Last Sunday evening, 24th January 2010, Channel 4 launched its new series of seven attractively produced documentaries on the Bible, each hosted by a well-known public figure. Howard Jacobson, the best-selling Jewish novelist and humourist, tackled the awesome subject of ‘Creation’ for the pilot show – truly the foundation for all that’s to follow – and rightly so. The result must have left most viewers confirmed in their suspicions that this foundation is a pretty shaky one, for if Genesis is telling us lies how can we trust the other sixty-five books of the Bible? When does God start telling us the truth?

Back in September 2009, I was invited to participate in this programme by preaching a sermon on Genesis 1 at Westminster Chapel, then being interviewed for 90 minutes by Howard Jacobson. Both would be filmed as material to be included in this hot debate about creation. Howard wanted to find out how ‘fundamentalist’ creationists explain and defend the theology of Genesis. Most ‘fundamentalists’ usually appear not much ‘fun’, slightly ‘dumb’, and occasionally ‘mental’ to me, but I was willing to take the risk and participate.

I found Howard Jacobson to be charming, witty and incisive in his questions. A Mancunian Jew who drifted away from the faith of his fathers and lived a secular lifestyle, he now hovers indecisively somewhere between wistful longings and strong scepticism on the God-question. This was reflected in the whole tenor of the programme.

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