Every year since I was saved on that Amtrak train between Fernley and Reno, I've read the Bible from cover to cover, taking notes and learning more about who Christ is, who I am as a Christian, and what it really means to be a Christian.
January First is always IN THE BEGINNING day! The rest of the book falls on different days - I usually end in August or September, because I simply read and absorb to my heart's content, rather than follow a specific schedule. But for some strange reason,Genesis 1 always falls on the first of January. Wonder why.
With that ado, here's some thoughts from my notebook on the opening three chapters of Genesis, the tale of Adam and Eve, the Creation of the World, the Garden of Eden and the Serpent...
It's good to remember that the humans who wrote Genesis were not the ones who were there. In fact, it wasn't even Moses, for the most part, although he apparently did the compilation when he started writing the Exodus down. Genesis is the combination of TEN different accounts of the time before Israel's family came to Egypt during the famine. They tell a history in a way that is true, but in places has the same difficulties as any telling of history by the people who came later. Because it's GOD, the important parts are TRUE. Beyond that, the choice of details sometimes got left to the humans.
I will admit here and now that I am NOT a literalist when it comes to the "six days" of creation, but I am a firm believer in the story of creation. Here's why... Read the account: "Let there be light" - that's NOT the formation of the earth (it even SAYS so; that doesn't happen until v.10) - that's not the sun (that's in v. 16). THAT is so obviously the Big Bang that it's phenomenal anyone still argues it. "And God said..." - now that we've come to understand that both matter and energy is vibrations, how obvious does it become that God spoke the Universe into creation? What IS speech? Vibration. And we can go on and on. But most importantly, if you were God, and you're explaining to pre-scientific man how You created the Universe, how would You describe it? Think about that carefully, and then go back and read Genesis 1:1-19 again. Current cosmologists may disagree with some of the ordering, but the only thing that modern science hasn't matched the Genesis account in yet is the pre-flood lack of rainfall because of the upper and lower barriers of water in the firmament. The scientist in me cannot fathom that. The Christian in me is patient - everything else has proven itself true. [Oh! And the other reason I'm not a "six day" guy is that even God's account doesn't allow for the creation of a solar day until verse 16, the "fourth day". So, what WAS a "day" until then? That's all a caveat to pre-scientific man: It's an easier tale to tell when You're trying to teach Man the concept of a Sabbath if you give them a reason for resting on the seventh day - after all, it's not like He NEEDED to rest on the seventh day or any OTHER day.]
Remember the "ten accounts" part? Genesis 2:4 begins a second account. It's a second account of the creation of Man. Of course it backtracks!
Don't spend your time complaining that Eve listened to Satan and ate the fruit - she never even heard the directive! God gave Adam that order in 2:17, and didn't create his mate until verse 22! No, the sin that got us evicted was later. Read Gen 3:11b-13...
Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
God gave them a chance to accept responsibility for their actions, and they each passed the buck. He immediately blames her, and she immediately blames the serpent. What if they had both said, "Yes, Lord, and we're sorry." Would we still be in the Garden? Possible.
Sometimes, getting my children involved in Scripture takes some creativity. My Star Wars addict teenage boy studied Genesis 1 enough to come up with this a year ago, just before Episode VII came out....fair warning, if you see sacrilege wherever you look, don't read further...
"In The Beginning, God created a galaxy far far away. The galaxy was without form, and void, and the Dark Side was over the face of the deep. And God Said, Let the Light Side Be, and there was the Light Side of the Force. And God saw that the Light was good. And God separated the Light side from the Dark. God called the Light Side Good, and the darkness He called Evil..."
Not to be outdone, my then nine-year old wanted to change it to Let There Be Cake! Again, you've been warned...this is from the Bible of the "Batter-Day Saints"...
"And He called the solid part Cake, and the creamy part Frosting, and it was good...And God said, Let there be a Knife to divide the Light from the Dark. And the Light He called Angel Food, and the Dark He called Devil's Food. And it was good..." OR this alternative... "...and He separated the dry cake from the liquid. And the dry cake He called Brownie, and the liquid He called Milk..."
The moral of the story: do (almost) whatever you have to do to get your kids into the Bible.
Notice that we're all supposed to be vegetarians, or at least we WERE before the Fall: This is Genesis 1:29-30....
29And
God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is
on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You
shall have them for food.
30And
to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to
everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of
life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
It wasn't until death was introduced through the Tree of Knowledge that we learned to eat (and like) dead meat as food. (By the way, if you read the end of Revelation, it looks like the Tree of Knowledge will be present after the Second Coming, in our Final Home.)
Both God and the Devil tell the humans the truth about the Tree of Knowledge, you realize... In 2:17, God says, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And while God gave them a stay of execution, their immortal lives came to an end and they began their slow deterioration towards death at that moment. But listen to what the serpent says to the woman in 3:5 - “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And he was right: they did NOT surely die - at least not that day. And their eyes WERE opened, and they WERE like God in the sense of knowing good and evil - where they had only known good before. Tragically, the serpent told them the truth. And the temptation which the devil introduced that day is still the leading cause of evil...the temptation for something that we really wanted anyway...
There is a "gap" implied between Genesis chapters 2 and 3. At the end of Genesis 2, "the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed." When we start the next chapter, we only know that the serpent is casually chatting with the woman. In 3:8, God comes walking "in the cool of the day", fully expecting to walk with His two master creations (and knowing already what's happened, but that's another story), as if it's a regular occurrence. Here's my question: how long elapses between chapters 2 and 3? Do our ancestors spend two days in the Garden with God? Two months? Two decades? Why not two millennia? They were almost certainly immortal until they were cast out...I'd sure like to think that Adam and Eve spent a long time enjoying God's presence in the birthplace of humanity. (Actually, that's not true either - Adam was created in 2:7, and then the Garden was created for him in the next verse. But, again, that's another story.)
LAST THOUGHT: Here's something to sleep on... If you believe that God can create the universe...that God created mankind...EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK that it happened exactly the way Genesis describes it, remember that if GOD CAN DO THAT, DON'T YOU THINK HE CAN DO WHATEVER MIRACLE YOU NEED TO HAVE HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE?
Never lose faith in an omnipotent God. EVER. Even if YOU can't imagine how your situation can be salvaged, HE CAN. And WILL.
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