Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Source of Life
Commentary
for the November 30, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in
the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made
that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all
mankind." John
1:1-4, NIV
In the town I grew up in we
lived on a ridge above a steep sided valley that cut through the western part
of the town. As is often the case with valleys, a small stream ran down the
course of the valley bottom. Geologists would say that the stream produced that
valley through erosion over an exceedingly long time, but as children we had no
awareness of such things. We only knew that the creek that flowed there was as irresistible
to us as a flame to a moth. We spent many childhood hours down there eating
berries that grew beside the stream, catching frogs, and floating stick boats
in the gentle current that flowed to Sinclair Inlet. On one occasion we
wondered where the stream began, and we hiked upstream in search of the source.
Unfortunately, we ran into an impenetrable wall of thorns of a variety known locally
as Devil's Club. A few pricks from one-inch thorns on canes as thick as our
thumbs led us to decide to leave the mystery of the creek's source a mystery
still.
Intrepid explorers, not deterred
as we were, have long sought the sources of major rivers. In the early 19th
century Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, after difficult traveling upstream,
discovered the headwaters sourcing the Missouri River. French explorers
Marquette and Joliet had discovered the river long before but had never gone
past the river's mouth, they recorded that the local tribe referred to the river
as Muddy Water due to the tremendous amount of sediment the river carries. The nickname
Big Muddy has clung to the Missouri to the present day in story and song.
Later, about the time the United
States was devolving into civil war over the issue of slavery, John Hanning
Speke, of England, began travels in Africa that brought him to Lake Victoria.
He claimed it to be the headwaters of the Nile River but failed to verify it. On
a second journey, he traveled the western shore of the lake until he found the
outlet that fed the Nile, establishing the truth of his claim. A few years after World War II, two other Englishmen,
Sebastian Snow and John Brown, discovered the source of the Amazon River to be
a small glacial lake. The often-impenetrable Amazon jungle could be to blame
for how long it took explorers to finally reach that source.
Rivers are often seen as sources
of life. Those who live along them rely on the rivers as a food source, a
source for water for cooking, cleaning, and drinking, and a means of transportation.
Traveling downstream was an obvious first step. Going back upstream was more
challenging. For short distances a tow rope could be used from shore to pull
the boats, but for longer distances, the only real solutions were exhausting
paddling or poling against the current. This was such challenging work that
most who traveled the Mississippi to New Orleans in flatboats, would sell the
boats to be broken up for their wood and hike back overland rather than try to
go upstream to places like the Ohio River basin. But without the great watery
highways the rivers provided, life would have had a much harder time taking
root in the wilderness of North America or the jungles of South America.
Humanity has not only sought the
source of these rivers that sustain life. We have sought the source of life
itself. The Bible states that God is the source of life, but because Archbishop
Ussher's timeline and the idea of creation taking only six literal days approximately
six thousand years ago is so readily disproven by the various sciences that
deal with geology, biology, archaeology and others, people have been "throwing
the baby out with the bath water" and claiming that there is no God, no ultimate,
intelligent creator of life. On every side of this issue, they fail to see that
Creation in Genesis is not a scientific text or a history. It is a metaphor for
life itself. When we look at the light created on the first day, it makes
possible the sun, moon, and stars of the fourth day. Likewise, the sky and
water created on the second day made possible the birds and the sea life
created on the fifth day. Last, the dry ground created on the third day made
possible the creation of the animals and humanity as well as the life
sustaining plants on the sixth day. It is like each element built on the ones
before spiraling upward together and entwined like a strand of DNA with its four
interlocking nucleic acids that are the basis of all life on our planet. We can
celebrate the Creator behind all of that. For those who choose not to because
they have never seen God or were present for his creation of our world, they
are right. It is a matter of choice.
One can believe in God as the
source of all life, or they can instead believe that life somehow appeared
through processes that cannot be replicated. Despite that, awed by modern
technology, there are those who are more willing to trust such unproven
concepts than are willing to believe in an intelligent creator. Perhaps it is because
believing in the spontaneous generation of life requires no commitment to something
greater. After all, if everything is generated by random processes, why should
we find purpose in our lives? Are our lives like Shakespeare quipped? "Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the
stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing." Were this the case, I would have a tough time
getting out of bed each day to continue such a useless drama.
But this is why the metaphor of Creation
in Genesis is so important, not as a counter to actual science, but as a statement
that life itself from beginning to end is charged with purpose endowed by an
intelligent creator. Our lives are to be lit by that purpose
and in turn, we are to light up the lives of others by bringing them back to
that sense of purpose. That purpose is not to dance around regurgitating
Archbishop Ussher's nonsense about the age of the earth. Despite its wars,
treachery, and adultery, and the abuse evil people have inflicted on others
using the Bible as an excuse, it makes clear what our purpose is and how the
light of that purpose is to shine. We are told repeatedly
in its pages we are to love God and love our fellow human beings, even those
who are not so nice. In Genesis, we are created in God's image. What is that
image? "God is love." (1 John 4:8) We were created to love. That is our
purpose. Unfortunately, after we chose to end our loving relationship with the source
of love, we decided to repay God's favor by recreating him in our image, warts
of evil and all. While God's true image would lead us to believe that a religious
zealot should be someone with a tremendous capacity to love, we have created zealots
with a tremendous capacity to hate and kill, invoking such wrath in God's name.
Those who do so do not even flinch with a twinge of conscience at the blasphemy
inherent in such acts.
It is this distancing of
ourselves from our intended purpose and our broken relationship with God that causes
the first angel of Revelation, chapter 14 to call us back to recognize God as
Creator, to reestablish our connection to the source of light and love for humanity
and our world. That angel is not calling us to die on our sword over young
earth creationism. He is not calling us to become martyrs in support of a creation
of six literal, twenty-four-hour days. Such foolishness trivializes the great
themes of love found like so many golden threads throughout the Bible and woven
into a pure garment of grace in the life and words of Jesus. Creation tells us
to multiply and fill the earth which we have done, but we forgot the reason for
doing so. We were to fill the earth with light and love and instead have filled
it with misery and despair. Jesus invites us to stop dwelling in hopeless
darkness and come to the light of love in his presence. In doing so, we will
find that darkness cannot overcome light. The opposite is true. Even the
smallest light has the power to extinguish darkness. It is time we claimed our
rightful place, a place of love and purpose, a place we were created to occupy,
not through conquest, dominance, or compulsion, but through love, the most powerful
purpose of all.