in such a way that each and every human being who’d ever live could look at His vast download and conclude either: “This was an accident.”, or “God made this.” If all creation was made to provide us with free will, our answer to the question should include that notion.
One may ask, “If God made it, would He waste a lot of time?” Few of us would take a month to wash our windshield. We’d want it clean quickly so we could go for a drive. If the thought that “we are made in His image” means anything at all, it’s hard to imagine him spending eons more time than He’d need to download everything required to give us free will.
In fact, the distance a person is from appreciating God’s power is numerically quantified by the number of years he thinks it took Him to program and download the Creation Program.
When we consider the passage “Esau I have hated”, we may realize that The Creation Program was written and downloaded to provide free will to let those whom He loves separate themselves from those He hates. The fear of being hated by God, and the obvious punishment provided and promised, may get some to open their minds.
If those minds are in the “loved group”, they will open, often creaking like rusted hinges, to He Who loved them enough to send His Son to die for them.
