A Thought For The Week Of January 1, 2018

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) As we start a new year, where better to look than the very start of the Bible, which begins with the words "In the beginning." This is really such a simple verse and such a simple message (and, really, so is the entire story of creation) but we make it so complicated by trying to force it to answer questions it was never intended to answer. So, you have some Christians who insist on treating the creation story as if it was a science textbook, and some non-Christians who then choose to poke holes in the details of the story. Both groups seem to miss the point. The former abuses Scripture and the latter abuses science. The most important point in the creation story is not how God created. Scripture is not intended and was not intended to get into the nitty gritty of the process of creation. The Bible itself seems happy to leave those questions to science. The most important things about the creation story are, first, simply that God created, and then what that act reveals to us about God. The creation story tells us that God is real and that God is creative and that God cares about what has been created. I'm not saying that there isn't more that we need to learn about God - but from one story (and even one verse) of the Bible, that seems like a lot. And I wonder what difference it might make in the world if we started with the proposition that the God revealed so simply in this story exists. Instead we start either with the proposition that God is much more complicated than the Bible actually reveals, or we begin with the idea that God is a concept to be disproven. But if we started with just this verse - just the idea that everything that was created (all the raw materials, so to speak) came from God then we essentially recognize the goodness of creation - which is another vital part of the story. God saw everything that he had created, and called it "good." But what we do with those divinely created raw materials isn't necessarily good. I don't blame God for nuclear weapons, for example. We've chosen to use the raw materials for purposes that defy goodness and dishonour God, and we choose to do that because we make the Bible (from the creation story on) far more complicated than it should be. Scripture, God, etc. may be mysterious - but it's not that complicated. Everything came from God; God loves what was created - including us; we use what God created for good or for bad or for evil purposes; God calls believers to be active in seeing the goodness of creation and in trying to restore it as best we can. Tough to do, perhaps (that last part) - but not really that hard to understand. So I begin a new year with a commitment to try to see God in everything, and to following what is really a very simple gospel without letting it get too complicated.