“In The Beginning…”
Act 1—Gen. 1:1ff
4/3/11
3KCOC
Introduction: The best story wins!
In Texas their athletic and academic meets are both governed by a body called The University Interscholastic League (U.I.L). When I was in second grade we were given the opportunity to compete in the U.I.L.’s story telling competition. The rules were fairly straight forward. We listened to a teacher read a story and then we would retell the story as best we could before a panel of judges. I never made it that far. Not knowing what I was getting into, I eagerly volunteered. The day came for our first practice. We were to hear the story from our homeroom teacher and then go tell the story to the other class. I had no problem on the first part, but the second was a different matter altogether! I stood in front of the classroom and stared blankly into the eyes of my fellow second graders. No words were coming out of my mouth! I was simply petrified! In a great act of mercy, the teacher, Ms. Chisum, had me turnaround and face her desk and just tell the story to her. So with my back to the class I mumbled some pitiful version of the story to Ms. Chisum, slipped out the door, and my U.I.L. storytelling days were over. It doesn’t matter how good your story is, if you can’t tell it.
A lot of us are like the scared 2nd grader. We know there is something compelling about our story, but we can’t tell it. Our backs are turned to the world and we mumble our story in our holy huddles we call a church service and then we wonder why the world isn’t so impressed and why they seem to so greatly misrepresent our story. Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t relate our faith to the idea of a story. We think of our faith as list of propositions that we must believe on one side of the paper and a list of do’s and don’ts on the other side of the paper. We don’t tell our story, because we don’t even know we have one. And the world isn’t very interested in our propositions and list of proper behaviors.
In fact, our holy book, our Bible, our Scriptures are predominately related to us in story form. Even those portions which are not in narrative form are based on the stories. But this is good news, because our culture and our world love stories! I recently saw a movie based on the modern day manifestations of the Greek Gods—Zeus, Poseidon, and the like. It is a great story, but no one today is dying in the name of Zeus. Those stories are reduced to fairy tales, not stories which people orient their lives around by the millions. So, why do people live and die for the story on these pages? Over the next several weeks, we are going to relearn our story, the entire Bible in six acts. Then maybe we will know it better, live it better, and tell it better. Maybe we will finally turn around and face the class, so to speak. The greatest story has the best beginning, and so we start today, “In the beginning.” What does God expect us to believe, proclaim, and defend about creation? We will know the answer when we know our story.
Move 1: The creation story of Enuma Elish (“When On High”)
But first I want to share a different story with you, one you are probably not very familiar with. It helps place our creation story in its appropriate context. This is the story of “Enuma Elish” or translated, “When On High.” It was written down long before our story and it belonged to the ancient Mesopotamians, and the land nicknamed “the cradle of civilization.”
In the beginning…there were the divine beings Tiamat and Apsu. They were personifications of a preexistent realm of only waters. Tiamat, the female, was the salt water and Apsu, the male, was the fresh water. These waters mingled, or more precisely, mated and produced the second generation of gods—Lahmu and Lahamu. Like all other gods, these newly born gods were also associated with nature and so Lahmu and Lahamu were the silt, which were made by the waters. These two mated and produced the third generation—the horizon—Anshar and Kishar and they produce Anu, the god of heavens. The supreme deity was a fourth generation god.
I can relate to the senior god, Apsu, who couldn’t sleep because of all the noise his kids were making! He had a servant named Mummu, who advises him to kill all the other gods. His wife, Tiamat, tries to dissuade him, but the council of Mummu wins out. Ea, who is the god of wisdom and the son of Anu (so, fifth generation) hears about it. He casts a sleeping spell (ironic) on Apsu and then kills him.
Tiamat, Apsu’s mate, is outraged. She swears vengeance on the gods involved in her husband’s death. She raises an army of all kinds of creatures—serpents, dragons, centaurs, scorpion-men, etc. The other gods are in panic mode, because both Anu and Ea fail to defeat her.
But Ea begets another god known as Marduk (sixth generation). He has four ears and four eyes and is therefore able and wise. Marduk goes before the panic-stricken gods and volunteers to defeat Tiamat, if they will give him the high seat in the council. They basically fall all over themselves in granting him his request.
Marduk and his army march against Tiamat and her army at last. The battle is swift and decisive. Marduk summons the winds and paralyzes Tiamat and slays her with an arrow through her heart. Her main general, Kingu, is taken captive and Marduk cuts Tiamat in two, forming the heaven and the earth with each part of her corpse. The lesser gods are charged with building a city to honor Marduk, the city of Babylon, but they get weary and rebel. So, Marduk has Kingu killed and through his blood and clay forms humans, seven male and seven females. They are put on the earth to do the heavy lifting for the gods.
Move 2: The creation story of Ancient Israel
This was the story that an entire civilization oriented their lives around. For them the gods cared little for humanity, except for only what they could do for them. Yet, there is another story from ancient civilization that will certainly be familiar to you. It doesn’t have all the sex and action of the previous story. Hollywood would definitely opt for Enuma Elish over this one.
It opens simply. Read Gen. 1:1-2. There is no story about how this God came to be. He isn’t some spawn of generations of mating gods. He simply is. There is no rival god to be defeated in order to create the heavens and earth. Can there be a more understated claim in all of literature? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There is no effort, no contest, no rival; he just simply created all in existence by his spoken word.
Yet, his creative work was not done; the Spirit of God hovers over the waters of formless and void earth. Not every aspect of the story is entirely clear. Is there time that elapses between this initial creation and the days of creation that follow? Or is this simply part of day one? Either are possible, but let’s not miss the point of the story. God created all that is in creation and there was nothing in existence before he began creating.
The story then unfolds in a rhythm of poetic symmetry. Read Gen. 1:3-27. Each day, God simply speaks, “And God said…” and whatever God said happens. There is no chaos or opposition to God’s creation. It unfolds in an orderly and structured way, completely opposite of the chaotic manner the heaven and earth was thought to have been created in Mesopotamia.
Even the days form a pattern within a pattern. The light is created on the first day, but the specifics are not created until the fourth day (sun, moon, stars). The waters were created on day two, and they are filled with life on day five. The land is created with vegetation on day three and animals and humans are created to inhabit it on day six.
This symmetry tells a story of an absolute sovereign God creating and ordering his creation. The competing narrative of our day comes from naturalistic science, which tells a story about all in existence coming through nature alone, but that was not the competing story in the days of Genesis. The competing stories that were being told when Genesis was written were stories like Enuma Elish. These kinds of stories threatened to redefine Israel at all times. The story of Genesis was given as the creation story that was to define them. To read it as a modern scientific text is to do great damage to its context and meaning. It obscures the story. It isn’t trying to date the age of the earth nor does its structure and style insist that everything was created in six literal, consecutive, 24 hour periods. We better understand the message of the story, when we understand it against the backdrop of other ancient creation stories.
What the biblical creation story tells us that God alone is creator and he has no natural rivals. He is not part of his creation and nothing existed before him. Creation is not an afterthought to be made with the body of a slain god, but the intentional design of a good God, who made a good creation. Man and woman were not created from the blood of a dead, rebellious god to lift the burden off the lesser gods, but they were created in the image of God as the crowning achievement of his creation. Humans made images of their gods and displayed them in their temples. But the God of the Bible put his image on display in human beings. He has said, “This is my representation within creation and I have given them dominion over creation.” There is another story we must consider today, the prevailing competing story today.
Move 3: The ‘creation story’ of Darwinian Naturalists.
In the beginning about 14 billion years ago, there was no god, but there was a very big bang, full of energy and matter which gave birth to our universe. The earth formed and settled into orbit about 4.5 billion years ago. As the earth cooled, somewhere between 3.8 and 2.5 billion years ago life appeared! No one really knows how, but somehow certain molecules became the simplest form of a living cell. Over a few more billion yeas life became more complex, spawning an increasing variety of life. From this evolutionary process came our prehistoric ancestors. And over many more millions of years, through natural selection, we have evolved into what we are now.
This story is different from the biblical story in many ways. It presupposes that matter simply existed. The biblical account presupposes God as eternal, but a naturalistic account declares there is no god from the beginning. So, don’t be duped into thinking that this story is simply scientific and ours is not. It is not scientific to rule out the cause of the universe prior to your investigation and that is exactly what naturalistic atheism does.
Though the biblical story is not a scientific theory, many scientific discoveries have proven certain aspects of the biblical story, such as the fact that the universe had a beginning. And our story far better explains the uniqueness and special abilities of humans than naturalism. We bear our Creator’s image and are therefore rational, spiritual, and relational beings. No aspect of naturalism can come close to explaining this. It is they who have to keep adjusting their story in the light of new scientific discoveries, not us. Yet it is we who often cower at the teacher’s desk, afraid to face the class to tell our story. Why is that? Why do we believe we have lost? Just because they told us we have?
Move 4: Telling our story in celebration of our Creator.
I read an article about how PETA is giving away a free vasectomy—that’s right—to a human! The lucky winner will be a man who brings in his animal to have it spayed or neutered and then writes the best essay. Now there’s a prize to look forward to! But their rationale is that the overpopulation of humans is a threat to animals. So, for the same reasons we fix our animals, we need to fix our humans! What story is PETA living by? Alasdair Macintyre says, “We do not know what we are to do until we know what story we are in.” So, what story is PETA living in? Are they living in the story of good God who created humans in his image and told them to be fruitful and multiply? Or are they living in the story that declares there is no difference between humans and animals? I am not making statements about human birth control or fixing animals, but I am saying that when we look close enough to the actions of others we can discern the story they are living in.
The rest of the Bible boldly celebrates its creation story and the glory of the Creator. We’ve heard from the Psalms today, but look at what Paul told the Athenians who did not know about our creator. Read Acts 17:22-28. Paul was not apologetic about his creator, nor would he yield the ground to the intellectual big shots at Athens. He knew his story and he turned faced the class and boldly proclaimed it for their sake, and the glory of his creator.
We have to remember our story always begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It isn’t only our story, but the story for all of creation. Nothing exists apart from God as Creator and Sustainer. And his creation praises the creator. Read Ps. 148. What story are we living in? Let’s not leave the world guessing. It is time to face the classroom and boldly proclaim and celebrate the story of God and his creation. Let’s own our story, share it, hold to it, and worship our God as Creator forever!
Invitation: Become a part of the story.
The greatest thing about God’s story is that he invites us to be a part of it. If you want give your life to one who made it all, including you and me, then please do so today!
