Much debate rages over the Bible's
Creation account, many Christians insist it must be taken literally
and that it teaches that the Universe is about 6000 years old. Others
claim that this cannot be and that the fact that the Bible says this
shows that it cannot be true. Then other Christians argue that the
text is not intended to be taken literally and that it in fact not
saying the Universe is young. While libraries of books have been
written on this subject. To me however there lies in the Creation an
account of a secret, about how we are to be living in the Creation, I
call it a secret because no one seems to notice it, though it doesn't
seem very secret to me at all
This secret might be one that Alan
Watts speaks of in “The Book” when he says, “There are indeed
secrets in the Bible and some very subversive ones, but they are all
so muffled up in complications, in archaic symbols and ways of
thinking,”
To me the message is loud and clear, as
if sirens are going off and lights are flashing, this is perhaps the
single most important message in the entire Creation account, whether
you take the account literally or as an allegory it does not matter, the
message here is the same either way, it is a call to action that to
my knowledge no Church even has noticed. A picture of what the Earth
was designed to be, and what we should be working to make it.
This secret is primarily contained in
just three verses, and they are not even next to each other. This
certainly contributes to it being missed. The Chapters and verses, not
in the original, but added much later, tend to affect the way we view
the text, it turns it into a collection of thoughts and can cause os
to miss grand themes that are in the text.
The first of these verses is, Genesis
1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Mankind was to
go out from that spot and fill the earth, Populating every corner and
subduing it and having dominion. Now often subduing and having
dominion is taken to mean exploiting or destroying, but this is not
what is intended. Rather it is living in harmony with the Creation
so that man fits into the ecosystem and has his needs met by it.
Then the second verse comes in the next
chapter, Genesis 2:15 “And the Lord God took the
man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”
The filling of the earth and the subduing it was to start in the
garden, a place specifically prepared for man to start, a place that
would serve as a model for man's dominion over the earth. The existence
of the garden implies that there were places that were not the
Garden, that the garden conditions did not cover the earth'
Finally in the third chapter, we
have this, Genesis 3:23 “Therefore the Lord God sent
him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he
was taken.” Man is expelled from the Garden because of his
disobedience. Again this also implies that the garden was limited
to a specific part of the earth and did not extend to every part of
it.
So then going back to the first verse,
where man is commanded to fill the earth if man had done this without
the disobedience that led to expulsion from the garden, wouldn't he
have had to leave the Garden? After all the garden did not cover the
whole earth. How could man reach every point on earth without leaving
the garden, but why would man be required to leave the garden except
for disobedience? The only way mankind can cover the earth, without
leaving the garden, is to extend the garden as mankind moves out into the
earth. This is plan A for the planet, to be filled by mankind, and for
mankind to live in harmony with the earth and the rest of the
Creation. To live on earth in a manner that bring abundant life,
instead of in the current extractive way that is slowly destroying
life. This is the message we should be spreading about the creation
account, not arguing over how old the planet or the Universe is. The
age of the earth is mere trivia, a distraction from what really
matters. No one lives or dies because of on opinion or another over
how old things are, but people die every day because man lives in an
extractive, consumptive. selfish way. Very few people in the Church
even notice. Most in fact buy into the very economy that is built on death and exploitation.