Some years ago, my wife (who was then my girl-friend) and I took a trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. We went to look at the dinosaur bones, although I’ve always been just as fascinated by the pre-historic mammals (you have to love the teeny horses the size of dogs). After a glimpse of the hairy, low-browed, unclothed pre-human guys on display, I’m guessing that my then-girlfriend (now wife) began to appreciate the hairy, low-browed, but fully clothed human guy she came with. It was probably those proto-humans she was thinking about when she agreed to marry me (he’s not as bad as one of THEM).

In any event, you may think that I am about to launch into a discussion of evolution, Genesis, and Biblical inerrancy. I could be about to strain at gnats or to swallow camels to reconcile each word of the creation story in Genesis with modern science. Alternatively, I might suggest that we abandon Genesis as a lot of mythology. Both of these have been done before, though, and that is not today’s topic. Today, I am writing about CHON.

When you visit the Natural History Museum on the Washington D.C. Mall, do NOT go right for the dinosaur bones. The dinosaurs are the product of BILLIONS of years of hard work. It took a very long time, and a lot of effort, to build up to the dinosaurs. Fortunately, the Smithsonian has not left out the crucial first part of the story (well, second if you count the creation of stars and planets as the first). For years, probably since the 1970’s, the Smithsonian has had an endlessly repeating cartoon musical extolling the virtues of CHON, the building blocks of life.

CHON is Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, four atoms of which we are almost entirely comprised. In essence, each of us is a big, complex pile of CHON, with some other things built in. The Smithsonian’s movie details the long process by which sunlight, electricity, and water combined with these elements to develop simple proteins, then complex proteins, then replicating proteins, then simple cells, then complex cells, then multicellular organisms. There is some very catchy music, too. Unfortunately, the music doesn’t carry well in typing, since the lyrics are very repetitive: Chon, chon, chon, chon, chon . . . .

Why am I writing this? When I first saw this film, I had earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in science, and this wasn’t really new to me (although I don’t recall any class specifically covering the origins of life). It was not until that moment, however, that the sheer awesome complexity of it all struck me. I have read accounts by biologists who marvel at the complexity of DNA and the beauty of the double-helix from which DNA is formed. That double-helix is, in turn, comprised of amino acids, each of which was itself the product of millions of years of effort. The atoms (CHON) build the proteins, which build the DNA and the cells, which build the plants, the bacteria, the birds, and the beasts, and the people. We are only beginning to construct a map of the human genome. We aren’t even close to understanding its detailed workings, and we sure as heck couldn’t build it with a pile of CHON and some electricity, sunlight, and water.

What struck me was the awesome power of this design. Scientific rationalists might tell me that what appears orderly is simply random chance: if you get a big enough random sample, there will be localized spots of "order" in your sample. This is a variation on the old saw that an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters will reproduce Shakespeare. I don’t believe it (the random universe part, I mean; you might convince me of the monkeys except that you couldn’t possibly find an infinite number of typewriters anymore). From the exclusive perspective of what is scientifically provable, the universe might or might not be random, or might or might not be the product of a divine will. Science can neither disprove nor prove the "why" of it all, it can merely assist in understanding the "how."

For me, I see an order beyond anything that a human could create, that has its own powerful beauty and fills me with awe. It is the awe of realizing that we live among 100 billion galaxies, each with 50 billion stars, each star unique; like the 6 billion or so unique people that presently inhabit this unique planet. It is the awe of glimpsing a plan that has been developing for billions of years, of which we cannot see the beginning and cannot scientifically predict the end. In this, Genesis was right: God made it, and it is good.

How then, is our appreciation of God enhanced by "creationism," which denies everything we know about the wonderfully complex universe around us, in exchange for a literal reading of Genesis that insists that we were literally created in six days. Putting aside the fact that this is a metaphor, not a scientific blueprint for the creation of the universe, such a reading of God’s word gives short shrift to the billions of years across which God’s plan and his universe came into being. It ignores the wonderful design built by God through long stretches of time, until the conditions and the time and the place were just right for humans. It ignores CHON.

I recently heard an evangelical minister sneer, "they say that we came from SOUP, that our great-great-grandfathers were FISH, and that our great-grandfathers were MONKEYS." Perhaps. That is like saying, "Genesis says we were made from DIRT." Contempt is a dirty emotion, with no place in Christian thought. The "soup" took billions of years and a wonderfully complex universe to create. The fish that was my "great-great-grandfather" was itself a marvel that humans cannot begin to fully understand. And as for my great-grandfather the monkey, I am happy to claim kinship.  Detesting the Lord’s creation, whether it is a monkey or a fish or a human, is certainly not what Christ was about. In the parlance of Genesis, we all, human and animal, came from the same earth and were shaped by the same divine hand. If that hand took billions and billions of years to carefully prepare the universe for humanity, I can only stand in awe.

Ever since my trip to the Smithsonian some years ago, whenever I hear a creationist speak, hear the accusation that I am sinning when I consider the age and complexity of the universe, or hear that I am disrespecting God’s word by trying to understand His creation, the song always starts in the back of my mind, like a small and far away but very insistent voice: chon, chon, chon, chon . . . Thank you, Lord, for DNA, for CHON, for this wonderful blue-green planet, for the Sun about which it revolves, for the spiral-armed galaxy in which it is nestled among 100 billion other galaxies, in a complexity that I could never understand. Truly, God is Great, in every sense of the word.