This is the second post in the series, The Work of Creation.
During this weeklong exploration of the creation stories in the Bible, we will be looking at different aspects of the first two chapters of Genesis. Yesterday, we laid out a basic description of the two stories to introduce the series and get some thoughts flowing. Today, we are going to jump into a more focused look at the mystery of God within these stories.
Here’s the thing that we’ve noticed: these stories have been mistaken as descriptions of what happened at the beginning of time. They were never intended to give biological or historical evidence for creation. I don’t care what your grandmother says. Just because the Bible says that God created in 7 days, does not mean that evolution is a sham and we should ignore gravity. In fact, the opposite is true. These stories have so much mystery and beauty in them that we can’t bear to ignore scientific discoveries because these stories show us that the natural world is a very important part of our existence that we are intimately related to on a deep level (for more on this see Elizabeth Johnson’s book Ask the Beasts).
As people have taken these two stories to be historical and biological descriptions, they’ve wiped all of the mystery from these beautiful and mysterious stories. Tomorrow, we will explore the nature of myth, but today we want to set aside our preconceived notions of these stories to let the mystery of God free our imaginations.
First, as we look a little deeper at the first story of creation, we can see that God is mysterious from the very beginning. The first Hebrew word for God that we have is Elohim (pronounced El-o-heem). Most people over look the fact that this word is plural! The first word for God that we have in the Bible is plural. This is part of the reason why we have the odd statement, “Let us make humankind in our image,” (Genesis 1:26). This could cause people to panic or it can be the most beautiful word. We’re going to choose the latter option.
It is beautiful because right from the very beginning we have a God of mystery. From the very beginning we have a God that cannot be pinned down with one word, but needs a multitude of words. From the beginning, we have a God who is incomprehensibly plural.
This leads to a comparison of the two images of God, a conversation we began in the first post of this series. The first story carries with it an image of God who is out there, transcendent, and powerful. This God just says it and it comes to be. This God’s power, without love, could be quite dangerous. However, in the next story, we get a God who is intimate, close, and gritty. We see God walking around with humankind. This God is near.
What happens so often is that people emphasize one over the other. They emphasize God’s power at the expense of God’s nearness and love. In doing so, they make God into a ticking time bomb, ready to explode in creative power or vindictive power at any moment. When this image of God is emphasized alone, the metaphor for God becomes limited by power. God’s power alone doesn’t make God good.
When people emphasize the nearness of God over and against the transcendence (or out-there-ness), God becomes a buddy that we take around everywhere. God becomes almost like a pet and often is ordered around like one too. When this image of God is emphasized alone, people have a tendency to try to tell God what to do and where to go. This is the perspective that causes people to think that God hates the same people they hate.
So we need both of these perspectives of God to give us balance. We need them to live into the mystery of God set forth in the first story by the word used for God. But we also need more. We need God as a mother and a father, God as a farmer, God as wisdom, God as spirit, God as fire, God as water, God as a mountain, God as a valley, God as light, and God as dark.
Every word we use for God is a metaphor. Richard Rohr says, “Every metaphor for God walks with a limp.” No one word or description of God is sufficient because God is absolute mystery. When we use only one metaphor for God, we are turning it into a definition.
This is important. This is why it is dangerous to just call God father. This is why it hurts people when they just hear that God is like a father.
When there is one metaphor for God at work, it becomes a definition. If we define God as a father, what about all of the people with bad relationships with their own fathers? What about people who have been broken by their fathers?
The creation story shows us that we cannot seek to define God as anything but mysterious.
There’s an old poem by Rumi that comes from an ancient proverb. It’s about a group of people going to feel an elephant in the dark. Every person feels a different part, describing the elephant in a different way. Every person’s perspective in incomplete. They each need the other’s perspective to have a more complete vision of the elephant.
The creation story shows us that we all need each other’s perspective to have a more complete image of God. God’s mystery deserves no less.
What if God is more mysterious than any one person’s descriptions? We hope that you find freedom in that. We hope that if you have been the recipient of abuse from a church or pastor with one particular image of God that you can find hope and healing from the fact that God is not defined by that person or group. We hope that you can encounter the true mystery of God in all of creation.