"This world was not created by God"

I had a dream about Ellen Degeneris last night. I am not sure how we got there, but there we were sitting around my parents breakfast nook chatting about life. She shared with me that she has a strong faith in God and that she is not sure why she was created to be gay. I thought for a moment and then a strange answer came out of my mouth. I said, "Ellen, this world was not created by God."

As soon as I said it, I knew I had some explaining to do. Not just to Ellen but to myself. But the thought is definitely an interesting one. We grow up as Christians being taught, "God created the world and everything in it." We learn about this in Sunday school and never doubt for a second that its true.

Then we move on to adolescence where we start to ask questions about how God created and whether "creationism" or "evolution" is the way to go. We may even progress further into college and seminary and learn that we are missing the point of Genesis altogether when we focus on "how" God created rather than focusing on "who" created and "why."

But all of this is a bit of a tangent to my original point, which is that God did not create this world. Let me say that again with some different words emphasized: God did not create this world. By "world" I mean our societies as much as the environment. And by "this world" I mean the world of sin, pain and death that we live in. I can say this because I am not a Calvinist.

It seems that we are the creators of the sin and pain in the world. And so while there is good in the world that has been created by God, I believe I get the credit as a co-creator for the messed up stuff all around us. I do believe God is re-creating the world around me through His many acts of redemption. Hopefully I can be a co-creator in that process as well.

I guess my point to Ellen in my dream was that I didn't want her to get the wrong idea with all of us Christians running around saying, "God created the world and everything in it." Not true. Not everything. Especially not now. But we used to be able to say that and our hope is that one day we will be able to say it again.