Mind of a Christian - Chapter 2

The overshadowed and obvious conversation in Genesis

I think that Genesis 1 and 2 are one of the more read portions of the Bible, perhaps above the 50th percentile (I don't have statistics on this, so it's an anecdotal hunch). It's right there at the beginning, and for curious kids like me in 7th grade, I see my family's "altar bible" on the counter, and think to myself, "this is the book of our faith, so I wonder what's inside." I think I made it to Genesis 4, and closed the book in boredom after seeing the first genealogy of the Bible.

One way or another, the West has familiarized itself with the premise of Genesis 1-2. It's certainly made its rounds in our attention in faith-scientific debates like Ken Ham vs Bill Nye: should Genesis' creation narrative be taken historically-literally; is the universe young or old; etc. And although the science-faith dialogue is important (and fun when everyone gets along!), I don't think that this the main takeaway that the Biblical authors intended for us.

So, I'm actually going to conveniently side-step away from the science-faith conversation surrounding Genesis 1-2, and instead look at it in its theological narrative and significance. I personally think that this is much more useful to meditate on personally or with others, and it helps that it doesn't have to be divisive. So, let's take a look at how Genesis 1-2 shows that:

1. God has full control over reality;
2. God is good, creative, and full of life;
3. Creation is good, beautiful, and abundant - heavenly, even;
4. God created us to partner with Him, so that we can rule the land in the gentle and nurturing sense of a gardener, and not by violence and power projection;

and how we can meditate on these points.

All of these points are obvious and not unorthodox, but it warrants me to bring them up all the more. When a man says, "I love my wife," it's a simple/obvious statement, but it's an entirely different thing to experience that reality in its fullness, both broadly and in the day-to-day moments. My essaying isn't as romantic, but I hope you get the idea: the more we immerse ourselves in this biblical reality, the more fulfilling it is to us, and the more we see it play out throughout the rest of the Bible (because indeed, it plays out a lot).

I might not go through my list in-order, but we'll get through it. So! Let's get started, first with a high-level overview of Genesis 1 and 2.

These two chapters are not linearly sequential, but rather are two parallel narratives. The first narrative is from Genesis 1:1-2:3, and has a cosmic creation narrative about the heavens and the earth. Genesis 2:4 to the end of the chapter has what I'll call an intimate creation narrative about the origin of humans.

They start with different initial states: Genesis 1 with an ocean and Genesis 2 with a desert. But, both of these chapters share the same motif - that reality started out as chaos and devoid of life, and that God stepped in to create something ordered, beautiful, and full of life.

Let's zoom in on Genesis 1. It starts as follows:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was chaos and waste, darkness was on the surface of the deep (תְהוֹם), and the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) was hovering upon the surface of the water (הַמָּיִם).

We're introduced with an unpleasant image. I know that getting tossed around at sea is a regular thing for maritime people (big respect to them), but imagine all of reality only being that. There's no land, no rest, no light. To really drive the point home, the word used for the deep / abyss is tehom (תְהוֹם), which is etymologically related to chaos (tohu, תֹהוּ). To borrow language from the BibleProject, it's chaos-waters, and it's everywhere.

But something changes when the Spirit of God replaces the darkness in hovering over the waters. The chaos waters (tehom, תְהוֹם) is replaced by neutral, workable waters (ha-mayim, הַמָּיִם). Whereas the creation narratives of Israel's neighbors involve some sort of battle or struggle to overcome the chaotic waters (see: Marduk vs Tiamat in Babylonian cosmology), the Spirit of God just needed to hover over it to subdue it.