Our Defining Stories: Creation

It's so much more than counting days.

I could be forgiven for thinking that the book of Genesis was written in response to Darwin. At least, growing up, it always seemed like that’s all anyone cared to talk about when we looked at the story of creation.

Even during my college years (I attended a small Bible college) whenever we looked at the first two chapters of Genesis, it was almost always so we could debate how God created the universe — counting days, arguing timelines, debating the meanings of words.

I’m not going to talk about any of that today.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Over time, I’ve become less interested in the debates about creation that captured my attention when I was younger. I’ve concluded that this is an area where Christians can disagree and still be on Team Jesus. While I think what you believe about how God created the world matters — and especially why you believe what you do about it — I’ve become convinced that the creation story has much more important things to say to us. Our debates about the questions of our day about creation have distracted us from the story God is telling about creation. A story much more concerned with the who than the how and when.

So what is the story God is telling?

Context, Context, Context

My reading of Genesis in my younger years was dominated by the questions of how and when God created because of the context into which I was born. We all live in a post-Darwin post-Scopes Monkey Trial world. We live in a world that has largely embraced materialistic explanations of the universe to the exclusion of God, and so we have framed our reading in light of the challenges we’re facing in our time.

But Genesis was written at least 3000 years before The Origin of Species.

Genesis was written to a completely different world than ours. We have a context, but so does the book of Genesis. And, as my Bible professors loved to remind us:

A text, without context, can be a pretext for whatever you want.

In other words, if we don’t take the time to understand the context of Genesis (or any Biblical book) we can easily twist it to say things it was never saying. Even on accident. So what was the context of Genesis?

Ancient Creation Accounts

It may surprise you, but Genesis wasn’t the only ancient creation account around when it was first written. Contrary accounts for the origins of the universe aren’t a modern invention. Egypt, Babylon, and the various Canaanite tribes each had their own defining stories that attempted to explain how the world came into being.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

It is interesting to note that many of these creation accounts have similar features to the Genesis account. Many of them:

• begin with a watery dark chaotic universe

• feature god(s) who create the world as we know it

• involve the introduction of light, the separation of elements, and the naming of different features.

All of these elements are present in the first verses of Genesis:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. (NIV)

Some may make much of the similarities. But I think the real meat of what God is trying to say through Genesis lies in what is different about the Genesis account.

The Difference

So, what is different about the Genesis account?

The first and biggest difference is the complete absence of violence. Other creation accounts frequently feature conflict between competing gods, child gods killing their parent gods and usurping their authority, rape, incest, dismemberment… It’s pretty gruesome stuff. By contrast, the God of Genesis simply speaks. He declares it, and it comes to be. Peaceful. Ordered. Good.

The second massive difference is the creation and role of humanity. In Genesis humanity— all humanity, men and women —are crafted intentionally in God’s image and called to rule over creation alongside God. This contrasts greatly with the competing accounts. In them, humanity comes as a byproduct of conflict between the gods, or is created to be their slaves, or where only some very special people (e.g. kings) are the image of god, but not everyone.

I’m sure there’s more I could cover. But, for now, these two differences are enough. From them, there are three key things I think we would do well to remember.

Things we miss if we allow the debates of our context to drown out the story God is telling.

Photo by Graham Holtshausen on Unsplash

Peace

The first thing that stands out about the Genesis account in this context is the peacefulness of it.

God doesn’t make the land out of the corpse of his rival. He simply speaks, and it comes to pass. I love how J.R.R. Tolkien (in The Silmarillion¹) and C.S. Lewis (In The Magician’s Nephew) portray God as singing creation into existence. I love that image. It turns the poetic repetition of the Genesis account into a literal song. It reflects the peace and harmony of the Genesis account.

This peacefulness doesn’t only contrast with the violence of the Ancient Near Eastern creation accounts. It also contrasts with the violence inherent in purely materialistic ones.

According to Genesis, nature was spoken into being by a creative God. It is not, fundamentally, “red in tooth and claw” to borrow a phrase from Tennyson.² The story woven in scripture is not, “survival of the fittest,” not “eat or be eaten.” It’s a story of peaceful intentional creation, not violent chaos and chance.

Don’t check out on me as being “anti-science” when I saw that. There are Christians I respect who subscribe to a view of Theistic Evolution. As I said at the top, I think this is an area where Christians can disagree (and should disagree charitably). However, I am saying that purely materialistic explanations for the existence of life are fundamentally violent in a way that conflicts with the account of Genesis.

This context of peace leads us to the next major takeaway I see in the Genesis account…

Goodness

Contrasting the Genesis account with its ancient competitors also helps highlight the goodness of God. There’s no drunkenness or debauchery. No violence (as we’ve already discussed). God doesn’t create out of laziness or by accident. In fact, the Genesis account doesn’t give us any clear motive for why God created.

This lack of expressed motive has led to attempts to answer that question, “Why did God create at all?”

The answer I’ve found most convincing³ is that God created out of an overflow of love. The Trinitarian God existed before time as a perfect and unbroken communion of love. And, just as the creation of a new life is the natural overflow of love between a husband and a wife,⁴ the creation of everything is the natural overflow of God’s love within himself.

Loving, good, generous, abundant. That’s the kind of God we see in this account of creation. He is not needy. He doesn’t use brute force.

In contrast to competing narratives, Genesis reveals our Creator as a good and loving God. And nowhere is this more visible than in the creation of humanity…

Dignity

I love the account of the creation of humanity in Genesis 1. We have this poetic pattern happening :

• God says “Let there be…”

• The thing comes into being.

• God names the thing and/or calls it good.

• The day is numbered

• Repeat

But then, in the middle of Day Six, the pattern gets interrupted, like the turn near the end of a sonnet or the change in rhyme at the end of a limerick. Suddenly, God interrupts the flow to have a little aside:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (NIV)

Then, we get this delightful little poem-within-a-poem:

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (NIV)

This is incredible.

There is so much that can be said about being made in the image of God. So much you could fill a book! (And— what luck —someone already has. Quite excellently, I might add.) But what I want to stress here is this: God created all humanity in his image. Which means God has bestowed everyone with incredible worth and dignity.

Men are made in the image of God. Women are made in the image of God. Children are made in the image of God. Wealthy people. Poor People. White, black, and brown people. Disabled people. People with extra chromosomes. Immigrants. Refugees. Asylum seekers. Israelis. Palestinians. Russians. Ukrainians. Americans. White collar. Blue collar. No collar. Married. Single. Divorced. Old. Young. Strong. Weak.

All are made in the image of God. And all means all. “You have never talked to a mere mortal.”⁵

You don’t have to be famous, or wealthy, or successful to be a person of worth and dignity. You simply are, by virtue of existing, because you are the image of God.

Peace. Goodness. Dignity.

This is the kind of story God is telling. And he’s been telling it since the very beginning.

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1. I think, anyway. I haven’t yet read this book, but I’ve heard others talk about this feature of it. In the words of Shrek, “It’s on my to-do list.”

2. In Memorium A.H.H.

3. I wish I had a source I could point you to, but I can’t remember where I first heard it.

4. I understand that this can be a fraught and painful metaphor for those who long for children but, for whatever reason, have not been able to conceive. Please know my intent is not to bypass, minimize, or deny your heartache.

5. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory