I announced in my post 20 Questions I Have About Church that I am starting a study on church: its purpose, how it should function, and the relationships therein. As I study, I’ll write at least one post a month about what I’m learning. To kick everything off, I felt it valuable to go back to the very beginning of that which makes up the church—mankind.
In order to live a life that truly matters, you and I must first understand a few things about our creation.
Over the next five posts I will be doing a series on what it means to live a life that matters. This series is not an in-depth exposition, rather a basic understanding of why man was made and God’s plan for him throughout his life. We’re going to start with creation, then look at salvation, then discuss the church, and end the series with two posts focused on ourselves individually and how we find our place in God’s eternal story.
“In the beginning, God. . .”
God existed before I did. I don’t understand where He came from or what it would be like to exist before the universe was created. Had God created galaxies and other creatures He dwelt among and led through a history of redemption? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I need to know. As it comes to my existence, this is where it all begins.
I find it quite easy to accept that God created the world because if God did not create, if a worldview based in Scripture is not correct, then I cannot know anything for sure at all. All facts become subjective. Truth illusive. And meaning unexplainable, aside from conclusions I may derive based on human biological and emotional urges. Life is crazy enough and the Bible is the best perspective I have heard in helping me understand it all.
But here’s what makes me uncomfortable about God creating—the only reason I would like another explanation for how creation happened: if God did create, if the Biblical worldview is correct, I am subjective. Someone beyond myself calls the shots on my life. Someone other than me knows what’s best for my eternal wellbeing. I am not autonomous.
Six literal days, or six thousand years?
There are a lot of things I do not know about creation. I do not know if God created the earth in six literal 24-hour days, or if each of those days were as a thousand years. I do not know if God sovereignly used evolution to bring about the current state of earth or if it was as simple and awesome as speaking things into being within an instant. I have heard many arguments and I embrace the young earth theory because, from my yet feeble understanding of science and the Bible, it seems most consistent. But many godly intellectuals disagree, and I can see how we could read Genesis 1 and 2 differently, how it could be biblical to believe creation took longer than a week.
For me personally, I don’t need to know these answers to trust the Bible and believe in God. Even those who believe in figurative six-day creation believe that God created. The reality of God creating us is what is most important. If we stray from the that conviction, we clearly stray from a scriptural understanding of creation and begin losing the ability to know anything for sure.
If God did not create us, there is mass chaos in understanding our purpose. If He did, wouldn’t there be clarity in knowing what a life that matters looks like to Him?
I believe God created. Everything.
There are many aspects I don’t understand about how God created, but I am convinced He did create. And I believe that means He created everything about us as humans. He created our desires, the way we function, the way we think, how we interact with each other, and whether I like chocolate and you like vanilla. Nothing in all the universe, nothing within our makeup—absolutely nothing about us was created by anything or anyone other than God (Col. 1:16-17; John 1:3).
Your desire for relationships is good and God-created. Your longing for significance is good and God-created. Your wish to feel safe and be at rest is good and God-created. Your drive for sexual intimacy is good and God-created. Your attraction to beauty and pleasure is good and God-created. Nothing was given you that was not created by God.
Satan cannot create—he never has created. But he perverts.
He challenges God’s authority and offers fulfillment of God-given desires in a way God never designed those desires to be fulfilled. The desire within Adam and Eve for knowledge and truth was created to be discovered in God, but the serpent came along and offered a more immediate fulfillment of that desire. Satan gave just enough satisfaction to distract mankind from his original intent.
What is wrong in the world is not something wrongly made, but something good gone bad.
Too often we miss this. We live as if the problem is our desires, that somehow we need to better control ourselves into righteousness. But our desires are not the problem; the way we fulfill them is.
I don’t understand why God created man with the ability to choose. I simply conclude that God, like us, enjoys mutually satisfying relationships. In other words, He’s not interested in close relationship with someone who doesn’t also want Him. After all, we are made in His image and if we don’t like robots, He doesn’t either.
But with the ability to choose comes the ability to walk away.
Adam and Eve agreed with satan’s perversion. They chose to know immediately what it could be like to be God rather than enjoying relationship with God Himself as He led them into the fullness of Truth (John 16:13).
With their agreement, they began functioning outside of God’s design. Their desire was good, but they sought fulfillment of that desire in a way God never intended for it to be fulfilled.
Now we are all born with a nature that tries doing life without God. We have become estranged from our Maker.
