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01 January 2013

Genesis 01

There's a lot that could be said about Genesis 1; there's probably been more written about this chapter of Scripture than any other.  That's understandable, since the theme of the chapter is the creation of the entire universe.

Since I'm not smart enough to know Hebrew, or to try to reconcile the text with whatever scientific orthodoxy rules these days, I'll just focus on one aspect of Genesis 1:  God created everything.  It was all his doing.  It was his design and his execution, and because it was made by an all-powerful and all-wise God, it was made exactly as he intended.  The refrain "it was good" is an understatement, to say the least.

Something else to consider is that since God made it, it belongs to him.  It's his.  He has control of it, and he gets to make the rules.  This goes for things like gravity and magnetism that operate more or less mechanically, but also for creatures who possess some degree of free will.

In verses 26-29, God creates humanity.  He gives them definition ("in the image of God"), purpose ("fill the earth and subdue it") and provision (all plants are for food).  He creates people, so he gets to decide what they're for.  Against all the Bertrand Russells, Richard Dawkins, and Epicuri of history, God says that he created humanity for a reason.  We're not just clouds of mindless atoms that happened to clump together; we're the specific creation of God, who had a specific purpose in mind for his creation.

We have a role to play in creation, and we have a responsibility to the one who gave us that role. We don't have to be able to explain how God created the heavens and the earth, but we do have to believe that he did it.  He doesn't give us the details of separating light from darkness or placing stars in particular formations, but he tells us that he was the one who did it, and that it was good.

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