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| This is basically continued from my last entry, which was on Genesis 1.
A few things I have realized since: my concerns about approaching Scripture with a bias were very valid. Many times I have wondered how a certain speaker compiled a certain sermon. Often it seems as if he develops a certain point or point of view, based on one or two verses at best, and then approaches the Bible to pull together all of the verses that back him up. But that's such a biased way of reading Scripture! To only pick out the bits that work for you is an outrageous way of approaching any source of information, much less the Bible. It would be better to read all of the passages that pertain to a certain topic, THEN draw your conclusion from there based on the patterns you notice.
The fact is we all have a bias and I am going to identify mine. I am post-modern. I am skeptical. I am educated. I live in a generation where there are few hard and fast rules, where every tradition is under attack and where it is almost laughable or backwards to speak of absolutes or to make judgement calls. I've come back to the Bible, not rejecting the absolutes, the rules, and the traditions, but seeking more behind them. Many times I end up living my life according to rules that I can't explain. Why should I dress the way I do? It has something to do with being Christian, but what? And why should I be opposed to violence? Why should I be pro-life? Should I be these things? Where does the Bible say it? You may say, "the Bible can't answer those questions", but it CAN. It just hasn't highlighted the spot for me. In my first entry I talked about how the Bible came alive when I handled it, how as I examined it and thought about it I started to see the life and the governing principles behind it. That is the part of the Bible that can answer any and every question; not the dead words on a page, but the life behind them. That's how an unbeliever can turn away from the Bible and say, "it's a dead book about a dead idea", and I can look at the same book and see an endless source of guidance.
So there's my bias. I don't want to try to debunk centuries of traditional values. But I do feel that our North American culture has, for decades, spread vicious or benign lies about what Christianity is and what Christians are like. And the Christian community, eventually, accepted these lies. Part of us, in our worst moments, does feel that we are the last guard of a quaint and outdated religion, that we are Ned Flanders, that we are irrelevant. It's not always fear of rejection that keeps us quiet when we should talk to our friends. Sometimes, it's the feeling that they don't need our Christianity, that they are happy without it. But the opposite is not preferable, it is not better to run around informing people that their lives are meaningless. If they don't see it themselves, there is no need to tear down someone who has worked all their lives to find a meaning for themselves in a meaningless world. It's a superhuman task and one that I have never attempted. I think we have got to stop viewing our religion as Meaning in a Can, as a panacea, especially in an age where everyone wants to make their own. Christianity is not opposed to individual thought, to interpretation, to a personal journey. All of those things are absolutely essential to the Christian life. Instead of trying to tell people that Christianity will save them from the dreadful task of running their own lives (and this is often our essential message), we should be telling them that Christianity is the greatest and highest adventure they will ever embark upon. Because it IS.
anyways. Genesis 2.
tentative conclusion: God experiences joy.
textual evidence:
v2 tells us God rested from the work he had done.
WARNING: THIS CONCLUSION IS NOT BASED ON A STRICTLY TEXTUAL ANALYSIS.
When I read this passage I was super stumped. What kind of a God rests??? God doesn't rest, because God has infinite energy and therefore cannot get tired. What is going on here?? This one verse threatens the whole premise of Christianity, I cannot understand why there are not more questions about it. The only saving grace in this passage is that it never says God was actually tired and needed rest, or anything like that. The only way the universe makes sense -and yes, that is seriously what is at stake here - therefore, is if this rest was voluntary. Well, if God is so energetic and active (as seen from his endless activity in Genesis 1 and the lack of evidence that he ever slowed down), why would he choose to take a break?
Ah. This is where Heng comes in. She was there when I started freaking out about a God who does work and RESTS from it. She said something interesting. She talked about how an artist likes to enjoy their work by taking a step back and enjoying it. This is also kind of a rest. I settled down and started to think about this. V31 of Genesis 1 tells us God looked at everything he had made, and it was very good. There is something restful about that statement, as if he was looking at everything in a leisurely sort of way, to enjoy it. As if he was resting and looking at the same time, as an artist does when they step back to view their work. The Hebrew wording supports this reading. "Rested" is footnoted in the NIV as 'ceased'. When we read the word 'rest' in the context of work, we think of a human rest, which implies weariness. But it is more accurate to think of 'rest' in a scientific sense, as in, 'an object at rest'. The object isn't tired. It's just not moving. So this verse does not tell us that God got tired. All it says is that he stopped working for a bit, which is big, because chapter 1 showed us a God who never stopped working. These signs point towards a reading of the verse that portrays God as a being with the capacity to enjoy things; things he's made, in this case. In order for God to joy in (enjoy) something, he must have the capacity to experience joy. Chapter 1 contains repeated references to God seeing that things are good. To see that something is to good is to enjoy it, so that all of God's creations brought him joy. It is conceivable that God had no higher purpose for his creation, no better motive to make it, than because doing so would bring him joy.
This helps with the second difficulty of this question, which is, just because God rested, why does everyone else have to? Skipping ahead, Exodus will show us that God specifically commanded his people to set apart the Sabbath day and keep it holy. They were to make it a day of rest. Why? I think it has a lot to do with the above. It wasn't just that God wanted to force his people to take their three weeks' vacation, to 'rest' in a sense of weariness. I think he also just wanted them to stop moving, stop working, stop scheming, just for one day. Just long enough to actually take a look around and see that things were good. Just long enough to experience some joy. We serve a being who is joyful, who wants to continue being joyful and who wants to spread joy to his whole creation. I think, in a way, this is the whole point of Christianity - the 'big picture'. We are being transformed into beings who can experience joy.
conclusion: man is special to God.
textual evidence:
-ch1v27 says that God made man in his image and likeness
ch1v28 says that God gave man dominion over all living things on Earth.
ch2v7-8 details God's creation of man, in a way that no other creation act is detailed.
ch2v8-8-9 shows God making the garden for man's comfort and enjoyment
ch2v15 says man was placed in the garden to work it and care for it.
In the first place, we see that man was made for a reason that no other creation was made for. Man was made in God's own image and received God's authority over the creatures on Earth. It seems as though the other creations were made for man's benefit; that if man did not exist, there would be no point in having plants and animals. Man is not just the custodian of the earth, he is its most significant inhabitant. Why? Because he is the only creation made after God's image. He is the only creation who can experience fellowship with God. Anyways. Genesis 2 details the creation of man, how he was made from the dust of the earth. This might not be that significant; it could be that God made each of the animals by the same process, including the breath of life bit, and the Bible only details the process for man because we are people and we wanted to feel special.
The reason I say that man was made for a purpose different from that of animals and plants is that God doesn't worry much about protecting and caring for the animals - not that he doesn't, but he doesn't go overboard trying to prevent an existential crisis that is never coming. However, with man, he didn't just put him on earth and tell him to go to it, as he did with the animals. He created a special garden for man to live in, though man was obviously meant to spread out eventually, since God commanded us to 'be fruitful and multiply".
Then he told man the garden was for him to live in and work. This is obviously not the whole story. The rest of the Bible tells us that God clearly had a bigger plan for us than to work in the garden of Eden all our lives. Our bigger purpose was to get to know him. The Garden seems to have been a special, protected place, where God could closely oversee man's development as he explored the possibilities of his mind and body.
I say that the Garden was not the whole of man's purpose because of the presence of the two trees. I think it's logical to assume that man was expected to make a choice between the two trees. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was deathly, while the tree of life would have given man immortality (Gen. 3:22). So then, before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge etc., were they mortal or immortal? God told them that the tree of knowledge etc. would surely kill them - yet they didn't drop dead on the spot when they did eat the fruit. In my church this has been given a special spiritual significance; God was really referring to the death of the spirit, not the body. I don't reject that explanation, because when sin entered man a lot of things died, and the spirit was probably one of them - but I think there is another, simpler explanation: God said if they ate of the tree they would die. He didn't say when. The versions of the bible that say, "you will SURELY die", help support this reading. If something will 'surely' happen, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to happen right away, but it does mean that the occurrence is inevitable. Sooner or later, (a) will surely happen. And if the tree of life gave eternal life or immortality, it is not unreasonable to think that the tree of knowledge of good and evil led, among other things, to mortality. Anyways, my point is that Adam and Eve's status in the Garden was very unclear. Man had free will, but had not made a choice about God yet. We don't even know what his lifespan was supposed to be. I don't think they were meant to remain in that state for long. They were meant to make a choice, and the two trees were placed there to give them concrete options. I think the serpent tricked Eve relatively soon after they arrived in the Garden, because he had to make sure to get to her before she ate from the tree of life. And there were no rules against eating from the tree of life, so Adam and Eve could have decided to try it at any time.
I want to make a note about God's guidance of man when he first placed him in the garden in chapter 1. Verses 29 and 30 show God giving man detailed instructions about what to eat - fruits with seeds and grain. Not the green plants, those are for the animals. It's an interesting point that God never gave any of the other animals such detailed instructions. Animals have instincts that tell them what kinds of things are good to eat, and how to eat them. Man doesn't have that instinct. If you put one of us in a forest, we would have absolutely no way of telling what things were good to eat and what weren't. The only way for us to find out is by trial and error, while all the other animals are completely guided by their instincts to unerringly pick the right foods every time. The tiniest insect on earth knows what plants it can eat and what plants it can't, yet mankind was left completely clueless. I think this is interesting because instincts are like the programming that tell the animals how to live. The benefit is that they don't make stupid mistakes and die; the downside is that they must always follow their programming. An animal cannot be intelligent in the way that man is intelligent because an animal cannot be guided by anything but its instincts. A man cannot be intelligent in the way that an animal is intelligent because a man cannot be guided by anything but his analytical logic. Man's strength does not lie in our ability to follow our instincts, but in our ability to override them. This is something that no animal possesses. This is what makes man special out of the rest of the creations on Earth, and also special to God. I think that our lack of instincts points to our higher purpose because instincts are meant to deal with the physical world. They have nothing to do with the spiritual world. Animals can't experience spiritual things, because their intelligence is based on purely physical things. An animal knows where to sleep, how to defend itself, and how to find and eat its food. An animal is perfectly equipped for its environment. It cannot ask "Why?", and if it could, there would be no answer. But humans are not solely physical beings. If we were, it would only be fair to give us instincts so that we could cope with our environment effectively, instead of having to invent all kinds of crazy gadgets just to survive. Humans are both physical and spiritual beings - we're a weird kind of amphibian. The reason we are not instinctive beings is that if we were, we could never know God. Our experience would be limited to the physical world. We would have no ability to experience the spiritual world. The reason God has to give us such careful guidance, to place us in a secluded garden while we learn about ourselves, the reason we are so vulnerable in this physical world is because we were meant to be able to know God himself, and for that we had to be given a higher form of intelligence, and that intelligence meant we could not be ruled by the instincts that would have helped us survive our environment. Therefore, the reverse is also true; our higher intelligence, our physical vulnerability, are signs that our purpose is not confined to this physical world. Otherwise we would be better equipped for it.
[Of course, humans have some instincts, some physical guides; we have pain, fear, the flight-or-fight thing, etc. But this is nothing compared to the instincts that guide an animal through its daily life.)
I also want to comment on the trees. People read this story and say that God had it out for people, that he was testing us, just like Pandora and her box, knowing we would fail. People blame God for sin because he is the all-powerful one and should have been able to stop it. Also, he was the all-knowing one and should have known what would happen once he put the trees in the garden. But the only part of sin that started with God was the placing of the trees in the garden, and the interesting thing is that the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the one that brought sin into our lives, but it is not called, "the tree of sin". That would be much simpler than the ridiculously oversized name we have for it now. But the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not somehow magically contain sin; it could not have, since God cannot create something that is against his own nature, as sin is. In ch. 3 v 22, we see that God has knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, the kind of knowledge that God can possess without harm is absolutely deadly and destructive for man. Maybe this is because in man, to understand is to sympathize. To learn is to experience. Many times we resolve our fights by looking at things "from the other person's perspective". Once we see the other perspective, we understand it, we experience it as our own and thus we cannot fight against it. And we learn by experiencing, by 'doing', by absorbing. Human understanding, human knowledge, and human learning are only achieved via experience. But God's knowledge and understanding is perfect, self-contained and eternal; he does not 'learn' in the way we do; so he is safe from the influence of evil. He can understand it without experiencing it. But people can only know by learning, and can only learn by 'doing'. In order for us to have knowledge of evil, we would have to experience evil; some element of evil would have to enter into us. And that, it seems, is exactly what happened.
All of the above is just my speculation, though I've tried to base it on things besides my own imagination. but the important thing to note is that in eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Eve was trying to reach heights that only God could inhabit safely. I think that the trees represent a bigger choice than 'good tree' or 'bad tree'. Both trees represent aspects of God. One tree contains God's knowledge, which man cannot possess without harm, and the other tree contains God's life, which can only benefit man and bring him closer to God. The tree of life was 'good' and eating of it would have been 'good' because the choice to eat from the tree of life would have reflected a desire for God. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was 'bad' and eating from it was 'bad' because the choice to eat from that tree reflected not a desire for God, but a desire for God's status. The choice was to receive either God's life or God's knowledge; to be one with God, or to (try to) be like God. Man was created, he was placed on Earth, and introduced to God. The next step was to choose what state he wanted to be in, and as a creature with free will, the choice was his to make: for God, or against him. The tree of knowledge of good and evil did not contain sin. It was man's part of the equation, the act of eating from that tree, the act of choosing to rebel against God, which brought sin with it.
conclusion: the relationship between husband and wife is deep, symbiotic, and unique. It is a connection on a physical and spiritual level.
textual evidence:
v18 shows God expressing concern over man's solitude and deciding to make a 'helper' for him (NCV version)
v19-20 show God bringing all the animals to Adam, in the context of looking for a helper, and none of them being satisfactory.
v21-22 show God creating Eve using Adam's rib.
v23 shows Adam recognizing that Eve is part of him and perfect for him
v24 is Moses explaining the significance of marriage - how two people become one.
The first point, that man needed a helper, does not go to prove women's subservience to man but to show how indispensable she is. Man needed a helper. It was not good for him to be alone. Therefore, Adam is at least as dependent on Eve as she is on him. Eve was created to fill Adam's need; therefore, Adam had a need that only Eve could fill. One gets the impression Adam needed more than just a housekeeper. On the other hand, Eve would not have been created if Adam had not needed her. She owed her existence to him. And Eve was created to be Adam's helper, not his master. However, Eve's help was absolutely indispensable. These verses do not provide a basis for the inequality we have seen in society forever and ever. They show that man and woman are equally reliant upon each other. On one hand, it was Adam who received God's commands in vs 16-17. Therefore he had more knowledge and more authority in the relationship; his authority came from his knowledge of God and what God had said. On the other hand, God himself saw that man could not get along without a helper; and not just any helper, none of the animals could satisfy Adam's need for companionship. Adam would have remembered what it was like before Eve came into his life, and this would have helped him appreciate her. The point is that Adam's position, and Eve's, both have strengths and weaknesses; Adam knew God better, but he still needed Eve's companionship. Eve filled Adam's need in a way nothing else could do, but she was newer and less experienced and did not know God as well. For this reason I say that the relationship was symbiotic and/or codependant.
An interesting point is that Adam and Eve had no wedding ceremony. There were no formalities preceding their marriage; they were made one by the act that God designed for the purpose of uniting two people in mind and body: sex. The older usage of the word 'marriage' does not refer just to the relationship between two people who have endured a long and expensive ceremony together, but to two things that are inextricably linked. To think of two people as 'married' did not mean that they wore matching rings - the rings and the ceremony are more of a declaration - but that their two bodies had become one, as Moses says in v24. For this reason, I think that today's term, 'premarital sex' is a misnomer and a dangerous one at that. There is no such thing as premarital sex. All sex is marital sex - all sex 'marries' or unites two people inextricably. 'Pre'-marital sex, or 'sex before marriage', implies that you can have sex that does not create a deep and permanent physical and emotional bond. That kind of sex does not exist - but people think that it does. People pretend that sex is purely a physical act, with no deeper significance, but if this were the case then the abuse and misuse of sex would not create so much pain. Besides, there are very few things in this life that are purely physical acts; not even eating, not even sleeping can be said to be a purely physical act. Humans have a body and a soul, and what one does affects the other. The Biblical depiction of sex gives full credit to its emotional and spiritual significance. Many people see God as a killjoy because it seems as if he has randomly decided that only a certain part of the human population is allowed to enjoy sex. Christians have furthered this belief by saying that sex is something God has 'reserved' for married couples. It is more accurate to say that sex IS marriage, that sex is the thing that God uses to bind two people together, to marry them. What we mean when we say 'premarital' or 'extramarital' sex is sex without commitment, sex which does not involve the forming of a deep bond; this sex does not exist, and the idea that it does leads people to actions which only cause pain and damage, which is why God and Christians are against it. When a Christian says, "I don't believe in premarital sex", the only logical way to understand him is to know that he is saying he literally does not believe that premarital sex exists. We have allowed ourselves to get typecast as prudes and snobs, when in fact we're just being logical. God's plan is better not just because it was God who said so, but because God's plan is based on an accurate understanding of people and of sex, whereas ours is not.
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| This is from an email I wrote. I think it sums it up best.
"...It's a significant struggle, but I think struggle is the only way anything valuable is ever achieved. What I learned is that all my life I had been living in a bubble of what I thought Christianity was and who I thought God was. But most of my worldview was based on the environment I grew up in and what people taught me. I have never even read the whole OT. Subconsciously I think I really believed that aside from the obvious criteria, a good Christian was also well-mannered, modestly dressed, smart, didn't talk loud or misbehave, etc. Those were the values that we were taught as kids, and it was in a Christian context, so part of me really associated those things with spirituality. Then I started to date a non-Christian, and suddenly I didn't fit in the bubble anymore; but weirdly enough God still wanted to talk to me and I still wanted to talk to Him. So I had to redefine what spirituality really was, and what things were really valuable to God. In other words, I had to start thinking for myself, and I had to throw out most of what I thought I knew about God and Christianity, because it turned out to be a compilation of bits and pieces from sermons and books, several extremely subjective experiences, and a crapload of stuff that was hammered into my head when I was five. Now I'm diving back into the Bible and I'm not coming up without a text-based analysis (English major finally pays off) that tells me who the Bible says God is and what the Bible says God wants from me. Going from serving one to skeptic is a major step backwards, but my foundation wasn't going to be able to support me anymore, so I'm going to need to start over. It's really hard and really rewarding."
Materials:
I'm reading the NCV version, which is my current favourite. I did some background research and found out that it was originally written for deaf people, who were unfamiliar with many idioms in the English language. The principle of the NCV version (aside from being faithful to the texts in the original languages) is that God intended for everyone to be able to understand His Word. The first version of the NCV was written at a third-grade reading level. (This doesn't mean they dumbed it down, just that they used very simple terms and short sentences.) This version was also marketed as a children's Bible. Later it was upgraded to a grade 5 reading level and sold simply as the NCV version. I like this because as they say, if you can teach something to a ten-year-old you know you really understand it. So it follows that if a ten-year-old can't understand a version of the Bible, something is wrong. I am reading an NCV study version which has all kinds of extra inserts. Originally I planned to ignore these, but there was one on the creation story, and it was pretty useful and I couldn't help but read it and follow up all the cross-references. So now I'm converted.
Method:
- I pray often for God to bless my Bible reading and reveal a bit of Himself in the verses I read. I pray hard because I really feel it's a stretch to expect to get to know God by reading some book. But it's all I've got, and I'm really seeking here and I'm trying to keep an open heart and above all not to limit God to the things I think he is or does. I want to open my mind as much as possible, but that doesn't mean I would reject something the Bible showed me on the grounds that it was predictable and expected. I'm not expecting to uncover a revolutionary new aspect of God, but I do think if you talk about anything for centuries and centuries the tale will get bent a little bit, and there is no proof that Christians are always right all the time. To say the least.
I read 1-3ish verses a night, but not all nights because sometimes I forget. I read them slowly several times, narrowing my focus to figuring out what that verse tells me about God, and then I pray to thank him for that quality. Although I present my results conclusion-first, in reality as I read over a few nights, I start to notice a pattern that indicates a particular quality about God, and that's my conclusion, but I consulted the text without having that conclusion in mind.
My initial reaction to opening Genesis and glancing through it was one of discouragement. At first glance, nothing distinguishes this creation story from the hundreds of other creation stories out there from every society on Earth. It was passed down as an oral storytelling tradition for a long time and acquired a lot of the traits of oral storytelling; it has a particular order and rhythm to it. This is discouraging because it means that the full story, with all of its ins and outs, has been pared down over the centuries from one storyteller to the next to this generally accepted version. It bears the fingerprints of every storyteller who ever told it, particularly those of Moses. In fact, Moses is all over this book from start to finish. God is hundreds of degrees removed from this story. How am I supposed to see him clearly? But this is all I've got to work with, and there's no denying there is something very strange about the Bible. Most books aren't alive in the way the Bible is alive. And it comes alive as you handle it; first glance shows you a holy book like any other holy book, but by the third glance the words start to move and you can see the life behind them. So as I handled the Word more I started to get more out of it until I was seeing some really exciting things.
Here's what Genesis 1 taught me.
- God is a God of balance and symmetry.
Textual evidence:
V1 tells us He created the heavens(sky) and the earth
v3 tells us He made light (there was already darkness)
v5 tells us about night and day
v10 tells us about the earth and sea
v16 tells us about the sun and moon
V27 tells us about the male and female humans
Vs8, 13, 19, etc all tell us that evening passed and morning came.
These verses show God making things two at a time, for them to balance each other out.
So if we are following this God, and if we are trying to get our lives to mirror His principles, we should expect that there are going to be conflicting forces. We will have strengths and weaknesses, friends and enemies, a place to serve and a place to receive, joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats. I think we can see this in God's design, where he doesn't abolish the darkness but balances it out with the light, where the solid earth is countered by the fluid sea.
- God is a God of organization. He distinguishes things from other things and gives them names.
textual evidence:
v4 tells us he separated the light from the darkness.
v5 tells us he named the light and darkness 'day' and 'night'
v6 tells us he divided the water, creating the ocean and the whatever-was-above-the-air (some theorists argue for a 'water canopy' that then contributed to the flood. godandscience.org gives a strong argument against this theory.)
v8 tells us God named the air 'sky'
v10 tells us God named the dry land 'earth' and the gathered water 'sea'.
this connects with the next point:
-God is also a God of power and authority.
*power defined as the ability to make things happen.
*authority defined as the right to assert your will over other people's wills.
textual evidence:
v3 says God spoke light into existence. In other words, God demanded something from nothing, and got it. That's power.
God also speaks into existence the air, the earth, the sea, plants, the lights in the sky, and all living things in the sea, the sky and on the earth.
v16 says God made the brighter light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
v18 says all the lights in the sky (sun, moon, stars... planets, comets...?) were placed there to rule the day and the night
v26 says humans were given power over the earth and everything that moves upon it.
God is organized, and God has power and authority - what appears to be absolute power and absolute authority, unless there is some kind of power superior to the power to speak something from nothing. And if there is a being superior to the God of the Bible, the Bible denies it emphatically, so we must assume God also has absolute authority since he asserts his will over everything else and there is nothing asserting its will over his. Genesis shows God giving power to some of his creations so that they will rule over lesser creations. The sun rules the day, and the moon rules the night. Humans rule over the land and the animals. Since we are made in God's image, perhaps we also share this urge to organize things, and that's why we create power hierarchies everywhere we go; in politics, the workplace, the family. Since God has absolute power and absolute authority, there can be no power or authority which does not come from him. The source of this power is God, and the ability to organize it comes from God, so this implies that power hierarchies are part of God's arrangement and that we should be willing to accept the authority placed over us.
Many philosophers (Locke, Hobbes, etc) have discussed the conditions under which a rebellion is justified. All I can say at this point is that the most notable rebellion in the Bible is that of Satan against God, followed by the many rebellions of Israel against God, and those always proved to be calamitous. Many times God saves his people from enslavement and captivity, but always by getting them out of there, or at least by fair fight, never by rebellion. The Israelites left Egypt, they didn't rebel against it; in fact they didn't leave until Pharaoh said they could. The same thing happened in Babylon, with the Israelites obtaining permission from the King before leaving. It is possible that the only form of rebellion there is is rebellion against God, since all power and authority comes from him, and since rebellion is an attempt to fix a situation on our own strength; an indication that we have given up on God. Also, often the result of rebellion is chaos, and since God is a God of order, he probably doesn't like chaos.
- God is good to us. He may be absolutely good, but that remains to be seen.
textual evidence:
v3 tells us God created light.
v11 tells us God made plants. He also made everything else that is alive on Earth.
v27 tells us God made us.
A note on the word 'good': The Encyclopedia Britannica gives two main meanings for good: 1) 'of a favourable character or tendency' and 2) 'virtuous, right, commendable. The first category is based on perspective - I may receive good news, but the same news could be bad for you - and the second is based on morality. You may say that morality is based on perspective too, and certainly superficial differences exist, but we would all protest if someone stole from us, if someone close to us were murdered, if we found that our spouse had been unfaithful, so our morality codes can't be significantly different. Genesis 1 doesn't seem to provide any material that could be used to infer God's moral goodness (all he does is make stuff) so the first category of goodness will be used here. The Encyclopaedia Britannica adds that its etymology is traced back through English and German to the Sanskrit 'gadhya', 'what one clings to'. My definition of 'good' in this case would be, 'that which benefits' or 'that which is necessary for existence' (we all cling to existence above everything else). This is an amoral goodness.
Since God is the source of light and plants(food), which we need, and since without Him we wouldn't exist, we can say that as far as WE are concerned, God is good. He is good for us. In addition there is nothing that does not owe its existence to God, therefore God is good for everything, which is close to absolute goodness. But this kind of goodness requires a beneficiary and thus is not absolute. Absolute goodness doesn't depend on anything else but is perfect of itself.
-God is the source of all identity and purpose.
v5 shows God naming day and night
v7-8 show God making air to divide the waters, and naming it 'sky'
v10 shows God naming the earth and the sea
v11 shows God making plants for the production of grain and fruit (v29 shows that they are to provide food to man)
v14-15 shows God making lights in the sky to be used for signs, seasons, years and days and to give light to the earth.
v16 shows God making the greater and lesser lights to rule the day and night and to separate them.
v26 shows God making man and giving him authority over the animals and the land.
The things that God makes have a purpose, and he gives them a name. He knows what they are; he knows what they're for. The creation of the cosmos and Earth seems to have been done with man's needs in mind. And man himself was given a job to do on Earth in taking care of the Garden of Eden. It is God who names the night and day, the earth and the sea and the air, because he knows their true nature. I find this really comforting because all of this has shown that God is always the one in control. He has the power and the authority and the desire to create order and balance out of chaos. If we look at the beautiful way God's creation is so purposful and all fits in together, I think maybe we can see the higher purpose of our lives, how they are designed with a purpose in mind, how they fit in with other lives to help accomplish something on Earth.
Which leads to the final point:
- God always has a plan. And there is always another step.
textual evidence:
v1 shows the "beginning". I think it is safe to say this only indicates the beginning of earth and/or human sentience.
some numbers: (note: Genesis 1 contains 31 verses)
# times "Then God Said" occurs: 11
# times God makes or creates something: 10 (counting him making the humans male and female)
# times God does something aside from making stuff: 9
# times God sees that his creation is good: 7
# times God names something: 5
total actions of God, including speaking and seeing: 33
the above goes to show that God is always doing something ELSE. He does something, then he does something else, then something else, then something else. It just doesn't stop, but it always fits in together in a really neat way. Like how he made the world: first light and dark, then water and sky, then land - like he's setting the stage. And then when everything is ready he fills it out: plants, birds, fish, land animals. And finally the piece de resistance: people! People made like God, no less. This shows a definite plan with consecutive steps arranged for optimal efficiency. And there is no evidence to show that God ever stopped planning. As far as we can tell his initial plan (Step 1. Make Light) has evolved to this massive interconnected web of people and events and it's anyone's guess as to where this thing is going but I think I will stick with the man with the plan.
What I think is cool is how God wants to get life on earth started as quickly as possible. He seems to be so excited. As he goes, he sets everything up so the plants and animals will make more of themselves, and when he makes the birds and fish, he specifically tells them, "Have lots of kids! Fill the seas and the sky(v22)!" He blesses them, too (v22), and does the same thing with man, "Increase in number! Fill the earth! Rule over stuff!" (v28) and he continues, "look over here! I made you plants! You can eat them! These ones are for you. The green ones are for the animals. (29, 30) Speaking of animals, you've got to see them. There are these wild ones walking around, you have to make friends with them first, and I even put things in the air, they're called birds, and look, look, there are these little guys crawling all over the place. It's all yours! What are you waiting for???" [I know the enthusiasm is overstated, but the verses understate it so much and yet it's right there]. And there's still the morning and the evening of the day left, so he just looks at everything all over again (v31) and watches it go. And it's "very" good. Everything else was just good. But this, all of it together, is 'very' good.
finally,
- there is something about man that is special to God.
This is as far as I can go with that until I finish C2.
A question from my reading:
In view of my extensive definitions of the word 'good'... when God looks at stuff and says it is 'good' (v4 etc), what does he mean? What kind of good?
What does it mean that we are made in God's image?
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| someone from california checks my blog four or five times a day, the same time each hour.
Whoever you are, what are you waiting for? Maybe I can oblige.
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| BOTH MY PARENTS NOW HAVE FACEBOOK. why. why. why. why. | | |
| I haven't updated in a long time, and there's a lot to say. Everything has turned around since the beginning of the summer. First, Toronto held a local conference and divided it up into four workshops to talk about how to go on with the church life. I can't really remember what they were - discipleship, service, worship, and community outreach, I think. I ended up in the community outreach group (since renamed Healing Hands) and within a few weeks we had found a food bank to volunteer at. The first time I went, Heng was there too. And we were dividing up big bags of rice into single portions, so they could be put into packages for people. And I think I must have expressed something to Heng about how frustrated I was with the church life, and how I wasn't doing anything and I really wanted to be doing something. So she told me what was going on with her and Rhema - that they were starting to brainstorm ideas for the college work next year. So I jumped in headfirst, not really thinking about it - just knowing it was something to do. So we got together to discuss all of our ideas, and the different areas of our ideas - Jean wanted to unify God's testimony on campus, i.e get all the separate little Christian clubs to work together as one team. I wanted to reach out to, and connect with, all of the people on the fringes of our group - to provide a ssafe community and a place where they felt they were valued. Because that's what I'd been missing. Heng wanted to do more outreach work. And as we talked, I reconnected with Jean and Rhema, two of my very oldest friends whom I'd drifted from in recent years. And I connected to Heng too, but that was unprecedented. And we put together a 16-page manifesto and presented it to Del and Ian, who helped outline some major steps for us. So we called everyone on our current college-age list, and talked to them about coming to the meetings. And we established a core group, and found things for everyone to do. And that's roughly where we were at before the college training - still keeping an eye out for interested people. Then Titus gave that groundbreaking message about something-or-other, in which he used the example of the children's meeting, and how you could go from house to house praying with everyone. And for some reason EVERYONE jumped on it. Toronto and Cleveland and Buffalo are the three that I know about, but there must be a few more. So right away we compiled a hit list (elders and district leaders) and started grabbing people and inviting ourselves over to their houses to pray. Everyone was rather awkward about it, but once we were actually at their house it was always really profitable. Then I went to GO, which was also really good. And I really wanted to go because we need to learn how to preach the gospel if we're going to focus on that this year, so I had to arrange an incredibly complicated ride schedule. Basically I couldn't go down right away because I had to work. So my dad drove me and a couple others down a few days into it. Then I was there for three days and drove back with Ian. Then I was in Toronto for Thursday, because we'd committed weeks ago to have a planning meeting on Thursday, so I had to be there. Then I drove back down the next morning with Peter Cho, and stayed for the rest of GO. Then I found a ride last minute with Mark Yee, so I could go to Cedar Point with everyone. But it was worth it! I learned how to get contact cards. And be assertive, yet nice. I think that was the high point of my summer - the beginning of GO. And it was all because I finally had a purpose. Then GO was over and we came back here and resumed praying at people's houses. Then Toronto visited Buffalo - by which I mean four people from Toronto visited Buffalo. And that was ok. But when we got back, Rhema and Heng had had the best experiences praying with people. So I jumped back into it, and it was really good. So yeah. | | |
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