The gospel is easy to understand. It is simple to get the point God makes in the Atonement, even though the details are rich in complexity. But not all the truth in the Word of God is simple. There is the milk of the word and there is the meat of the word. God has absolutely no interest in making all of His truth easy for you to understand. He is interested in you loving truth. Loving it enough to seek it diligently and earnestly, even if it is hard. The doctrine that the "plain-reading" of scripture is always the correct reading, and further that the most literal reading is all God means to say about a matter, has become apathy posing as virtue for too many Christians. I made the case for loving truth in that manner at length in my book, and shan't do so again here.
Instead I want to give a very pertinent example of how this flawed view of scripture leads to an inability to comprehend even the most basic things which God is trying to say. Exodus 20:11 is often used as "proof" that God created the universe in six literal 24-hour days. I talk about Exodus 20:11 some in my book, but I want to go into a little more depth here. Exodus 31:17 is also sometimes used, and what I say here applies to it as well. First let's look at the "plain-reading" of the text from the King James Version:
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Do you see where it says "Six days shalt" in verse nine and "For in six days" in verse eleven? The Hebrew for "six" in those two places is the same, yet one verse says just "Six days" and the other "...in six days". Is the word "in" really a part of the text or is it assumed? It is assumed. In my KJV it is in italics for that very reason. Verse nine has the exact same Hebrew word and it is just translated "six" without the "in" before it, because the word "in" isn't in the text. Exodus 31:15 (and many other places) use the same Hebrew term and don't have "in" inserted before six either. This insertion gives the English reader an idea that this passage is referring to things from Genesis 1:1, the "creation of the heavens and the earth." But that's not the Hebrew text, it is a meaning derived from an assumption of the translator.
If one was to insert an English word there, "for" might be a better choice. It isn't used, possibly because the Hebrew standard word translated "for" or "because" starts off verse eleven of chapter twenty. It would be awkward to begin a sentence with "for" twice in a row. Yet our English word "for" has a couple of senses. It can mean "because" or "this amount". That's where the awkwardness comes from, but there is no reason why you couldn't use each of the senses consecutively. If we said it, "Because for six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth" it would be a valid translation. He "made" them, but not in the sense that He created them from nothing. He accomplished the work He wanted to do, He "did something with" them. Like the farmer does to his land. He created them "in the beginning".
The passage is saying that man should rest from his own labors on the land for one day out of seven because for six days the Lord Himself worked and on the seventh He rested. Farmers do not “create” the earth they farm, but they do make it into something productive. That is mostly what the LORD did during the so-called “Creation Days.” The reason you rest is in honor and remembrance of His resting. To fit the comparison, this passage is about God's work on the heavens and the earth, not His bringing it into existence in a formless and void condition. The context of this passage is of a human farmer working the land, not bringing land into existence from nothing or an unseen realm. It starts assuming the land is already here. It's not a passage about the length of time the universe has been here.
The verbs, that is the activity that God is doing in these two verses, are not identical. Genesis 1:1 uses the verb "bara" and it is translated "created" while Exodus 20:11 uses the word "asah", translated made. There is overlap in their meaning, but "bara" is used of things that are fiat miracles by God. "Asah" is more general but it is also used in the creation account, for example on days four and six. Genesis 1:1 is a statement saying that God created the heavens and the earth. The six days are a record of His subsequent work on the earth that He had previously created.
So even if the six days of creation were literal 24-hour days, neither Exodus 20:11 or Genesis chapter one are making a statement about how long the cosmos was in existence prior to "Day One". Other verses may or may not be, but these verses aren't. There is even a strain of theology called "Young Biosphere Creation" which says that God made all living things in six literal 24-hour days but that the universe is old. I don't hold to that theology myself, but there is nothing in the text of Exodus 20 or Genesis chapter one that rules it out either, even if the "days" are interpreted as six twenty-four hour periods.
Now one might say, "but He is still saying that He did all His work on the land in six days." That the days of our week are compared to the days of creation might imply that these are the same kind of days, but it doesn’t require it. We must see if there are other passages which speak to the issue of whether God experiences time the way we do. And of course, other verses of scripture tell us that God sees time differently, and in a way that suggests that his “days” take vast amounts of time.
Psalm 90:4 (NIV) says “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” Second Peter 3:8 says: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” And of course the land also has a "Sabbath" rest, (Lev. 25:4) but it is one year out of seven years, not a day out of seven days. So the principle that the "rest" or Sabbath can be more than a day depending on "who you are" is well-attested to.
In the case of God, I would argue that His rest is an eternal one, and scripture supports this view. In fact, the Christ-centered view of early Genesis interprets the seventh day of Creation as both history and prophecy. Scripture teaches that the morning of the seventh day did not even begin until after Christ was on the cross, and it endures till the end of the age.
So unless you want to take Christ and most of new testament teaching on the Sabbath out of the conversation, and shockingly many people who call themselves "Christians" seem to want to do that in order to defend Young Earth Creationism, the "seventh day" mentioned in Exodus 20 isn't a 24-hour day. Therefore there is no compelling reason to assume the other days of the creation week are either. Indeed, in the Christ-centered model for early Genesis, it isn't the sun producing the "light" from these days, but the Word of God Himself entering the Cosmos produces the light. See "The Light He Called Day." So then the attempt to make the days about 24-hour periods of physical sunlight and dark once again works to take Christ out of the account. Do you see a pattern here? YEC isn't just wrong because the universe isn't really built that way, it is wrong because it consistently prevents people from seeing how even the creation account points to the work of Christ. Christ Himself said that He was what Moses wrote about (John 5:46). But of course, one can't see Him there in a "literal" "face-value" reading.
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