Genesis Mysteries
Genesis 1:1-3
Genesis means “birth” or “beginning.”
When we read the stories in Genesis we quickly discover that they raise all sorts of odd questions. We also discover that our culture has added layers of mythology to these stories. Did creation happen in seven days? Why didn’t God know that Adam and Eve had disobeyed in the Garden or that Cain had killed Abel? Was it an apple that Adam ate? (Gen. 1-2) Why would Cain (after being banished from the garden) be afraid of other people if Adam and Eve were the only people on earth? Who was the woman from Nod? (Gen. 4) Who were the sons of God that mated with the daughters of humans? (Genesis 6) How did a flood cover the earth? How do we read these stories?
Genesis came into being to answer the theological and empirical questions that people wondered about. How did everything begin? Why do people speak different languages (tower of babel)? How did we end up with 12 tribes in Israel? (Several versions of that one) What does a rainbow mean? What kind of relationship does God want with humanity?
We try to read these stories as history when the ancients were simply trying to make sense of their world. They had no concept that when light passes through water vapor, a prism effect happens and a rainbow appears. They had no idea how cultures evolved and language changed over time and place to the unique experiences of a tribe or clan. They had no concept that a woman produced an egg and a man produced sperm that fertilized that egg and that was how a child was produced. So they developed stories to help all of this make sense.
What if, instead of literalizing the stories, we used the stories to help us gain insight into the storytellers and their understanding of their developing faith?
Two creation stories. The first begins at 1:1-2:3. The second begins in 2:4. When we read them side by side we get a fascinating look into two different approaches to explaining how everything that we know to be the world came into being. In the first God speaks and it happens. In the second God actually does the work of forming, taking a rib from Adam to create Eve, etc. In the first creation story, humans are created to be the spiritual children of God. In the second, humans are created to be farmers. In the first story humans are created both male and female and there is equality to the sexes as both are created in the image of God. In the second, a female is made out of a part of the male and there is the impression that a hierarchy exists between the sexes. In the first story Elohim (plural word) is the word used for God. In the second story Yahweh is the word used for God. The first uses a “science book” approach of measuring and ordering (days/light). The second has no same sense of order.
What can we learn from these two stories? First, not everyone understands who God is and what God’s about in the same way. There is room for more than one right answer. I think most of us actually get this one but even for us when we have an experience of the holy that touches us or moves or changes us powerfully, there is a tendency in all of us to want to make that experience of God the measure by which we judge other people’s experience of the holy. Everyone else’s experience must be identical, we seem to think.
Two, your understanding of how God works impacts the way you value everything else. (First story has equality of sexes, not second) If you understand God to be a “being” that is holding a check list of your faults ready to tick them off, then your experience of the holy will be very different than if you understand God to be the presence that fills you and calls you to deeper understanding and higher living. If understanding God as father is key for you, then your experience of God’s presence will be different than if your concept were God as a mother eagle or a towering fortress or the peace that passes all understanding. All of these images are glimpses of the holy. The more glimpses we incorporate into our understanding, the better picture we actually have.
Third, the words you use for God say something about how you understand your relationship to God. Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh, Yeshua ha Mashiach, Holy One, Presence, Spirit, Help in Times of Trouble. There are many names we use to describe God. Words are important because they give meaning and shape our understanding of realities.
I think that the greatest Genesis mystery is how the stories of a wandering group of nomadic herders and farmers survived and became part of the ongoing drama that continues to be the presence of God today. We are part of a long line of human exploration into the mysteries of the divine. I am sure that people in the future will find some of our stories about God to be just as quaint or as strange as we think some of these stories are. When you are trying to describe a reality that is so indescribable – so resistant to being placed within the confines of a definition or a construct – is it any wonder that mystery continues to challenge us as a primary means through which we grapple with God?
Faith, ultimately, is the only way to approach the God of wonders – not reason, not definitions, not absolutes, not even confining words. Ultimately we experience the reality we call God and we are filled with wonder.