One fact about the Bible which "every schoolboy knows" is that the opening chapters of Genesis tell about the creation of the world. Actually, as not every schoolboy knows, there are two accounts of the Creation, one in Gen., chs. 1: 1 to 2: 4a, and the other in Gen. 2: 4b-25. Before you continue this book, take five minutes to read them over, and another five minutes to think about them.
What is the real religious significance of these stories? When we attempt to answer such a question we discover that the accounts are much more profound than they appear to be on the surface. Here are some starters:
1. The stories are first of all stories about God. They breathe throughout the atmosphere of his majesty and power and holiness. The term "holy" in the Bible suggests the idea of "otherness"; that is, that God is other than, more than, the created order. To use a very long word, God is "transcendent"; that is, he is not to be confined within the world, but is above, beyond, outside, greater than, that which he has created. This understanding of God is implied throughout the Genesis stories, and it is made very explicit in the Isaiah writings, which were written at about the same time. The prophet of the Exile makes his point with incomparable beauty:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance? . . .
Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the isles like fine dust.
Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and
emptiness. . . .
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nought,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
( Isa. 40: 12, 15-17, 21-23)
This is the God of creation -- a God of majesty, power, transcendence, before whom we must stand in awe.
This means that one who thinks Biblically can never practice "nature worship," or believe that nature is God. Such a belief (called "pan-theism," that is, everything is God) is a pagan belief, which is repudiated by the Biblical emphasis that God creates nature, and is above and beyond nature. One of the psalms makes this distinction well.
Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
They will perish, but thou dost endure;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Thou changest them like raiment, and they pass away;
but thou art the same, and thy years have no end.
( Ps. 102: 25-27)
2. A second thing we learn from the Creation stories is that all that is, is dependent upon God. I am not "the master of my fate" or "the captain of my soul." God is. We have not placed ourselves here. God has. "It is he that made us, and we are his" ( Ps. 100: 3). Life is not something we have earned or deserved, but something that has been given to us. It is a gift. We did not ask for it, or earn it. We simply received it. The girl you are in love with, the parents who look after you -- these are the gifts of the creator God. Everything derives its meaning and significance from God. He is not only the creator of the universe, but its sustainer.
Take a brief "time out" over that last word. To believe in creation in the Biblical sense is to believe that at every moment in time, the created order is dependent upon God for its continuation. Without him it would cease to be. It is not enough just to think of God as creating the world "once upon a time," and then sitting back and saying: "There now! I'll let it run itself." The Bible stresses the fact that creation is God's ceaseless activity. "My Father is working still, and I am working" ( John 5: 17) was the way Jesus summed it up.
3. The Creation stories emphasize very explicitly that creation is good, since it is God's handiwork. This theme is stressed particularly in the first Genesis story. On four occasions the identical wording about creation is used: "And God saw that it was good." (Compare Gen. 1: 12, 18, 21, 24.) God also saw that "the light was good" (v. 4) and toward the conclusion we find the summary statement, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (v. 31). (The natural reaction, "Then what about all the evil in the world?" we shall try to deal with in Chapters 11 and 12.)
God's world, then, is good. This means that we are to have a positive attitude toward it. We are not to "reject" the world, or throw up our hands in dismay at the thought of doing anything significant in it. Nobody who takes the goodness of creation seriously can say, "The world is so evil that I must escape it," or, "People are so bad that I hate them all," or, "There's no more point to living." Biblical religion is one of "worldaffirmation" rather than "world-denial" precisely because of its belief in the goodness of creation. (We will see this more clearly in the chapters later on Biblical ethics.)
4. Finally, the Creation stories remind us that since God created the world, there is meaning and purpose behind it. The world in which we live didn't "just happen." It is not simply the product of chance or fate. Rather, the universe is the result of God's purposeful activity. We are not "trapped" in an unfriendly and hostile universe. Rather, God has a plan and a direction for it. It follows that our main task is to try to discover that plan and make our lives fall into line with it, so that we are working with the creator God rather than against him. We are to help, rather than to hinder, the bringing about of those things which God had in mind when he created the world.
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