Genesis 1 - The Beginning of Creation and Creativity

With the very first book, chapter, and verse of the Bible, the overall importance of the creation story of our entire universe is put on full display as the centerpiece of the biblical narrative.  God’s creation is what matters.  As the first message to mankind from God in the Bible, it highlights the importance of the very real and literal ordering of the generation of God’s creation.  It shows itself as the divinely inspired word of God presented to mankind from outside of space and time based upon its beginning perspective from outside of our created universe (“In the beginning God”), and it sets God apart from that creation as an eternal being who created all that we experience in His creation.  Time itself is a construct of mankind to measure the relative movement and change in position of physical matter, energy waves, and light.  Because God is outside of all these things while simultaneously present with all these things, he is technically “outside of time” and also “outside of physical space.”

     Genesis 1 begins at the beginning of our known experience within God’s creation.  It sets the stage for our understanding of everything that follows it in the Bible.

     He created the heaven and the earth.  This statement draws attention to the importance of the earth as it is mentioned on the same level as heaven, which is everything else outside of the earth itself.  There is a great vastness in God’s creation and to put both the earth and "everything else outside of the earth in the known universe” on the same level shows us what God wants us to focus on in his message to us, the earth.

     This doesn’t preclude God from having created other beings on other planets, but it does stress the importance of the earth to the receivers of this message in the Bible…mankind (perhaps, if there are other civilizations on other planets circling other stars, they have their own version of the Bible given to them and tailored to them by God also).  By omission, the Bible often stresses what the important messages are for mankind to receive from God in the Holy Bible.  I believe that this is one of those places.  God wants us to know that he created everything, but he also wants us to focus on what is important for us and that is the earth itself.

     If we delve deep enough into scientific analysis of the energy required to bridge the distances physically between the stars, we will find that there is no possibility of physical alien life forms ever having meaningful contact with us humans here on earth.  At best, if an alien civilization tried to communicate with us using light (the fastest communication medium), we were able to capture the light, we understood the message being sent, and we could reply with a message of our own that could be understood, it would take years for that two-way communication to occur with a planet circling the stars nearest to our own solar system.

     If we meld scientific theory (all science is theory without direct observational evidence and testing with scientific method) with the next passages of Genesis 1, we can see that there is good evidence that our solar system was likely formed of dust that coalesced into planets, one of them being the earth prior to the formation of our sun.  The Bible makes no reference to the timetables of this period of time prior to the first day of creation.  When the sun comes into being on that first day of creation, God commanded it be so, and he saw that it was good.

     The evening and the morning were the first day.  It is with some speculation that God’s calendar has as its center the Promised Land on earth.  It is my thought that the dividing of the light from the darkness, that the first day began in the evening, and that the first rays of light to hit the earth were timed such that dusk fell upon the Promised Land upon the first shining of the sun.  Thus, each day begins at the time of dusk in Israel and ends at dusk the following day.

     The second day, God divides the waters above from the waters below.  Air, in addition to being a gas, is also by definition, a liquid.  Dividing the vapors and air from the more solid, liquid form of water also makes sense scientifically as the heavier liquid water coalesces upon the surface of the earth separating itself firmly from the gases of what is also referred to as heaven.  We often still refer to what is in the sky as being in the heavens.  There are multiple uses of the word “heaven” in the English translations of the Bible, but in all instances, they refer to a place outside of the surface of the earth.

     The third day, God made the liquid water settle upon the face of the earth in the deeper parts of the land exposing dry land which he also called earth.  Also on this day, he brought forth all manner of plant life to grow upon the earth.

     On the fourth day, God allowed the Sun, the moon, and the stars to become visible from the surface of the earth in their fullness.  It is important to note that it explicitly states that not only are they to mark the time and seasons, but God set them in the heavens for “signs.”  If they are meant to be signs for humankind, it then follows that we are meant to see the signs in the heavens and pay attention to them.

     On the fifth day, all living creatures were created and he commanded them to reproduce and fill the earth.

     And, on the sixth day, God created humankind, male and female in the image of spiritual beings.  He gave them dominion over the earth and all things upon the earth.  He gave them all growing plants to eat as their meat.  It is my thought that these are humans, but not humans of the lineage of Adam and Eve.  In later chapters of Genesis, we can investigate this demarcation further.

     It is important to note, though, that God finishes his creation with mankind which is the crowning jewel of his creation.  He spent full days creating multiple other things, but also one full day was devoted to the creation of mankind.  We are special in God’s eyes.  It is my belief that by creating man in the image of spiritual beings from outside space and time, we are anchored to the earth, but we also have both a soul and a spirit, and from these springs the same touch of divinity that displays itself with creativity.  Humans create music, art, and literature because God is the ultimate divine creator of the universe, and we follow him in the art of creation (in poor imitation of his full creation).

     It is often asked by non-believers why God would create a universe knowing full well that there would be evil, pain, and suffering in it.  We could also ask ourselves why in popular culture humans create stories, songs, and movies containing the same elements.  It is about the ending and the journey to get to the ending that matters.  It is to the greater glory of God that the entirety of the story of his creation ends with a triumph of good over evil.

     It is the same with being a parent.  We know that for our children there could (and very likely will) be pain, suffering, and death, yet we are driven to replicate God’s works by creating and raising children of our own because we are made in the image of God.  I would not consider humans that create and rear children to be evil because of knowing full well what those children would encounter in this life, and it is a false narrative that God is evil for creating us and all of creation knowing full well how the story would unfold.  If we see the story of creation in its fullness, we can see more clearly that this is all in accordance with his divine plan.

Written by Leon Workman