Parish Magazine Item for February 2023

 

From The Rectory

 

I wrote last month about the Diocesan Year of the Old Testament. As part of that, some of us have been spending some time in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. These ancient texts are in many ways strange to us. We come to them, perhaps, with a whole host of modern scientific questions, which I guess never really entered the minds of their first readers. Whatever we think the Bible means to assert about such questions as when the earth come in to being, it seems to me obvious that Genesis means to tell us, above all, about God, his creation, and humanity’s place within it.

You might think that Genesis takes some believing in 2023. It’s not at all obvious that modern atheists have better answers about the origins and significance of the universe. As someone has said, Christians believe in the virgin birth of Christ; atheists believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos. In a way, atheists embrace a bigger miracle: something out of nothing, order out of chaos, apparent beauty, truth and goodness without any objective basis for these things.

 

If we think for a moment only of Genesis chapters one to three, we can notice at least five great truths which give a radical basis for a Christian understanding of life on planet earth, and which go on to shape human history and biblical theology. 

 

(1) God created the world. Therefore the world belongs to him. And is accountable to him. It does have meaning and purpose. And a God given destiny. Life is more than random chance. You are more than a chemical machine. You have enormous dignity and significance.  

 

(2) God created the world good. The ancients were sometimes very suspicious of matter. And Christians too have had their issues with the stuff of life and of sex. But the bible teaches the original goodness of the created cosmos. And holds out hope for it. Our bodies and this world are gifts to be enjoyed, to be received with thanksgiving. When our hearts stir at a sunrise, the intuitions we have of being a small part of some grand design are true.

 

(3) God made men and women to live in the world under his loving rule. Genesis gives us a delightful picture of harmonious relationships between God and humanity, human beings and the world. We were intended to be stewards of the creation, in friendship with God and with one another. And yet we know that we live in a far from perfect world. The Bible can explain all the brokenness and pain we see around us:

 

(4) Human beings rejected God’s loving rule. All of us, in one way or another, want to live in God’s world, and receive his good gifts, but to please ourselves. At the heart of the human problem, is the problem of the human heart. We don’t want God as our God. We would rather be our own gods, decide for ourselves, or invent gods we can control, who won’t trouble us too much. Human beings fight with God and with one another. We see the battle of the sexes. And the abuse of the created world.

 

(5) God goes on loving human beings. God doesn’t give up on us, or the world he has made. If we looked at the detail of Genesis chapter three, we could see the judgement of God, certainly, but also his mercy. The Bible doesn’t end after three chapters. Yes, the good world has gone wrong, but God means to put it right.  

 

These five points, then, set the scene for the coming of Jesus. The world was made through him. And he came to redeem his own. He always lived under God’s perfect loving rule. And he takes all our mess and confusion on himself. He undoes the consequences of human rebellion and failure, so that God’s plans for the world can at last be fulfilled. Jesus means to bring us back to a new and better Eden. The Bible begins with a garden; it ends with a garden city. In a way it is a love story: it begins with the marriage of Adam and Eve and it ends with the marriage of Christ and his church. Jesus is the true faithful human being, the only perfectly good person. We can know the love of God, for which we were made, by trusting in Jesus.

 

These great principles, this story line, could transform how we think and live. God invites us to live as part of this story of his rescue and renewal of our fallen world.

 

Why not take some time this month to read and reflect on Genesis chapters one to three? You can easily find them in a modern translation online at biblegateway.com, if you don’t have a bible handy. These few pages of Scripture, if we took them to heart, might transform everything.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd