Dear Friends,
Lately, I've been writing to you about the theme of goodness in the creation account in the fist chapter of Genesis. Today, we arrive at days four and five.
"And God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.' And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
"And God said, 'Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.' So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.' And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
"And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:14-25 NIV)
So far, I've been commenting on how similar the Genesis account is to the theories of modern science. Day four is the first place where the two seem to diverge. Genesis describes the formation of the sun and stars after the growth of vegetation on the earth. This seems quite strange in light of scientific descriptions of the formation of our galaxy, but only if one believes the order of named events in Genesis is always intended to communicate chronology.
Those who have studied this ancient poem in depth often point out that, after God is said to have established different spaces -sky, land, and sea, God is then said to fill each of these spaces. Ancient people generally thought of heavenly bodies as living things. So a way to think about this is that this account is not meant to establish the exact order in which every single thing came to be but to recognize that it was God who made the sky, the sea, and the land. And it was God who filled the sky, the sea, and the land, each with its own inhabitants. From this perspective it is still interesting that space was filled with its inhabitants first, then the water, and then the land.
This also seems like a good point in the conversation to comment on the amount of time it took God to do all of this creating. Some people like to think that creation took a grand total of six twenty-four hour days. I certainly believe this is possible. None of us was there, and there is a lot we don't understand. However, there are significant problems with trying to be too literal in one's understanding of this poem. Most notably, how can a "day" be defined as the 24 hour period that it presently takes the earth to rotate in such a way that each side faces the sun in turn if the sun doesn't come into existence until the fourth "day?" Interestingly, the Hebrew word "yom," usually translated "day," can also mean "age."
All this is to say that it is possible to believe the first chapter of Genesis is a truthful account of God's creation of our world without entirely rejecting the explanations of science. The only thing that must be rejected is the idea that all of this came about as a meaningless accident. To believe in the truth of the Bible is to believe that life on earth has meaning and purpose, that there is deep and intentional goodness in universe, and that we are meant to find it.
A prayer for today:
Lord of the universe, let me see your goodness. Don't let me be tripped up by things I don't understand, pitting science and the Bible against each other. Let me instead cultivate a sense of awe as I recognize you as the creator of all things and declare along with you that all you have made is good. Amen.
Love in Christ,
Michelle
