The First Murder

Continuing on through the book of Genesis, I will jump to chapter 4. Here, we see humanity moving further away from the utopian garden setting that God had created. Things quickly take a turn for the worst following the offerings that Cain and Abel brought to the Lord. Let’s pick it up in verse 8:

Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

I think what strikes me most about this passage is not the sudden decline of humanity to this spiteful level (Cain and Abel were after all the children of Adam and Eve. . . . They were not that far removed from the garden themselves), but rather God’s response to Cain when asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Instead of emphatically and probably more clearly shouting yes, God answers by saying that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground. What gets me is the idea that we can never be at peace unless those around us are also at peace. Because we as humans are so intimately connected to one another, we can never truly feel at home if there is a homeless man at the end of the block. We can never really feel full if we pass by the beggars outside of the supermarket. And we can never truly feel the warmth of our fireplace knowing that there are people sleeping in cardboard boxes in -20 degree weather. Just the other day I read an article about the increasing homeless population in Aspen, Colorado. Here we are, in a posh, gaudy ski resort town, where money is more common than water in the ocean, and there are homeless people just trying to survive. Something seems to be wrong with this picture. 

Thomas Merton once wrote, “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.” There’s something deep within us whispering that we are indeed our brother’s keeper. Jesus echoes this in his telling of the story of the Good Samaritan. Because of our intimate longing for relationship, specifically with other humans, the only way we can truly find peace is when our neighbor has piece. May we be the keepers of our brothers and sisters, whether that means the homeless man begging for food, our alcoholic co-worker, or the shut-in down the street.

The Second Creation Story

Some thoughts stemming from reading Genesis 2.

• In the second creation account, we see a different creation story unfold. In Genesis 2:18-19, God decides that it is not good for man to be alone and wants to find him a partner. For many years, I simply imagined God simply snatching that rib out of Adam almost immediately and creating Eve. However, that’s not exactly how the bible reads. After God decides that Adam needs a partner, he creates all the animals and birds and brought them to Adam to name which seems quite a bloody daunting task if you ask me. It’s not like Adam had a dictionary or Google for that matter to find new words to name the animals. And finally, when Adam completes his task of naming all the animals, there is still not a suitor for him. Talk about an unproductive day. Or week. Or maybe even longer. I guess it’s then that God takes matters into his own hands, puts Adam to sleep, and stealthily steals a rib. And from this, the first woman is created. Donald Miller has suggested that maybe God did this so that everyday of his life, Adam would fully appreciate and cherish Eve, because he would remember the long, grueling process it took to obtain this suitable partner. Because maybe it is only in the absence of another that we can begin to understand how blessed we are to have them in our lives. But anyway, after the creation of Eve, we hear the first words of man recorded in the bible and it just happens to be poetry: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken” (2:23). So, from the very beginning of the human race, we see an interconnectedness between male and female. Essentially, they share flesh and bones with one another. That’s why I see the end of the second chapter of Genesis a fitting ending to the second creation narrative. Verses 24-25 read, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” This idea of being one with another is what the first human relationship was about.
• The other thing I wanted to mention is Genesis 2:15: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” I’ve been reading Andy Crouch’s new book Culture Making, which I actually posted on way back in September believe it or not. So getting to Crouch’s ideas, we should return to the idea that humans were created in the image of God. Crouch poses the question of just what this connotes when we say humans are created in the image of God. For him, at this point in the biblical narrative, all we see is a God of “limitless, extraordinary creativity.” So, being created in the image of God means that we as humans are also called to be creators, or maybe not called to be creators – maybe it’s in our blood that we are creators. But we also see a God that is more than solely a creator. Crouch writes, “Genesis presents God as both Creator and Ruler of the universe. Creators are those who make something new; rulers are those who maintain order and separation.” We are presented with this artistic God who orders his/her masterpiece in such a way that humans can continue in this creation. Thus the call to Adam to till and keep the earth begins to be seen in a new light on account of what Crouch proposes. We may not be called to create something out of nothing the way God did, but humans were first and foremost caretakers of the garden. Adam was called to not only care for life but to help give rise to new life in the garden.

In The Beginning

It’s a new year, and once again, I have undertaken the daunting endeavor of reading the bible through at least once this year, and hopefully twice. So, every now and again, I might be posting a random amalgam of thoughts from some of the readings. Today I will make some observations from the first chapter of Genesis.

• Every time I read the first creation account, I find myself wondering just what the light is that God speaks into being on the first day, because it’s not until the fourth day that the sun and the moon are created. Nonetheless, from this first day of creation, we read that God deems light to be good. Maybe this light is simply God filling the formless void and darkness. Or maybe it’s a foreshadowing to Christ on the very first day of creation.
• In Genesis 1:22, God calls the animals to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ and to ‘fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth’. This calls seems eerily similar to the one issued to the commission God gives to Adam in verse 28: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ So all flesh is called to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. A couple things to ponder: At what point does the earth become full? And what does having dominion over all the animals connote?
• In Jewish thought, the creation narrative is always moving forward. It’s always getting one step better. Thus,in contemporary Christian circles, we see the apex of the creation story to be the creation of humans. However, in the Jewish mindset, the culmination of the creation story is the Sabbath on day 7. This was and is the icing on the cake.