This passage has been at the heart of a great deal of controversy. Churchmen in the time of Galileo pointed to the verse where God creates the earth first as evidence that the Earth was the center of the universe. They pointed to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars and said this was clear proof that all these heavenly bodies went around the earth. When Galileo pointed out that his observations demonstrated that the earth must circle the sun, they called him a heretic and forced him to recant his ideas.
When Charles Darwin came up with his famous theory of natural selection (the basis for modern evolutionary biology) many Christians protested. There was no such thing as evolotion, they said. Genesis 1 made it clear that God created all of the animals in one day's time, and in their present forms.
Around the same time, an Irish bishop named James Ussher sat down with the genealogies of the Bible and used them to calculate that the world was less than 6000years old. Bishop Ussher was very precise in his calculations and said that the world had been created on Sunday, Oct. 23, 4004 BC.
Most Christians have long since realized that the earth goes around the sun and that the earth and the universe are billions of years old. The idea that evolution is false is holding on, thanks to the efforts of Scientific Creationists and the Intelligent Design movement, but this too will probably go the way of the dodo before the end of the century.
The problem with these ideas is that they are trying to make the Genesis 1 story mean something that it was never intended to mean. Genesis is not meant to be a text on physical science, geology, or biology. It is not trying to push any scientific theories at all. It is a beautiful and poetic story of God creating the world, but it is about the who of creation, not the how.
The message of Genesis 1 is right there in the first 5 words.
"In the beginning, God created . . ."
This stands in contrast to the creation stories of so many other people who lived in the Middle-East with the Israelites. In their stories, creation was an accident, the collatoral damage of a battle between the gods and the chaos monsters who lived before the earth was formed.
A good example of these other creation myths is the Enûma Eliš from the Babylonian Empire. In this story there is a terrible sea-monster named Tiamat who terrorizes the gods. A young god named Marduk fights Tiamat and kills her, then he rips her body in two and uses half to make the heavens and half to make the earth.
There are a number of other gods who had followed Tiamat in the story. Once she is killed, these gods become Marduk's slaves. Eventually, Marduk decides to have pity on the gods and sets all of them free except for Tiamat's husband Kingu. Marduk kills Kingu and uses his blood to create a new race of slaves to serve the gods. These slaves are the first human beings.
The biblical story is different in many ways, and each of them teaches something about the character of God.
- There is no power struggle in Genesis. Where Marduk or similar deities are seen as very human in their plotting and fighting, God is shown in above such things.
- There is no war in the Genesis story, in fact there is no other being who could fight God. The creation happens without any violence.
- In the Enûma Eliš, creation is an accidental byproduct of a power struggle. In Genesis, God deliberately creates the world, and pronounces it good at each step.
- In the Enûma Eliš, humans are created through murder and are destined to be slaves. In Genesis, God creates human beings "in the image and likeness of God."
Genesis is a huge leap forward in understanding what God is like. It shows a wonderful alternative to the chaotic world of violence and enslavement to uncaring gods.
In Genesis, God is both more powerful and much more loving than the Babylonian gods. God creates, apparantly for the pure joy of creating and the world is bright and good. The world is created with loving care, especially human beings, who are seen as God's beloved children.
Another detail of this story of Creation that always strikes me comes in verse 26-27.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Creation in this passage is totally non-sexist! Male and female are both made in the image and likeness of God.
There is a series of questions I often hear from young students when I point this out. It goes something like this. . .
Student: Wait a minute. Isn't God a man?
Me: Nope, God is God.
Student: But when you see a picture of God it's always a man.
Me: Yeah, but that's not what God really looks like. That's just the artist's idea.
Student: In the movies they always have a guy playing God.
Me: You need to see "Dogma" . . . um, when you're older.
Student: Jesus was a man.
Me: That's true, but there's more to God than Jesus.
Student: So, are you saying that God is like . . . half man and half woman?
Me: Nope. That's still a human picture. God is to big for us to get a really accurate idea of. When we make a picture of God, that's just our imagination coming up with something we can handle. The picture isn't really God.
Student: But you said that men and women both looked like God.
Me: Right! When you see another human being you're looking at someone who resembles God. It doesn't matter whether that person is young or old, man or woman, fat or thin, what color their skin is, or anything like that. We are all made in God's image.
Student: Okay . . . but is God a man or a woman?
Me: . . .
I'm not sure how well I explain it. I'm not even sure how well I understand it. As I said, God is so big that questions like this are impossible answer. But we have it right there in scripture that male and female seem as equal as equal can be.
The last thing I'd like to mention about this passage is the seventh day. When you ask a Christian how many days Creation took in the Genesis story, they're likely to say, "It took six days, and then God rested for a day." When you ask a Jew the same question you're likely to get (IMO) a wiser answer: "Creation took seven days. The day of rest was part of the Creation."
We (by which I mostly mean modern American Christians) don't really appreciate the significence of a day of rest. For us the need for rest can feel like weakness. We have that great Puritan work ethic that tells us to push on until the job is done. Many studies, and personal experience, have taught me that this is nonsense. When I don't take time to rest and relax, I hurt myself. When I push through working an insane number of hours, I become less productive, not more.
Rest isn't a nice break from the things we do in life; it's an essential part of them. That's something we'll see again later when the 10 Commandments refer back to the story of Creation and the Day of rest.
So, what has this story taught us?
Well, it's let us know that God is the Creator, which implies that creativity is one of God's important traits. It's taught us that all of creation is good for it has been crafted in loving detail. It's taught us we are good also; that we have been created in God's image with (implicitly) the trait of creativity and the capacity to love. It's taught us that all humans are made in God's image and that sexism and other prejudice is a denial of this truth. Finally, it's taught us that rest is an important part of our lives.
It hasn't taught us anything about the scientific facts of how God created anything, but what it has taught us is so much more important if we want to find meaning in our lives and to build loving relationships with God and each other. And that's a good thing.
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