Creation Accounts on Their Own Terms

May 7, 2017    4^th Sunday of Easter                Genesis 1:1-2:4a

            As you may know there are lots of things that happened that didn’t make it into the Bible.  Here’s something about creation that didn’t:

God created the donkey and told him: you will work tireless from sun up to sun down, carrying heavy bags on your back, you'll eat grass, you will not have intelligence and you will live 50 years. You will be a DONKEY!
      
      The donkey answered: I'll be a donkey, but living 50 years is too much, give me only 20 years. And God gave him 20 years.
      
      God created the dog and told him: You will look after the man's house, you will be his best friend, you will eat whatever they give you and you will live 25 years. You will be a DOG!
      
      The dog answered: God, living 25 years is too much, give only 10. God gave him 10 years.
      
      God created the monkey and told him: You will jump from branch to branch, you will do silly things, you will be amusing and you will live 20 years.
      
      The monkey answered: God, living 20 years is too much, give me only 10 years. And God agreed.
      
      Finally, God created man, and told him: You will be Man, the only rational being on this earth, you will use your intelligence to control other animals, you will dominate the world and you will live for 20 years.
      
      The man answered: God, I'll be man, but living 20 years is not enough, why don't you give me the 30 years that the donkey refused, the 20 years that the dog did not want and the 10 years that the monkey refused.
      
      That was what God did, and since then, Men live 20 years like a man, then he enters adulthood and spends 30 years like a donkey, working and carrying the load on his back, then when his children leave home, spends 15 years like a dog, looking after the house and eating whatever is given to him, then he gets into retirement, and spends 10 years like a monkey, jumping from house to house or from children to children, doing silly things to amuse the grandchildren.

Of course the creation account of Genesis 1 is far more serious and significant than that.  If ever a part of the Bible caused Christians serious problems in recent decades it is Genesis 1.  All too often it creates debates of creation vs. evolution.  Some Christians insist that God created the world in 6 days just like Genesis 1 literally says.  At the other extreme are scientifically minded skeptics who say Genesis 1 is a creation myth from the ignorant past, and anyone who believes its truth is laughably stupid.

            Of course there are many in between who attempt to reconcile the extremes.  They point out that Genesis 1 does go from greater chaos to more and more order, just like evolution.  They say that days don’t have to be taken as literal time periods, but they can be any length of time.

            Indeed this approach has its appeals, but as for me I reject both extremes and the middle!  To think it is literally true is to insult your intelligence.  At the other extreme, if you chalk this up as just a creation myth from the ancient world you do so at your own peril.  And if you take the appealing middle of the road approach you rob this story of its profound meaning and what it reveals about God and the world you live in.

            Never try to take a literal approach to Genesis 1.  Don’t do it because the text doesn’t want you to!  Notice it lacks internal logic.  There is light and darkness, days and nights, but the sun and moon aren’t created until Day 4.  I’ve seen footnotes in Bibles trying to wiggle out of this, but their arguments are nonsense.  And then there is the bigger logical problem of Genesis 2.  Genesis 2 is a different creation account which contradicts Genesis 1 in many places.  The biggest one is that in Genesis 1 it takes six days.  In Genesis 2 creation takes one day.

            We’re going to look at Genesis 2 next week, but for today just note that the creator of the book of Genesis was not blind to the fact that he put two contradictory stories side by side!  As we read through Genesis we’re going to discover that it is a finely and expertly crafted piece of literature.  The author wasn’t ignorant and he didn’t make mistakes.

            I say we need to let Genesis 1 speak on its own terms, not someone else’s.  We can’t use it to support our agenda.  It wants to create our agenda.

            What is it then?  It is an ancient Hebrew account of God’s power and activities.  It teaches you about God, about yourself, and about how you are to live in creation.  Learn from it and you will be blessed.  Balk against it and you will suffer.

            It is impossible to know this for sure, but the best a scientific study of the Bible can tell you is that Genesis 1 was probably created by a Jewish priest some 2600 years ago.  Unfortunately we do not have time to look at creation accounts from other middle eastern religions at the same time period.  If we did though, we’d discover the backdrop of thought this text is speaking to.

            Other cultures say there are multiple gods.  Other cultures have good gods and bad gods.  Some gods make mistakes.  Some do stupid and destructive things.  There are all sorts of mythical creatures and tales. 

What is the truth that Genesis 1 points to? 

-There is one God and only one God. 

-When this one God speaks things happen.  You know the phrase, “Talk is cheap”?  Well not with our God.  God’s word delivers results.

-What God creates is deliberate, thoughtful, and good.  Genesis 1 is in poetic form.  That’s why we read it the way we did.  You’ll notice the refrain after each day, “And God saw that it was good.”

-Another truth is that it is God who creates order out of chaos.  If you follow astrophysics and creation sciences you may have heard the phrase, “goldilocks conditions.”  The idea is that in an infinite universe there will be places where it is neither too hot nor too cold – things are just right – and in those places molecules can cluster and energy can become concentrated, and if things get even more perfect there can be complex chemical reactions and maybe even complex enough to be called life.

            I say that is pure nonsense!  I don’t say that from a faith point of view I say that from a scientific point of view.  I’ll never forget my college thermodynamics professor saying, “We let the biologists have their little creation myths, but we know it can’t work.”  In the natural world things always go from forms of higher order and energy to lower forms of energy and order.  Never ever the other way around.

            Where there is order and concentrated energy there is the creative hand of God at work… always.  The author of Genesis 1 recognized that.

-Genesis 1 warns us that if you mess with God’s created order you do so at your own risk.  Even very simply, you know never to mix bleach with ammonia.  It gives off a poisonous gas.  Ruth Halvorson told me that Knute would often come home from working in quarries and excavation sites and his clothes were filthy and stained.  She’d dump bleach and ammonia together in the washing machine to get the dirt out.  She did it because it worked.  When she told me that I looked aghast and said she’s lucky she didn’t kill herself and Knute.  She said when she found out she immediately stopped, but she didn’t know.

            Bleach and ammonia are a simple mix, but it speaks to much larger issues.  I grew up at the edge of anthracite coal mining territory.  Don’t process mine waste properly and you have an environmental disaster on your hands.  Handle radioactive materials wrongly and you’ve got an even bigger mess on your hands.

            God created a certain order to things.  We are smart creatures and can tinker with God’s created order.  That’s okay, but we must use care lest we unleash a disaster of chaos.

            I could go on and on about what Genesis 1 teaches but I want to end with one more thing.

            In Genesis 1 God creates in six days.  Then God rests.  If God rests we need to too.  If we live life working constantly and rushing from place to place we’ll burn out fast.  Rest is important.  It is in the created order of things.

            And along with that.  God creates in six days.  God rests on the seventh.  What does God do on the eighth?  God goes right back to the creative process.  God’s creative work continues even into today.

            Genesis 1 wants you to look at the world around you in awe and wonder.  God is so big that even the forces of nature obey him.  Everywhere you look, from your own body to the farthest of stars, you see the fingerprint of God’s action.

            Reject Genesis 1 and you’re living in a cold heartless universe.  Accept it and discover that God invites you to be a part of his creative enterprise.  Be bold, but be careful.  Genesis 1 tells you to enjoy creation and be in awe of God.

            Unshackle Genesis 1 from the creation vs. evolution debate we humans have bogged it down in and let it make your imagination soar; as it was intended to do.

            The universe is big.  Your God is bigger.