Bible Say Wha?! Genesis Chapter One

The aim of this series of blogs is simple. To figure out what the Bible is plainly saying. It is not meant to be definitive nor complete, but just plain. The bible is complex, that much is certain, and so is our reading and understanding of it. Often times I think our aim is either too high, or too low, and both sides end up missing what is right in front of us. So I hope to hit somewhere in the middle and offend everyone at the same time by asking “What’s the big deal?” If only one thing is to be pulled from this text, what is it?

BIBLE SAY WHA?! Genesis Chapter One

What does it say?

Like any good story, the bible introduces us to its main character early on, that character being “God”. We are also simultaneously given a frame of reference, “the beginning.” Now whether this beginning points to a specific time and date is unclear, there is a lot of debate around this, and while I think it’s important to talk about those things, it obviously is NOT the MAIN thing this text wants us to know. So the WHEN? of the beginning, nor the WHAT? of the creation, seems to be the main thin in this text. So then, it would seem that the WHO? is the main thing, and if you were to ask me to place theses things in order of importance, I would say that the least important part is the WHEN, followed by the WHAT, and finally, most importantly the  WHO.

This text then is about God, who at some time in the past, created everything.

So how did I come to that conclusion?

I’m glad you asked! Lets say you had no knowledge of the bible, or any thing that anyone had told you about the bible, you just happened to find this book, opened it up, and read from the beginning. You then think to yourself “What’s the big deal?” I would argue that whatever is given the most detail is what the passage wants us to know the most. This passage does talk about the beginning, it does talk about creation, but it talks mostly about God, which would then make Him the most important object in the text.

In this passage we do learn some interesting things about creation, specifically the “WHAT” it was that was actually created.  We read about the heavens and the earth, the light and therefore the night and day, the waters and the land, vegetation and seeds, stars in the sky, fishes, then livestock, then man. However, while this is specific, its not very specific, it seems very broad in its scope and leads to other very good questions.

Were all the different types of fish created, or just enough fish with enough genetic diversity to then eventually produce the variety of fish we now have? Same goes for the beast, and the vegetation. Was the earth in the shape and form that it is now? Were the mountains the same then as the are now, were the plains and valleys and regions generally the same?

Most likely not. Therefor there is no reason that a Christian can not trust the majority of scientific discovery that gives us a potential glimpses into creation’s early history. In fact the science vs faith dichotomy is a false one, but I digress. There is no need for someone who believes the bible to shun science, the only time we should be suspect is when someone tries to uses scientific discovery to rid of us of the main thing in this text, God. When it comes to the time frame of this creation account we don’t have many specifics, so it doesn’t matter if science says the earth is 6000 or 60 trillion years old, or that all of creation happened over long periods of time, or in an instant, the bible is fairly quite on the matter. What does matter is if someone would then suggest that this “science” is  evidence that there is no God at all, because again, the WHO is more important to the WHEN or the WHAT, and the bible is most certainly NOT quite about the WHO. So we can accept what science reveal and still believe in the bible….shocking, I know.

We should also note that the opening of Genesis is written as a poem, so we should consider that there may be some artistic license to the creation story, and therefore a strictly literal interpretation is NOT necessary to believe in this text or affirm that it is true, although this does NOT mean that the poem is not literal or at least partly literal either. Either way, it still does not shed as much light on the WHEN or WHAT aspects of creation, over the WHO of creation. Keep in mind that it does seem to zoom in a bit more in chapter two,  giving us more specifics, but still, the WHO of the creation story is still at center stage.

Ultimately then, the WHO should be our main focus.

To emphasis this, I was photographing a wedding at a small church about six years ago. On a small table in the lobby was a pamphlet about the different alternating theories of the creation account. Now we aren’t going to dive into this too much because our aim is the MAIN thing, and as I’ve already stated that I think the main thing is the WHO, not the WHEN of creation, but in this pamphlet it presented some of the different schools of thought including the “gap theory”, “day age view”, “theistic evolution”, “poetic framework” view, and the “literal” view. I’ll give some credit to the makers of this pamphlet, they did a very good job explaining the different views correctly, but then towards the bottom of the page, the bias began to show. The pamphlet boldly declared that any interpretation of the days of creation other than the literal interpretation was a compromise to God’s word and we cannot allow these compromises in the church!

To which I thought “Really?”

If I handed you Genesis chapter one and simply told you that this is a poem about how everything began, could you possibly find enough information from this chapter, and even the next chapter, to steadfastly determine that this is the only right way to understand this text? Me neither!

In fact the only detailed specific thing in this text is again, the “WHO”. When we read about the “WHEN”, all we know for sure about it, is “WHO” was there. When we read about the specifics of the “WHAT”, we get a little more detail, but the primary detail we read is that it was God “WHO” created it. There is much more detail about God than anything else in this text. We read that he has a Spirit. We read that he has a voice and that he speaks. We read that he has an image and a likeness. We read that image reflects some mysterious “our” suggesting that this God has some sort of diversity in himself. Granted it’s not a very clear picture of WHO this God is, especially the “our image” and “our likeness” bit, but it’s much more detail than we get about anything else, and as such, it is probably where most of our attention should be, not just in this first chapter, but in the whole story.

Lastly we do see a second “WHO” show up at the very end of this text. We see ourselves, or man. The main WHO, God, brings a LITTLE WHO, man, into his creation. We see that the MAIN WHO, gives us LITTLE WHOS dominion over all that he has made, and that the LITTLE WHOS are also a part of the WHAT of creation, the only thing not created in this text is the one WHO does the creating. Man and creation are linked, one is not above the other, they are made to live in peace together. God sets us up in an order or a relationship with Himself and with His creation. “You take care of the creation, and it will take care of you, and I will take care of both of you.”

Which is very beautiful, but it is not the whole the story. We know that this is the setting that tension will eventually be introduced into. This is the setting of peace we were in, and the Bible, as a whole, is a story of how that peace was destroyed, and how that peace was restored. The destruction of that peace can easily be summarized as the LITTLE WHOS think they know better that the BIG WHO. It is not us versus evil, its us versus God, from that single inversion all tension, unease, evil and suffering would flow.

However, we are not that far into the story just yet, so in true cliffhanger fashion, I’ll have to leave it there for now.

In summary this specific chapter of the bible is about WHO God is, and WHO we are in relationship to him and in relationship to WHAT he has created. The “WHEN” of the whole deal is a side-note at best, and this should set the frame for the rest of our investigation into the scriptures. The big deal is always going to be God. So if you are a Christian, plant your flag and stake your claim around the WHO of this passage and not the WHEN or the WHAT. In as far as we have traveled into this book, God is the main player, initiator, creator and driving force in this story. He is the most important piece, in fact the only piece that matters, because without him there are no other pieces for us to even think about. So then, for you, personally, that is the question. “Is God the only most important piece in your life, because without Him, none of the other pieces matter?

To be continued…

All these feels! Love and other messy things.

I get asked a lot of questions about love. By Gods grace my wife and I survived adultery, experienced reconciliation, suffered two miscarriages after three healthy pregnancies, then took in our two nieces (we currently have emergency custody). So from time to time people ask us about all these often destructive and challenging circumstances that we’ve survived. Which is fine, if we have gained any wisdom from these things then we want to share it. Normally though, people don’t ask questions preemptively, but after the fact. So when a young married man ask me to talk, it normally isn’t so he can guard his marriage and learn and grow as a husband, it is so he can hopefully repair the damage caused by a situation similar to ours.

FELT LOVE

Recently several conversations have stirred in my brain questions about the messy mix of love and feelings. First, a young Christian male dating and sinning with a non-Christian female. Then, a young couple who, like us, just adopted and are struggling to feel connected to their new children. And finally, another young man struggling to reconcile with his wife after her affair. The anchor in these situations, and in many others, is this idea of love, but specifically “felt love”.

Everyone would agree that they want to be loved. Well, being loved is one thing, but what we normally mean when we say this is that we want to feel loved, or have the positive emotions associated with love . This is where it gets tricky. Not everything that feels like love is love, and not everything that does not feel like love is not love. Here’s two easy examples.

First, lets say one of my five daughters is playing and she begins to wander dangerously close to the road. I, because I love her, intervene and keep her from harm, but she is young and immature, she doesn’t realise that I just saved her. All she knows is that I stopped her from having fun. She is being loved by me, but she doesn’t emotionally feel loved by me.

Secondly, as I mentioned before my wife and I survived adultery. Adultery is for me the most prominent example. There are tons of feelings in something like this, and some of those feelings even feel and seem to be loving, but is this love? Is there genuine love between one person’s spouse and a romantic partner outside of the marriage? Not in any real way, certainly not in any biblical way. There may be lots of emotional feelings, but not any real, or perhaps a better word would be, legitimate love.

So for the young man dating a non-Christian woman. He’s in this place, it emotionally feels a lot like love, but it isn’t legitimate love at all. At least it isn’t according to Jesus, but what does Jesus know about love anyway? (Add sarcasm to that last line)

To my friend who is trying to reconcile with his wife there isn’t hardly any “felt love”, but there are hard decisions and actions that are evidence of that elusive legitimate love. “We’re only doing this because we need each other.” Well great! That decision, is in my view, a right one. The decision is based in reality, and it is a true statement. It’s much easier to build on the truth and in reality, than on the need for special feelings.

Similarly with our friends who just recently brought home two children. Struggling to feel emotionally connected to children that they did not give birth to, not a lot of “felt love”, but lots of acts of love. They are much braver and courageous that someone who gives into every whim of their heart.

The world, and the people who make it up, tend to place most of our stock in emotional felt love over the actual acts of legitimate love. We see this everywhere. How often do you hear someone appeal to their feelings or emotions over all wise counsel to the contrary? “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, but I feel like I should…” We all want to live in our own personal version of the Notebook, A Walk to Remember or Love Actually, but actually these movies are merely entertainment. These movies pull at our heart strings, at our need for felt love, and rightfully so, the feelings and emotions they evoke are powerful.

LET’S RECAP

When we long for love what we really mean is that we want the feelings associated wIth love. There is a danger here. Feeling loved is not bad, but when it becomes the basis for our decision making, especially in relationships, we inevitably make poor and sometimes damaging choices. Felt love is powerful and easily manipulated. Heck, you can use the right mixture of chemicals to manipulate someone’ s feelings, not to mention the manipulative tools of charm and flattery. Again, felt love is powerful, but it is not the source of all things for us to live out of. Simply put, feelings are a response that should not be ignored, but instead, they should tested.

TESTING THEM FEELS

Great thinkers, much greater than me, have dived into helpful studies on the different types of love. I want to do something that I think is a little different. Instead of looking at the different types of loves and the ways they play out, I want to look at the way we feel these emotions in order to discern between valid and invalid feelings of love. Hopefully this will provide for us, a sort of test by which we can check our hearts when they are prone to wander.

YOUR HEAD, YOUR GUT, YOUR HEART

I think there are three main ways that we perceive feelings. Through our head or thoughts, through our gut or conscience and finally through our hearts or emotions.

The order that we test OUR emotions is important. It would seem that many of these emotions hit out heart first, and although they hit there first, they should first be tested by your head. I don’t begrudge people who are “heart first” types, but if you’re heart always leads from emotion without any tether to reason, it may be a sign that your heart is insufficiently guarded.

We should take what we know in our and minds and measure and guide what we feel in our hearts by it. I think our minds are the front gate, if you let something past the front gate it becomes more difficult to resist. It starts to become part of your internal thought process. Things are much harder to separate once they get past the front gate.

What we know in our minds keeps us grounded in reality. Whatever you preceive to be true in your head is a good predictor of what your heart will pursue. Fortunately for Christians, we have the revelation of scripture to inform us on what we know to be true, and what we should and should not pursue. We then allow God’s truth to renew our minds and then change or hearts.

So for my Christian friend in a sinning relationship with a non-Christian woman. He knows in his head that he is sinning, he also knows that this relationship is one that God would not approve of. He has acknowledged all counsel that supports this end as being in the right. So what happened? Why is he with her? Why doesn’t he break up with her and repent?

He has not successfully guarded the front gate of his mind. He let the influence of the feelings of his heart have influence over what he knows in his head, now everything is tangled up, and he can’t make sense of reason. “I hear what you’re saying, and I know you’re right, but no one has ever made me feel like this before.” Do you see the difference? Your head, when filled and shapped with the truth, protects your heart from foolish and sinful decisions.

As a young man, my friend, if he could act in accordance to what he knows is the truth, he will come out more mature and disciplined in the end. This will help him greatly in the ultimate relationship of marriage, and even more so as a parent. Instead he will become dull in his thinking, and waste much of the time that he could be growing into biblical manhood.

If these emotions get past the front gate of your mind the next last ditch effort is your gut, otherwise know as your conscience. The final defense, it tends to hold fast, and nag at us, even while we foolishly let the emotions of our heart pull us every which way. Even still it can be overcome and snuffed out.

That nagging feeling that won’t let you go. Everyone has a conscience, and if your mind is the front gate, then your conscious is the personal guard to your heart saying “turn back now!” It’s an alarm of sorts. You are no longer thinking clearly and now panic mode starts.

My wife and I did an interview for our church about our own reconciliation. I remember my wife saying that the whole time she kept thinking “Why am I doing this? “, “Why don’t I go back and work things out?” She was broken, her front gate had been broken down, her heart stolen away, and for eight months the alarm of her conscious rang in her gut telling her to “go home.”

When not in panic mode, our conscience serves to give us peace when we make tough choices that directly conflict the screening desires of our hearts.

My friends struggling to reconcile with his wife is here. He knows in his mind that he should reconcile, he thinks he wants to, but his heart wants to bail. His heart says “It’ll be easier to give up.” His mind says “I know I shouldn’t give up”, his conscious tells him to “Be strong and hold the gate.”

Once a feeling is tested by the mind and it travels safely through the gate it can move to the conscious. If examined by the concious and no alarms are set off, then we can, within reason, allow that feeling, and its emotions to rest safely in our hearts. How peaceful would you feel if every decision you made went through this test?

REVERSE ENGINEER THE TEST

However, the way this works best is not only as a test to see what feelings and desires that we should allow in our hearts, but to see which ones are already there that should be exiled. Then to further see which ones are missing that we should seek and welcome into our hearts.

My new friends just brought home two children from a far off foreign land. Two babies who don’t look like them or have anything in common with them, but they chose to love them anyway. Naturally there is a disconnect that is there, a disconnect that doesn’t happen when you carry your own children to term. Through reflection they see the missing desires and feelings and seek them thoroughly. They are willing to give their lives for their two girls even though they don’t naturally feel the same type of connection as they do to their natural child.

To me, this is more profound than simply following the emotions of their own hearts. To show love, and give your life for someone when you don’t feel it, is a much more difficult task, and at same time it is profoundly life changing for both the giver and the receiver.

BRINGING IT HOME

It is remarkably like Jesus. Who, with his impending death, was in great despair in the garden. He even ask his father for another way, for this “cup to pass”, and inspite of his holy heart breaking, he decides to love us anyway. That determination of will overpowered the feelings and emotions of his heart. Jesus still acted from his heart, but not according to its emotions, but by its conviction and it’s trust in God. It’s as if the savior said to himself “I don’t feel this, but I’m going to do this, even if it kills me, because I know that there is no other way.”

I know that at one point in my life, that understanding of Jesus in this light, convinced me to love and serve my wife, even when she hated and betrayed me. I felt miserable, I looked for many ways out of my commitment, I wanted to quit but I knew in my mind that I couldn’t. Something in me thought that if Jesus could suffer and die for his beloved, then so could I. Not because I am able, but when my gates fall and my concious fails, his spirit would make me able, and his gates would be my protection.

My wife would later say that seeing me change made her think that she could change. That she thought I was weak, but later realised that I was being strong. Christ made his appeal to my wife through me. If none of this happened, if I would of followed the feelings of my heart, then we would of never experienced the love and joy of reconciliation. It could of harmed another way, but God was faithful, and kind, and patient enough to walk us back through our messy feelings and emotions, and redeem everyone.