God's Wise Design

     Welcome! I haven't used this blog since the pandemic hit in March, 2020, but since my congregation is starting a two-year Bible reading program today, the time is right to get going again. (A bit of a bucket list item: I've started and stopped blogging my way through the Bible several times now; I'd really love to blog through the whole of it1!) I hope two things: 1) that I can keep up with the project, and 2) that it will be a blessing to those who read it!

Genesis 1-2

    Genesis 1-2 are foundational to the rest of the Scripture. They are the story of a God who, out of no compulsion or necessity, called a world into being for humans, who are the special objects of His love.

    There are literally dozens of books written on these two chapters alone. Add the extensive commentaries on these chapters and you have thousands and thousands of pages. Those books look at Genesis 1-2 from every conceivable angle: literature, mythology, ideology, science. And, I daresay, modern readers want answers that perhaps Genesis 1-2 were never intended to deliver. For example, in the whole debate about the origins of the universe, modern readers want a scientific explanation. (For full disclosure, the Bible certainly thinks the world was created by God speaking it into existence in 6 literal days. Consider Exodus 20:8-11 and Psalm 33:6, 9. I like to point out that there is a problem with the 6-day creation, but it's not what most people think. No, the problem is this: if God is all-powerful and can speak things into existence with just a word, why didn't he do it all at once?) Anyhow, the point is, we can ask these chapters a lot of questions, but maybe we should let them set their own agenda.

    I think that the point of Genesis 1-2 is twofold. First, the God that Israel confesses (and by extension the God that the Church confesses) is a God of order. The calm, wise way in which God calls  for the cosmos, the earth, and life on the earth stands in stark contrast to the prevailing mythologies and ideologies. In ancient Mesopotamia, the world was formed by the gods in conflict and violence; in modern conceptions the world and life within it begins in chaos and chance. But there is none of that in Genesis 1. No, Genesis is orderly to the point of repetitious: God said, it was, it was good, there was evening and morning. The world functions the way God intended it to function; it is designed to burst with life. (We can talk about what went wrong with God's good design tomorrow.)

    Second, Genesis 1-2 want us to consider the unique role that humans play in God's creation. They are created in God's image, a statement which, again, could lead us in a number of different directions: they share God's moral nature; they think and have the gift of language as He does; etc. But I think the most important sense of the image of God that Genesis 1-2 want to convey are that they are God's stewards for the creation. They are meant to extend His wise and peaceful rule throughout the creation; they are meant to tend His creation, as to whom He entrusted it; they are the special object of His attention and love.