Reflections on Genesis

I'm hustling right now to get ahead in my class assignments, so that when I take my annual retreat weekend in a few days I don't have to think about writing papers or posting on the discussion boards. I want to have a clear schedule so that I can be serendipitous! So I'm grinding them out right and left. The following is an assignment from the Pentateuch class where we were asked to post reflections on our time in Genesis. Hm. I doubt very much if I would have written these lines a half-dozen years ago. My perspectives have changed some.


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Reflections on Genesis

1) the role of the Bible in the Christian faith seems to be primarily about revealing God's character (not necessarily details about His essence or basic nature), His purposes in the world (particularly the redemptive purposes), essential aspects of human nature, and relationships in the created order. To use the Bible properly in the church today as Scripture requires that we respect its core purposes, and not overlay it with a Western Enlightenment scientific mindset. Modernity's penchant to require truth be at a granular level, rather than at the level of meta-narrative, is not consistent with the vast pespective of human history.

2) it seems to me that God does indeed do justice (good rewarded, evil punished, oppressed lifted, haughty made low, etc.)... but over time. Over generations and centuries, even. God is under no obligation to do justice on our timeframe, or even within the span of a human life. His reactions to us are not necessarily immediate - He doesn't close the feedback loop with the speed we would like. It's kind of like submitting several papers in a class and hearing nothing from the prof by way of evaluation until after the entire class is over and nothing can be changed. Sometimes the prof doesn't even answer your direct questions but instead offers vague generalities! You just have to go by what the prof told you in the beginning, your own instincts, and the advice of others who've taken that class (if they're still around!)

3) related to #2 above, I don't see individual (note that word) human beings as essential to the fulfillment of God's purposes. Humanity in general, yes. Individuals, no. God has many resources at His command, including many humans. He can work out His will without my or your cooperation. Individual cooperation with God is much more important for OUR well-being than for God's. :) His well-being is not dependent on us. However, ours is dependent on Him. The same can be said of His will and its outworking.

4) not all strife in the Bible is used by God to accomplish His will. This is not to say that God cannot use strife to further His ends, because He does (witness the selling of Joseph into slavery). But that is a far cry from saying that God always allows strife to happen because it is necessary to the outworking of His will. Here we can look at the strife between Hagar and Sarah. If those women had made serious effort to preserve harmony in Abraham's home, and had put their own selfish agendas aside, God could still have had the promise descend to future generations through Isaac. He could have made it crystal clear to all parties that Isaac was elected to carry the promise, without forcing Ishmael to separate from the family. There was no real strife between the brothers, just between the mothers. It appears that God did not incite the strife; he allowed the sending away of Ishmael, and turned it into blessing, only AFTER the strife had occurred. The separation in Abraham's family was not ordained ahead of time.

5) I really find myself questioning God's purposes in consistently passing over the first-born in Genesis, and then making such a big deal of the importance of the first-born in Exodus and later (through the Law's requirements to redeem the firstborn, the firstfruits of the womb, as rightfully His, set apart to Him). It's almost as if God is saying "do as I say, not as I do". What is going on here? I don't get it. And it perturbs me a bit, really. It's one of the things I voice aloud to God at times and get kind of worked up about it. God cuts me some slack in these matters, I think, because He knows that I know that I know nothing, and don't even pretend to understand. But I do voice my opinion to Him. ;)