Chapter one of Genesis contains one of the most famous quotes in all of the Bible. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Most writers strive for months if not years to create the perfect opening line to their story. Some are good, some are terrible, and occasionally some are epic.
"Call me Ishmael."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed"
"It was a pleasure to burn."
All those pale in comparison to "In the beginning..." That's THE opening that all other openings aspire towards. God says let there be light, and there is light. God says let there be water, and there is water. God speaks into existence land, plants, animals, stars, planets, the universe as a whole.
Then God creates man. One of the things I focus from God's creation of man is in chapter 26, "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."
Odd that God would choose the words US and OUR in describing himself, when later in the Bible he refers to himself as "I am that I am" in the singular. This always struck me as odd. Other scholars have debated the point, leading many to believe that God is referring to the trinity, or how God is able to be many things while also being one force. I personally believe this is the case, that God is almost using what we on earth would call the Royal We to refer to himself.
It's important to note here as well that in chapter 27, God creates both male and female at once. This is important because later in Genesis we get a different interpretation or perhaps clarification of what happened. However, in this first chapter male and female are noted as simply created together, and then blessed by God to rule over all things of the earth.
Now, if you understand science at all, you probably have heard the discussions about this story and it being called the Creation Myth. In actuality I have no idea if things happened exactly as described in this story, nor do I believe that science has a defined answer about the creation of the universe that precludes or removes God. In many cases, both sides of that argument will try to deceive you into believing they have the ultimate answer on something that likely happened billions of years ago.
What I do know is that God likes to speak in stories, and I know this from hearing the tales of Jesus. At the time of the Bible's creation, we're not exactly talking about well-educated scholars with a solid understanding of scientific method. They were simple people trying to survive a harsh existence, and their entertainment was telling stories. In many cases these stories were told orally and passed down generation to generation before writing even existed.
And yet, stories are one of the great ways at staying relevent even after the times have changed. The idea of God creating everything in exact days as we know them, to me that seems silly. God is infinite and his version of time is infinitely different than ours. However, God had to describe and humans had to grasp how the universe came into being. I don't think God would be able to tell our ancestors thousands of years back how quarks and neutrons worked in his creation of the Big Bang. Instead, we have a creation story that spans the test of time.
Accurate in detail or not, the creation story is an important one because God is the key figure. Often science will try to explain their way around that, but usually only succeed in describing how the system works. Not the original movers. After all, I know how an air conditioner works. I can study it and detail the features and reactions in that system. But somebody had to make it. There was an original mover.
And that original mover in our universe was God.
Study Thoughts:
1 - How have stories changed your life, Biblical or otherwise?
2 - Think of things that stand the test of time, what do they have in common?
3 - If God wrote the opening line to your life, how do you think it would read?
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