Not many of us have given thought to “how it all began.” Yes, we have pondered it from time to time, but this week we embark on readings that help us to think about how everything—EVERYTHING—began. While we believe that Moses wrote Genesis (as well as other books of the Bible), we have to realize that he was not around at the very beginning. Even Adam and Eve did not come along until the sixth day of creation. Most likely, as in many families, the stories were passed down from generation to generation until Moses came along and was prompted by God to turn the oral tradition into a written tradition.
In these early chapters of Genesis, we read about creation. Although these chapters are neither a scientific account of how creation came to be nor a chronological account of how it all came about, the story is truthful. What we learn is that all life, all of creation, comes from the initiative of a loving and caring God. But then sin comes into the picture (the “Fall” we call it), and brokenness enters the human experience.
When the Biblical account records that God said, “Let us make mankind in our own image,” many scholars today believe these words do not mean that God looks like one of us. Rather, these words reflect the idea that God is in relationship with Himself (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and that we are created to live in relationship with others. The foremost relationship for which we are created is with God Himself. Interestingly, note that at the end of each act of creation, God sees everything as “good,” followed by the human creation when He sees everything as “very good.”
Walter Bruggeman, perhaps the preeminent Old Testament scholar of the last quarter of the twentieth century, suggests that the central message of Genesis is to help us see that we are called to live in God’s world on God’s terms. Thus we see the struggle between Cain and Abel. When we read the story of Noah carefully, we realize that his narrative is not a “warm and fuzzy children’s story” as much as it is God’s determination to reboot creation built around one family led by a righteous man.
The story of the Tower of Babel is certainly a reflection on how we live in God’s world on God’s terms. When the people decide they want to be in control, God decides that the best way to help them see themselves in relationship to Him is by confounding their language. Suddenly they find their plans, as well as their language, confused (which is what “babel” sounds like in its original language).
The Psalm you read this week offers a choice. What do you want your life to look like? Will it be vibrant tree, or will it be trash that is thrown out because it is useless? The difference is how God’s Word impacts our lives.