Where did everything come from?

The question that humanity has asked from the dawn of time. The first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1 (Genesis means beginnings) states “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” This is the first creation story of Genesis, there are two. Both are simplistic and at the same time majestic theological stories that give us a glimpse of our creator God at work. In the simplest of ways, the Genesis narratives tell us that “God did it; God commanded it!

Here in the opening prologue of the Jewish and Christian Bible, we find the most revered and criticised story on humanity’s beginnings.

Today, several millennia after the story was written, many people seeking answers to scientific questions laugh at its naïve simplicity that professes the entire cosmos, and everything in it was created in just 7 days, by an invisible God. As people of faith, as believers in God, we must try to clear up any misunderstanding about what the creation story is and isn’t if we are to defend our beliefs.

What the creation story of Genesis is not, is a step-by-step scientific treatise that has been provided by God to explain the creation of the universe. Those that think so are missing the point of its simplicity and need to look elsewhere for understandings and explanations of the scientific laws that describe and define the physical processes of creation.

However, what the Creation story is, and has been described as is, “a poem of beauty and grandeur” or “a hymn to the majesty of God the Creator”.

A poem or a hymn?

How can theologians say that the Creation story is a poem or a hymn? We need to bear in mind that the Scriptures/Old Testament was mostly written in Hebrew and therefore what we read is a translation. As you can appreciate anything poetic will lose its natural flow of words in the translation process and therefore read like a straightforward narrative. However, by looking carefully at the form and structure of the narrative we can still see the skeletal framework of the poem or psalm that was. The story is structured around patterns and numbers with creation set out over a rhythm of seven days. The story begins by telling us that in the beginning, before anything existed, God existed and that He created the heavens and the earth, “God did it; God commanded it! The story then lays down the order of creation in three sets of separation, two sets of three days, with the first three days to create the heavens and the earth.

We read in verse 1, “God creates the heavens and the earth”, “with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters” or you might say “Let there be light”

Whatever way you describe it, ‘let there be light’ or ‘a Big bang’, it seems to me like everyone’s saying the same thing. People of faith have known for millennia where everything came from, but it has taken scientists all that time to arrive at a similar understanding. However, there are atheists who think that the entire cosmos came about by, and through, what can only be described as a process of nothing! Really you want us to believe that ‘nothing’ created everything from ‘nothing’, I think I’ll pass on that one!

Today scientists are coming up with new theories as they attempt to formulate a unified theory for everything and explain what reality is. Quantum theorists are abandoning ‘String theory’, which posited the ‘Big Bang theory’ because it can’t explain everything. A group of physicists in Los Angeles is working on a new theory about what reality is, how it came to be, and its building blocks. I won’t even try to claim that I understand what they’re talking about, but one major point of interest is that for their theory to work, they need to add new factors into their equation’s “consciousness” and '"awareness". Wow, that seems to me that they are now trying to factor God into their understanding!

The group has produced some YouTube videos of their work to help explain it, I’ve included a link below as it’s worth a watch but remember the ‘foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man’. The thing that jumps out at me here, is with all of humanity’s searching for an understanding of our reality of our existence, for the formulas to work, they are now factoring in God. Perhaps one day soon they will prove what we already know, God exists, and God created it, God commanded it!*Please note, I don’t know if this new scientific theory is or isn't a correct understanding of our reality, but what I would say is that I do love a bit of science fiction, so I’m happy to give it some consideration for now. A word of warning, however, the video link is a bit like ‘Alice in Wonderland’, only a caffeinatedsteroid version, so don’t let it fry your noodle as you enter the proverbial black hole rather than the rabbit hole, oh remember Our God is in control!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU

Ok, back to reality as we know it, with the creation narrative ‘days’ are logically ordered so that the next stage can take place,

On day 1, God made light

On day 2, God separates the waters and created the mantel or sky.

On day 3, He creates dry earth, vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and trees.

The second set of three days; Days 4 to 6 are when God creates time and then fills creation with life in ever-increasing complexity.

On Day 4, the Sun, moon, and stars, the greater and lesser lights, to mark sacred times, the seasons, and the days of the year. And the stars for signs and wonders:

With time as we know it only being created on day 4, we see that its use is poetic and therefore shouldn’t be taken literally. Our God who created everything, space and time included, exists outside the reality of his creation and unlike us, is not bound by its constraints. A day means nothing to our God, who is eternal. When reflecting on time the psalmist wrote in Psalm 90;

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. God, the eternal God creates TIME! as we measure it (regardless of whether it is relative or not). After all, a day for us is just the time taken for our planet to complete a single revolution on its axis. A ‘day’ as used in the Creation story is poetic and not literal. We even use it poetically ourselves, for example when we learn of someone’s death, we often say ‘they’ve had their day’ and by “day” we mean their entire life!

Scientists estimate the age of the Universe to be 13.8billion years old, that is a lot of time to us, but nothing to our creator God who is himself eternal!

On Day 5, Fish and birds

Living creatures, livestock, wild animals, creatures that move along the ground, creepy crawlies!

On Day 6, The pinnacle of His creation, when God creates humanity

Verses 26-2726

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The creation of humanity is the high point of the story. We are made in the “image of God” and given dominion over the rest of creation. As people of faith, we must ask ourselves what does the image of God mean? Is it a physical likeness or something that is found within? In addition, what does “dominion over” mean? Is the rest of creation provided for our exploitation or are we guardians of God's creation placed in a role of stewardship?

I will take a deeper look at what it means to be the image and likeness of God in the next blog.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Day 7, The Sabbath

Then in chapter 2 we read 2

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done

God rested from all his creative work, he blessed the seventh day and made it holy, set apart, a time for all to rest, rejoice and praise Him. A time for us to pause, look around, and marvel in awe and wonder at God’s creation, which reveals the work of His hands, its beauty, its majesty, and its splendour. A time for us to perhaps ponder and think about how did God make all this for us?

Perhaps if the scientists had paused for a just moment to consider the Creation narrative for themselves, they would have come to the same understanding of the universe and its creation a lot sooner, as we people of faith have known it to be for millennia.

Have a great day,

Trev.