NdukuOutLoud

On Chaos, Light, and the First Pages of Genesis

To know the art is to know the artist, and vice versa. I have thought about that again, and I think I want to know the artist.

I know that this a very tough task that I am inflicting upon myself—that no one really knows for sure and we are all just trying to make sense of it all. But I also think that this might be all that life is about: the messy writing and rewriting, the discovery and rediscovery of forgotten truths.

And so I picked up the Bible. Not because I think Christianity is a superior religion, but because it is the one I was brought up in, and I feel it better to start with the familiar before diving into the unknown. I know, too, that these pages don’t exist in a vacuum—that there are older, dusty stories written on clay tablets like the Enuma Elish that sound remarkably similar, echoing the same human desire to explain the dawn of things. But I am starting here. If anything, I am not reading this solely as a Christian. I am reading this as a young woman looking for a maker.

And like any sane person would, I started at the beginning. I started with Genesis.

I did mention that I was brought up as a Christian, so most of these verses are familiar. But I am reading them now by choice—to learn, to question, and to discover. And I will have you know that reading it by choice makes a very big difference.

The opening is very simple:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness…”

The Tree of Life version says that the earth was chaos and waste, darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the uach Elohim was hovering upon the surface of the water. Here we get introduced to God: an active divine presence and the beginning of the structuring process.

And now I am thinking that the Spirit was hovering over the chaos. Chaos that they created when they made heaven and earth, because that’s where it started—with heaven and earth. We are not told what heaven is like, but we are introduced to a formless and void earth. And He didn’t like it. All that darkness. All that chaos. All those dark waters. And deep waters are not calm. But you can’t fix what you can’t see well, so God said, “Let there be light.”

We get introduced to the power of the Word. Power we still have to be reminded about today.

Light was separated from darkness, and this time, He liked what He saw. The good book says God saw the light was good. And the story continues: He separates the water from the water (something I still don’t quite get) with the sky, then collects the waters in one place and creates land.

I will not get into the details of what was created on what day, but I notice that God saw that each day was good—impressed by His own handiwork at the end of each day. Something we also need to do: sit back at the end of the day and feel good about what we achieved.

We get introduced to a God of order, of life, and of harmony. A creator.

But they don’t want to do it alone. This is the first time, in my version at least, that we are introduced to other beings. From the onset, it was just this one spirit hovering over the earth, making order from the chaos. But for the main piece of the art, they had to work together. And so they came together and made man—in their likeness.

And a thought crosses my mind.

See, all along, it has been taught that we are made in the image of God. Just the one. The one making the earth and the sky. But then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness!” We don’t know what these other beings are like. Are they just like the Ruach Elohim, or are they something else entirely? I might find out, or I might not.

Man is given an identity.

It would be right to say, God didn’t want to do it alone anymore— so He gets help to make man. And then, somewhere down the line, makes man a helper. Is the whole point that no one or no thing should have to do anything alone? Maybe.

Man is given authority to rule over the fish, over the whole earth—something I think we have mistaken only for ruling, forgetting about the responsibility that dominion should come with: stewardship. And all is good in the Garden.

I wonder how they came up with the names of the animals. I know scientists use the genus and species name to give animals their classifications, but how did Adam and Eve do it? Is this part of the innate knowledge that people say we are born with? The ability to communicate, to understand language, to name?

They do it, though. And all is good and great.

Until the villain appears.

.. to be continued ..

p.s :Whenever I use traditional pronouns here, I’m just using the familiar language of the text