When Two Stories Carve One Grand Canyon: How Powell, Darwin, the Big Bang, and a Century of Upheaval Offered a New Origin Story

I just came back from a sightseeing visit at the Grand Canyon with my hiking buddies who brought up how amazing it was that the Colorado River formed the Grand Canyon, and then I countered it was a direct result of the flood in Noah’s time. Before going any further, let me say this clearly: this article is not an attempt to re‑litigate the geological debate or the biblical debate. Smarter people than me have written entire libraries on both sides, and we don’t need to rehash them here.

What interests me is something different — the moment in history when Powell, Darwin, the Enlightenment, the Great Awakening, and eventually the Big Bang theory all collided, and how Scripture describes a spiritual adversary who loves to offer alternative stories about the world God made.

Because the Canyon isn’t just rock and sediment. It’s a symbol of the stories we trust.

A Century of Upheaval: When Old Foundations Began to Crack

The mid‑1800s were a cultural earthquake. Three massive movements overlapped:

  • Darwin’s theory of evolution was becoming mainstream
  • The Enlightenment had already reshaped Western confidence in human reason
  • The Great Awakening had stirred spiritual renewal and biblical conviction

These weren’t isolated trends. They were converging currents — intellectual, spiritual, cultural — all reshaping how people understood the world.

And Powell stood right in the middle of that convergence.

Powell: A Man Formed by a Shifting World

John Wesley Powell grew up in a devout Methodist home. His father believed Scripture spoke truthfully about creation, judgment, and the shaping of the earth. But Powell came of age in a world increasingly convinced that nature was a closed system and that human reason was the final authority.

By the time he launched his 1869 expedition down the Colorado River, Powell’s theological anchors had loosened. His Canyon theory reflected the intellectual air he breathed:

  • slow erosion
  • deep time
  • uniformitarianism
  • no global flood
  • no divine intervention

He didn’t invent these ideas. He inherited them from the Enlightenment and absorbed them from Darwin’s rising influence.

Darwin: A New Story of Origins

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) didn’t just propose a biological mechanism. It offered a new narrative — one that explained life without reference to God’s creative word.

For many, Darwin’s theory became the interpretive key for everything:

  • biology
  • geology
  • human identity
  • morality
  • the age of the earth

If species could evolve slowly, then canyons could form slowly. Catastrophe was unnecessary. Divine action was unnecessary. Revelation was unnecessary.

A new story was taking root.

The Big Bang Joins the Story: A New Cosmic Origin for a New Age

As if Darwin’s biological narrative and Powell’s geological reinterpretation weren’t enough, the early 20th century introduced yet another sweeping explanation of beginnings: the Big Bang theory.

The Big Bang theory was first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Catholic priest, who suggested that the universe began from a single, dense “primeval atom” that expanded outward. His idea gained traction as astronomers like Edwin Hubble observed galaxies moving away from each other, confirming that the universe was expanding.

By 1931, Lemaître had refined the theory into a full cosmic origin story — a universe exploding into existence, governed by natural laws, unfolding over billions of years.

Even though Lemaître himself believed in God, the cultural adoption of the Big Bang quickly became another way to tell the story of beginnings without the God who speaks light into existence. It offered a beginning, but not a Creator. A cosmic moment, but not a divine Word.

And once again, Christians recognized a familiar pattern: a new origin story that sounded scientific, modern, and self‑sufficient — one that subtly whispered, “We can understand the world without God.”

The Enlightenment: Reason as the New Revelation

Long before Darwin or Lemaître, the Enlightenment had already planted the seeds:

  • trust human reason above divine revelation
  • treat nature as a closed system
  • assume miracles are improbable
  • reinterpret Scripture through human autonomy

By Powell’s day, these assumptions were the intellectual default. They shaped universities, scientific societies, and public discourse.

Powell didn’t need to reject Scripture outright — the culture had already done that for him.

The Great Awakening: A Counter‑Movement of the Spirit

At the same time, the Great Awakening had swept through America, calling people back to repentance, humility, and the authority of Scripture. It was a spiritual revival pushing against the tide of rationalism.

So the 19th and early 20th centuries weren’t just scientific revolutions. They were spiritual battlegrounds.

Two forces were at work:

  • a movement pulling people toward God
  • a movement pulling people away from Him

And Scripture gives language for that tension.

The Spiritual Dimension: The Great Deceiver at Work

The Bible describes Satan not primarily as a destroyer, but as a deceiver — one who blinds minds, distorts truth, and offers counterfeit explanations for the world God made.

Jesus called him “a liar and the father of lies.”

Paul said he “disguises himself as an angel of light.”

So when the modern world produced a sweeping shift away from a biblical understanding of origins, many Christians recognized a familiar pattern:

  • a new story that removes God from creation
  • a new timeline that stretches beyond biblical history
  • a new explanation for life that doesn’t require a Creator
  • a new geological and cosmic narrative that doesn’t require a flood or a divine word

Not an obvious lie.

A sophisticated lie.

A believable lie.

A lie wrapped in scientific language and Enlightenment confidence.

A lie big enough to reshape how millions would understand the world.

Scripture’s Counter‑Story: Mountains, Valleys, and a World Reshaped

Genesis 8 describes the floodwaters receding, the “tops of the mountains” appearing, and the earth undergoing massive reshaping. The Psalms speak of God raising mountains and sinking valleys at His command — a world formed and re‑formed by divine action, not merely natural processes.

These passages don’t function as geology textbooks. They function as theological declarations:

  • God acts in history
  • God shapes the earth
  • God judges and renews
  • God is not absent from the physical world

In other words, Scripture insists that the world is not a closed system. It is a creation — and creation has a Creator.

The Grand Canyon as a Symbol of the Contest

So when my hiking buddies and I stood at the rim of the Canyon debating its origins, we weren’t just discussing geology. We were brushing up against a centuries‑long struggle over truth itself.

The Canyon is more than rock and sediment.

It’s a monument to the stories we believe.

  • Powell saw slow erosion
  • Darwin saw natural processes unfolding over ages
  • Big Bang cosmologists saw a universe expanding from a primeval atom
  • Enlightenment thinkers saw a world that didn’t need God
  • The Great Awakening saw a world desperate for Him
  • Scripture sees a spiritual enemy working to blind minds

And Christians today see all of these forces converging in one breathtaking landscape.

From the Canyon Rim to the Global Stage

The same spiritual forces that shaped the intellectual climate of Powell’s century are still at work in ours. Scripture warns that the enemy does not merely oppose truth — he counterfeits it. He presents himself as an angel of light, offering explanations that sound enlightened, progressive, humane, or rational, yet subtly detach people from the God who made them.

You see this everywhere in the geopolitical arena.

Two people can watch the same footage, hear the same testimony, witness the same event — and walk away with conclusions that are not just different, but opposite. In earlier reflections I’ve written, we explored how this isn’t simply a matter of intelligence or ideology. It’s a matter of formation. It’s a matter of which voice has shaped our imagination.

Pastorally, that should make us slow to judge and quick to pray. It should make us gentle with those who see the world differently, remembering that perception is often shaped by forces deeper than we realize. And it should make us attentive to the Spirit, who leads us into truth not by force, but by invitation.

The Canyon, in all its grandeur, becomes a quiet teacher. It reminds us that God’s world is vast, His ways are higher, and His truth is not fragile. It invites us to step back from the noise, breathe deeply, and ask the Lord to steady our hearts in a time when so many competing stories swirl around us.

And as we stand on the rim — whether of a canyon, a cultural moment, or a difficult conversation — we can ask the Lord for the grace to see clearly, love deeply, and walk humbly.

Because in the end, the question that matters most is the one the Canyon whispers to every soul who pauses long enough to hear it:

Which story am I trusting — the one that reveals God, or the one that replaces Him