Dinosaurs: My Struggle With Creationism

I remember the scene clearly. I was in the third grade and an avid and excited learner. I loved going to school. Everyday we found out about new things…how to read really hard, long words, like perpendicular and chrysanthemum; how to add long columns of numbers and do division; to do our multiplication tables up the 6’s. We learned all the words to grownup songs like “The Star Spangled Banner” so we could sing along at basketball games. We learned about static electricity, astronauts, and soil erosion. I loved school. I loved reading. I loved learning. I also loved Sunday School. I loved gathering with the other children at Zion Lutheran to sing, “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “God see the little sparrow fall, it meets His tender view. If He so loves the little birds, I know He loves me, too.” I loved picking out the appropriate macaroni alphabet letters to spell out The Lord’s Prayer and pasting these on a shellacked piece of wood as a present for my parents. I loved learning how to pronounce the wonderful and hard Bible names like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who survived the fiery furnace; Nebuchadnezzar; Methuselah who lived to be 969; Jezebel who was shameless and wicked; Saul who became Paul; Abram who became Abraham. I listened and I remembered. Every night for six months my daddy would read to me from The Children’s Stories From the Bible, 2-volume set, illustrated. And I listened and I learned and I remembered. Well, this happy learning time continued on for me. I studied about true things in school and true things in Sunday School, and learned from my mom and dad, until one day in school we got to dinosaurs. Now dinosaurs were about the best things we had studied yet. Wow! What terrific long amazing names they had: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and Pterodactyl. I loved them. I read all the books on dinosaurs we got from the library. I drew pictures of dinosaurs on scraps of paper when the teacher wasn’t looking. I wondered if just maybe, there weren’t still a few dinosaurs left; say in darkest Africa or Brazil. I carried on my love affair with dinosaurs until one afternoon it hit me. If dinosaurs lived millions and millions of years ago, like, they were really, really old…how come it didn’t say anything about them in the bible? In the Bible, where it said that God made the world in 7 days and made people pretty much right away and all the animals which Adam gave names. My teacher said that dinosaurs lived millions of years before there were any people and we had skeletons and fossils from them and we could go to museums to see them. (I had never been to a museum, but I couldn’t wait to go…) And there were pictures of them in the books from the library. But the Holy Bible was God’s word “…given to us men for our salvation.” But how come it doesn’t say anything in it about dinosaurs? I thought and I wondered about how this could be. Where were the dinosaurs in the Bible? And if they weren’t there—and I was sure I could have noticed, they would have gotten at least a couple of chapters with illustrations in The Children’s Stories From the Bible. If they weren’t in the Bible, then what else got left out? What other things did they skip? Finally, after worrying a great deal about this, I sat down next to my mom after dinner, thinking she would be able to help sort this out. I said to her, “I don’t know whether I believe in the Bible or in dinosaurs.” My shocked mother immediately said, “You better believe in the Bible!” and quickly changed the subject. The end. No further discussion. Period. I never, ever talked with her again about this or to anyone for years and years. But as I grew and changed and learned and remembered, deep in my heart I knew, I believed in God and …I believed in dinosaurs.