Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Creation
Commentary
for the April 2, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
"And
God said...and, behold, it was very good..." Genesis 1:3-31, NIV
"In the beginning, God..." the Bible tells us, but what does
that mean. Of course, there is the assertion that there is no beginning without
God. In a sense, he defines all beginnings since by virtue of his eternal
existence, he precedes them all. Logically, it is a fallacy to assume that
correlation proves causation, but we have the statements in Genesis, chapters 1
and 2 that tell us that causation is indeed happening. While Arminian free will
means we are left to accept or reject this account of the world's genesis and
dole ourselves out to whatever consequences might ensue from our decision, there
are deeper, more profound understandings to be drawn from this account whether
accepted literally or metaphorically. Despite it being a story of origins, it
may be among the greatest of literary constructions.
We are tempted to look at the ancient past in simplistic
terms. We assume because the ancients did not have aircraft, automobiles, computers,
and smart phones, they were little more than Neanderthals slouching around with
their knuckles dragging the ground and grunting in puzzlement at the simplest
challenges. But if they were to see us today, they might wonder why we are so
physically and mentally uncapable. We spend our lives with machines that do
most everything for us. Even in my lifetime, we have gone from having to travel
to the local library by foot, bicycle, or car to simply turning on a computer
to ferret out answers from the world's accumulated knowledge. But we are unable
still to create the quality of concrete the Romans used to build their aqueducts
two thousand years ago. And archeologists have unearthed golden artifacts from two-thousand-five-hundred-year-old
civilizations like the Scythians, exhibiting incredible detail and durability
rarely found today.[i]
Therefore, it is sadly not surprising that we struggle to plumb the deeper
layers of ancient literary masterpieces like the Genesis creation narrative.
This commentary is an inadequate vessel to carry us to every port on that
journey, but we shall nonetheless make a decent attempt to visit those
destinations that are among the more significant and rewarding.
Before we begin, we need to acknowledge that some topics
commonly relevant to the skeptical will not be dealt with this week. Topics like
theodicy will come up soon enough this quarter, but they are best left to later
in Genesis. We will get to that thorny issue soon enough. Nonetheless, this foundation
is a necessary predecessor to all of that. As the Bible says, it is the
beginning, and what better place is there to start a journey? As I have already
pointed out, in that beginning, we find God. But what is God? In a sense, that
is what the Bible is all about, a chaotic and contradictory mess of attempts to
define him. (Even the word "him" carries certain assumptions about sexuality
and God that are problematic, for the Bible says God created man in his image,
but we seem to have returned the favor when it comes to gender superiority,
recreating him in our image.) Fortunately, the disciple Jesus loved,[ii] John, seems to have figured
it out, and it can be found near the other end of the Bible. "God is love."[iii] This is the most profound
revelatory truth about Creation. It began in love. That golden thread runs
through every day of the story, spoken into every minute of each day. We may
even go as far as asserting life derives from love. Logically, then it would follow
that death derives from the opposite of love. But that is a story for another commentary
soon to come. For now, it is sufficient to note that every act of Creation was
infused with love. The sun, moon, and stars, the verdant land, and the sea,
were all created with love. Like a man and a woman, all were created to
compliment and complete one another. Only recently have we discovered this
truth again. All life is intricately interrelated through biological webs, and
invariably what causes suffering at any point in those interrelationships
brings challenges to the rest. This was known to the ancients. Even Paul wrote
about Creation's struggle in his letter to the Romans,[iv] two thousand years ago.
What is not superficially apparent from the Creation story
is how closely, physically, all of Creation, including humanity, is tied together.
But the clues are there for the discerning. If we look at the days of Creation,
we discover that what is created on the fourth day could not exist without what
was created on the first day, likewise for the second and the fifth, as well as
the third and the sixth. Without light, the astronomical sources of light could
not function. The sun and stars would not shine or twinkle, and the surface of
the moon would reflect nothing. Without the separation of the water from the
sky, there would be nowhere for the water creatures to live or for the birds to
soar. Without the land and its vegetation, the many land creatures from ants to
elephants, and from rabbits to gazelles, would find it difficult to thrive.
Even man, the crowning creation of the sixth day, would despair to find a
stable home. There could have been no Garden of Eden.
Some may think that the
whole point of the Creation story is that God could make something out of
nothing in only six days. For them, the literal six days is a cross to die
upon. But God could have created it all in a microsecond. The fact that he did
not means there is a point to be made about the physical structure of the story.
Some have felt it was to create the seventh-day Sabbath mentioned in the
opening verses of chapter two. While the Sabbath was a wonderful gift of grace,
given before humanity had any opportunity to earn it, and it has a beauty
significant to the entire biblical narrative, I do not think that was the point
of the six-day creation. That would be like saying that the wedding gifts were
the point of a wedding. The Sabbath may be the crowning act of God's love, but
it is not part of Creation. The Bible tells us that Creation was finished
before God rested and blessed the seventh day. We are never told within the story
that God created the Sabbath. Rather than a part of Creation, it was intended
as a celebratory gift to humanity. Therefore, Jesus later said that the Sabbath
was made for man, not the other way around.[v] It is a gift, like the grace
of God, perpetually given, but sadly often left unopened by the recipient.
So, what is the deeper story hidden within Creation? It
can be found in that interrelationship between the odd and even numbered days.
The story is poetry, a poem of ascents, moving from what was more basic to ever
greater complexity, with humankind and his self-awareness coming into the story
at the end. Two strands rising together joined horizontally with rungs of
necessity holding the rising laterals bound to each other. Remarkably, a
similar structure is common to every form of life on earth. While the rungs of
the genetic code may differ slightly from one species to the next, we are all,
from the tiniest mosquito to the giant white whale, carrying the DNA blueprint
of Creation within our being. This has profound meaning for the interdependency
of every living creature no matter how diverse they may seem on the surface. Everything
we do, good or bad, on this planet reverberates throughout Creation and back to
us. Nature teaches us this and that the effect may even be multiplied many
times over. For instance, when we plant a withered kernel of corn in the sun-warmed
ground and water and tend it, we eventually get back more kernels than we can
hold in both our hands.
We may not realize it, but God was relying on this very
principle when he created the world. We are told he created us in his image. Some
may think that means an old guy with a beard and robe with an attitude. But if
God is love as John says, then we must be made with the capability to be that
as well, to the rest of Creation and to one another. God should be able to
expect that love to come back to him as well as to other human beings. However,
even a child can see that something happened. Most people are not loving toward
one another, and Creation is not receiving much love either. We might try to
blame God for what happened. Many do. But according to the Creation account,
God left us in charge.[vi] Blaming God then would be like
a babysitter blaming the parents that the child did not get to bed on time when
the parents entrusted the sitter with that responsibility. We were left in charge,
and we failed in our responsibility. How that happened will be the subject of
next week's commentary. Stay tuned.