Wild and Waste

If all I ever had to read of the bible were the first chapter of Genesis, I think I could be happy.  Of course, all of what follows adds to, elucidates, and enriches those first few lines -- and of course, Jesus brings the fullness of truth to them.  So maybe without the rest, I wouldn't understand the beginning.  But still, after 35+ years of reading the bible, I go back periodically to Genesis 1, and again and again, I am awed and amazed:

At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,

when the earth was wild and waste*

darkness over the face of Ocean,

rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters--

 

*in Hebrew: tohu va-vohu (wild and waste), indicating "emptiness."

 

Our world tends toward entropy.  If I remember right, that is the second law of thermodyanics.  Genesis, amazingly, does not begin with God creating the world from nothing, the way we learned in catechism, but it begins with the Spirit of God "hovering" over emptiness, chaos, darkness, the abyss.  Everything that follows in Scripture follows this pattern: 

 

The Spirit of the Lord hovered (or brooded) over the chaos created by mankind in the first six chapters of Genesis, leading to the flood, the "uncreation process" that destroyed the entire earth.  Man's rapid slide from paradise -- harmony with God, with one another, and with the earth -- to the total disharmony represented by the flood began with Adam and Eve and intensified with each generation.  Already in the second generation, Cain cries out: My iniquity is too great to be bourne! Here, you drive me away today from the face of the soil, and from your face I must conceal myself, I must be wavering and wandering on earth--now it will be that whoever comes upon me will kill me!

 

The original harmonies between God and man, man and woman, and man and the earth have now become a permanent source of alienation in all three areas. The reason Cain founded the first city was that the earth would no longer yield its produce for him.  Not only nature and energy, but relationships tend toward entropy.  I have a friend who maintains that all relationships end badly, either in alienation or in death.  That, to me, is a rather pessimistic observation, but I do believe that without God, it is indeed true.

 

Fortunately, however, the entire bible portrays the ever-creating, the ever-renewing Spirit of God "brooding" over the chaos that man tends to create, the entropy sliding down into nothingness once again.  Only for those who refuse to look up does "everything end badly."  Our hope is the Spirit of God "brooding" over the darkness.  As long as we continue to stare into the darkness and curse it, nothing changes.  When we look up to the breath of God gently blowing over the waters, we begin to see light.  Once again, the waters part, and order is restored -- not all at once, but gradually.

 

First, we find we have space in which to stand and breathe; we find not confusion, but order, a clear division between Night and Day.  And slowly, our dry land begins to teem with life; our waters are filled with living creatures, and the birds of the air fly in the heavens.  We are no longer drowning in the chaos created by evil. 

 

Psalm 18 is one of the clearest portraits of the entire pattern:

 

The cords of death entangled me;

the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

The cords of the grave coiled around me;

the snares of death confronted me.

 

In my distress, I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help....

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;

he drew me out of deep waters.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy,

from my foes, who were too strong for me....

He brought me out into a spacious place;

he rescued me because he delighted in me.

 

 

When we discover that our lives, our relationships, our work has descended into chaos and confusion, there is only one remedy:  we must look up to the Spirit of God, Who is "hovering" over us.  All light, all beauty, all harmony, all truth have their source in Him.  Only He has the light, the energy, the truth that can restore a darkened world.