Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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What is creation?

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Question 9Question 9 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is creation?”

The answer is, “Creation is God’s making everything out of nothing by His powerful word in six days – and all very good.”

It is probable that most people that read this question in the catechism in 2016 zoom in on the words “in six days.” So let me say from the beginning that it is OK for believers to disagree on how the word day should be interpreted. Some hold to a literal 24 hour day and others think day represents a much longer period of time.

How I interpret the word day in Genesis 1 is not going to cause me to break fellowship with other believers who take an alternative view. The one thing on which Christians should agree is that God is the cause for the world in which we live. God created it and we are his creatures.

At then end of Genesis 1, it says that God was satisfied with what he created, he declared that it was all “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Even though we have marred creation through rebellion, it still carries the marks of intrinsic goodness and creativity. God is a very gifted artist.

Take any category of plants or animals and look at the variety within that category. God didn’t make one kind of dog or one kind of fish or kind of bird. In each of these animals, there is incredible diversity. At my bird feeder we get such a variety of birds; chickadees, sparrows, nuthatches, finches, woodpeckers, jays, doves, cardinals and blackbirds are regular visitors.

Why did God build such variety into his creation? I believe it is to delight man, his highest creation. The variety is a clue as to how much God loves us.

At present we see the goodness of creation though it carries the scars caused by man’s failure to obey. But Jesus has promised to one day return and set it all right again. One day the taint will be removed and we will see the universe how it was meant to be.

In that day, we will then say with God that it is “all very good.”

Scary Love

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Scary LoveI recently saw a pair of Tweets by @GAfamily with the hashtags #scary and #love. (For those of you who are not into Twitter, using hashtags is a way of identifying key words so that someone searching on that word will find it) It struck me that these are two words that I would not have put together. Scary love.

Today I began reading Genesis for an assignment for our church’s ministry training class. It strikes me that God created us in spite of the fact that He knew that beginning with Adam, we would choose badly and rebel. To me this is the epitome of scary love. It is scary because it is so selfless. It is scary because the love that would create in spite of the certainty of rebellion is a love that is consumed by its object with no expectation of benefit in return.

In our human interactions, we do not give or receive completely selfless love. Consciously or subconsciously when we experience love or the approximation of love, we are wondering what’s in it for the other. This feels normal because it is a universal experience.

Along comes a man named Jesus a little over 2,000 years ago who breaks normality and opens up the possibility of experiencing selfless love in a human interaction. Jesus’ selfless love proved to be a blessing to those who recognized their need for love and a curse to those who didn’t.

So why is this so scary? It is scary in part because we don’t understand selfless love. Another possible reason is because, in our pride, we are unwilling to come to grips with the depth of our unlovliness.

When I reflect upon the selfless love of Jesus, when I read the gospels and see what he did and said, I am confronted with the festering recesses of my heart that are yet to be cleansed and healed. This self revelation is scary and many run from it. Yet, to be confronted by this revelation is the most loving thing that a loving God can do.

May we embrace this Scary Love and be cleansed and motivated by him.

Genesis 3 – Sin and Separation

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SeparationThere is a sense of longing in the culture around us. Implicit in this longing is an acknowledgment that things are not as they should be. Artists, politicians and marketers all play to this longing.

Where does this sense of longing come from? If we are “dancing to our DNA” or if we are random groupings of chemicals which are mysteriously self-aware, there is no adequate explanation for this longing.

On the other hand, if we were designed for something different, if what we see is a perversion of what was to be, then that longing makes sense.

The opening chapters in Genesis provide an answer to this. We were designed to be in fellowship with God and in harmony with each other and our environment. Adam, as our representative, chose to rebel and humanity has continued in Adam’s rebellion.

When I read the story of the original sin in Genesis 3, I see 4 aspects to the loss and separation that we feel.

  1. We are separated from God – “Adam where are you?”
  2. We are separated from humanity – “because I was naked, I hid myself”
  3. We are separated from our true selves – Eve blamed the serpent, Adam blamed Eve and God
  4. We are separated from our environment – “cursed is the ground because of you”

That’s the bad news. The good news is found in Romans 8:18 and following. There will come a day when all of God’s creation will be released from the bondage of sin and separation. At that time the entire creation (including us) will be transformed back into what it was intended to be. The longing will at that time (and not before) be fulfilled.

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