Genesis 1:3-4

2006.Mar.19 14:19

Creating Light

Read Genesis 1:3-4 | Full Chapter

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
(Genesis 1:3-4, NASB)

God’s first step, post creating “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) is to create light. It’s interesting that it specifies “light” rather than, for example, “energy”. (http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/9_literal.html also uses the term “light” in its translation, so I’m going to more or less accept that). Creating light, particularly in contrast to “energy”, implies sight. And then he separates light from darkness. That is, he prepares a situation in which most humans can visibly see for part of the time. The use of sight, light and darkness are often used, in the Bible and elsewhere, to symbolize spiritual realities.

Then, it seems clear, that God deliberately wants us to get used to the idea that we don’t know everything, and he is, indeed, explicitly hiding some knowledge, some understanding from us. This is reiterated with the trees, later. In this, God calls light “good” but has no recorded comment here on the darkness. The darkness is not so much good, perhaps, as necessary. The darkness of the night is the absence of one sort of energy, just as a lack of certain knowledge is also the absence of a desire to sin in humans. To see some of the things God can see, we must be aware of the ability to hurt others. It might have been nice had that knowledge remained absent, but, then…well, perhaps that’s another subject.

Genesis 1:1-2

2006.Mar.06 16:08

Above the Void, a Plan

Read Genesis 1:1-2 | Full Chapter

From Genesis, Entry 1

So, God’s chilling. Or whatever a omnipotent being apparently largely unaffected by time does before time begins. Since the subject of this blog category is neither metaphysics, nor philosophy, I’ll skip the required descussion on God’s self-existance. I’m more concerned with the relationship between God and I.

Let’s suffice it so, he has a plan, whilst chilling. So, he creates the heavens and earth (Genesis 1:1). Insofar as for the time being, I assume he had a plan by this point, I can’t exactly engage my wish of fanciful: “Well, I guess I’ll make a…earth!” Okay, I have some metaphysical thoughts on that. But I will refrain. Still, this seems a little disconnected. I’ll get to a point later.

Now here may be one of my favorite things ever written, from the NASB: "”The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters”" (Genesis 1:2, NASB) .

Why so cool? Because this is the one time I can think of that we really see, in the Bible, God just…chilling. Think of that, God hovering over a formless earth, moving across the waters. What was he thinking.

Okay, so, I am going to jump into theology for a moment. Here’s my theory.
Trying to refine my understanding, to correct, alter, drop if need be, this theory, is one of the major reasons that I am trying this step-by-step through the Bible. I imagine it will take most of my life, should I keep it up. Cool.

Here’s my guess:

God wants friendship.

Let me back up. To know God better, to begin to understand his reasons, motives, desires, I have several resources, among them: the Bible, the Holy Spirit, worship, prophecy, talking about him with other people, etc. All these being great, they also leave me wondering how I can understand him on a more “human” level.

There is one more source: myself. "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”" (Genesis 1:26, NASB) . That implies to me that I am enough similar to God that I can gather some of his desires by looking at my own. Among them, friendship. I’ll have a lot more to say about this when I actually get to that verse, say, sometime around June.

So, let’s propose that God wanted friends. And that’s what maybe he’s thinking as he hovers over the deep. About me and you, being his friends. But he knows it’s not as simple as just saying “Hey, you’re my friend”. And if you question the difficulty of that, I encourage a look at your friendships.

I hope to post in this once a week.