Genesis Chapter 1

If you missed part 1 please read it here: https://deacondavestowell.com/the-story-of-creation/

For whatever reason Religion has over the years been ostracized for not believing in Science. I am sure that this got locked into place simply because it kind of made some sense.  The Humanists point toward the Creation stories and mock them. Most people of the Bible blush and say well yeah… it might not have that right ….  Unfortunately, they give up far too easily.

Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ

I brought up the premise that the Bible is God’s way of looking at us, while Science is our way of looking at God. I think this is fairly true, simplistic as it may be. Much of the reason that this divide between science and Religion exists is simply most people don’t know too much about the Bible. That is certainly a shame.  I tried in my last article to point out   ways in which we read Genesis and some of the differences we may have when reading it.

Ways to read

A literalist view of reading scripture is dangerous, in that we attribute the meanings definitions and current culture to words written for a different reason.  Words today have different meanings than a Jewish reader would have had… though the meaning and ideas come through strong today as God continues “looking” towards his creation with love.

We are familiar that Genesis says that the world was created in 7 days. On one level 7 means the integer between 6 and 8.  Yet on another level it means Covenant Oath. Numbers had meaning far beyond their mathematic function.  Even today numbers have various meanings. Think of Friday the 13^th. It is just a number and just a day of the week. But join them together and culturally people have a completely different thought.  How many lives does a cat have? 9 well in our culture at least… but in another culture it could be 7 or 13 or various other things. 

Many of the numbers used in the Bible have various levels of meaning. As a matter of fact, reading of Scripture takes us through a myriad of thoughts and emotions as we read it.  It is constantly changing for us simply because we are constantly changing. The words don’t change, but how we think about the words and how we can therefore interact with God is always developing as we change and mature.

Genres in the Bible

Taking the words of Scripture and combining it with what we know about the various genres it is written in combining that with the reason the book was written and to whom it was written, all combine together to form, what is God trying to tell me y that passage.  Reading Genesis Chapter 2 we have God finishing up the creation of the Earth and then He creates the Earth Huh?  Reading this literally can get us in trouble.  But the description of the creation of the Earth is radically different between the two stories.  How can we read this? He created the Earth twice?  There is a much simpler explanation.  The two different stories were written by two different people. 

The Law is important.. but not everything

One other important consideration when reading scripture is that we must look at the Bible as a whole entity.  We cannot just cherry pick verses and use them to “prove” something.  The Book of James relates to Exodus which relates to Isiah, which relates to Obadiah etc., etc.  The 73 book (or 66 for some or even 79 for others (another story another post) have to be read together and used to help understand the other books. Much of the discussion in Early Christianity focuses on how do we reconcile Jesus and the Judaic Law.  It helps to know what the Judaic law is when you are reading passages like that.  One should know that Leviticus could answer so many of these questions. The Book of Numbers as well.

We also have to read knowing scientifically what we know. How does this passage help me to understand the Cosmos as we have found them to be?  Our purpose for reading Scripture should be to get to know better God, so having as many ways to look is wonderful.

Scientific perspective of God

Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre developed and presented his theory in 1927. This is known as the “Big Bang Theory.  He was a professor of Mathematics, astronomy and Physics at Catholic University of Louvaine as well as M./I.T. He was the first to explain the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by a theory of an expanding Universe.  His theory was confirmed by Edwin Hubble.  I started to read over the statistics involved here and honestly way beyond by ability to comprehend, but have at it doing a Google (or other search engine) search.  But Lemaitre obviously had the idea that God was the creator of the Universe, but let Scientific discovery lead him to a Theory that was plausible scientifically, and what also seen is the words “Let there be light. And there was light (Genesis 1:3) What a light that must have been from a singularity to an expanding Universe in a millionth of a second.

Steven Hawking gave a theory that our universe just dropped out a black hole. But that adds just another layer to an infinite number of steps that led to what we see and hear today.  Regardless of how that actually happened, at some point we come back to the first atom being moved. Something made that move and whatever that something is, we can probably consider that God. Even if it goes back through a black hole and starts somewhere else, something made that first move.

1st Great Truth

So that is where we start out as our first great Truth of the Creation story. The main point is God created all things at the beginning of time.  We get all bogged down in the details. When was the beginning of time? I don’t know.  But does it matter? Is it more important to know that God created it and based on the very broad definition of God given above, no matter what you believe or don’t believe God fits this definition.

So as hard as it maybe to believe, the Catholic Church asks each of us to believe this. But since it is something which everyone can believe. It would be insanity to not believe this. ‘But, what about scientific study?’  Great, suspend that belief and extract it from the study… That is part of the scientific method, which the Church created. The main point that should be remembered is in the end God is the creator of all things at the beginning of time.

2nd Great Truth

A second belief that should be believed is that Man was specifically created. See there goes these creationists again.  No look at what was just said. Then think back towards the beginning of this study. Man has not changed really at all since the beginning of Homo Sapiens. But wasn’t he at some point from Homo Erectus? maybe… but so what? Whatever process God used to specifically create man, He used. But man as he is, right now was specifically created. How he was created. again no one was there to witness it so we don’t have the ability to know for sure.  Ideas such as Space aliens coming to earth starting the human race sound crazy to most ears. But we were not there. We only know that Man was created (somehow; someway) specifically.   I can hear some deep breaths in either confusion or anger. It doesn’t take too much of a leap from any perspective to recognize mankind as unique.  I don’t know of any other creature that has had as much impact and technological advances as we have. We are unique and we are specifically unique in being.

Review

Well it seems this is a good point to close out Part 2. We have some information on reading the Bible. Some information on how we think about God, How Science and Religion work together to give us the full truth. and we looked at the first couple of True truths that are found in the Creation stories… 1. That God (by your own definition) created all that there is at the beginning. And 2.) Man was specifically created. These two things are pretty obvious. Whether human beings we were made as described, or developed over time to where we are right now, we can all see that man is a specific group and our genome project tells us we are all pretty much the same.

Next time

So next time We will continue down the list of things we actually should learn from the Creation stories in Genesis. We should read the stories not looking for historical accuracy but with a viewpoint of God’s love for each one of us. See you in Part 3

There are a huge number of resources that go over The Creation Stories. There are so many approaches that can be used. The purpose here is to highlight those things which allow us to accurately read the Bible. To read Scripture with anything but an open mind to what God is speaking to you inhibits your ability to grow in your love of Christ/ That should be the reason one is reading any of the books of the Bible. Science has nothing to fear from religion and Religion has nothing to fear from Science. two different ways of explaining what we can…the same thing… God

Here is a link to the Genesis Chapter 1 http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/1