"The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first
Bible is the Bible of nature. It was written at least 13.8 billion years ago, at
the moment that we call the Big Bang, long before the Bible of words. "Ever
since God created the world, God's everlasting power and divinity--however
invisible--are there for the mind to see in the things that God has made"
(Romans 1:20). One really wonders how we missed that. Words gave us something to
argue about, I guess. Nature can only be respected, enjoyed, and looked at with
admiration and awe. Don't dare put the second Bible in the hands of people who
have not sat lovingly at the feet of the first Bible. They will invariably
manipulate, mangle, and murder the written text.
In the biblical account God creates the world developmentally over
seven days, almost as if there was an ancient intuition of what we would
eventually call evolution. Clearly creation happened over time. The only strict
theological assertion of the Genesis story is that God started it all. The exact
how, when, and where is not the author's concern. Our creation story, perhaps
written five hundred years before Christ, has no intention or ability to be a
scientific account. It is a truly inspired account of the source, meaning, and
original goodness of creation. Thus it is indeed "true." Both Western
rationalists and religious fundamentalists must stop confusing true
with literal, chronological, or visible to the narrow spectrum of the human eye.
Many assume the Bible is an exact snapshot--as if caught on camera--of God's
involvement on Earth. But if God needed such literalism, God would have waited
for the twentieth century of the Common Era to start talking and revealing
through "infallible" technology.
Notice in Genesis that on the third, fourth, and fifth days what God
created is called "good" (1:9-25) and on the sixth day it is called "very good"
(1:31); but on the first and second days Scripture does not say it was good. The
first day is the separation of darkness from light, and the second day is the
separation of the heavens above from the earth below (1:3-8). The Bible does not
say that is good--because it isn't! This sets the drama in motion; the remainder
of the stumbling, struggling, yet sacred text tries to put darkness and light,
heaven and earth back together as one.
Of course darkness and light, heaven and earth, have never really
been separate, but "sin" thinks so (sin separates; God and soul unite). That's
the tragic flaw at the heart of everything, what Augustine unfortunately called
"original sin" and I'd like to call "original shame"--or the illusion of
separateness. Jesus then becomes the icon of cosmic reconciliation (Colossians
1:19-20, Revelation 21:1-3). He holds all that we divide and separate together
as one (which is really the foundational mystery of "forgiveness") and tells us
that we can and must do the same work of reconciliation of opposites (2
Corinthians 5:17-20, Ephesians 2:14-22).
Science is now able to affirm what were for
centuries the highly suspect intuitions of the mystics. We now take it for
granted, and even provable, that everything in the universe is deeply connected
and in foundational relationship, even and most especially light itself, which
interestingly is the first act of creation (Genesis 1:3). The entire known
universe is in orbit and in cycle with something else. There's no such thing in
the whole universe as autonomy. It doesn't exist. That's the illusion of the
modern, individualistic West, which tries to imagine that the autonomous self is
the basic building block and the true Seer. In fact, all holy ones seem to say
that the independent self sees everything incorrectly. Parts can only
see parts and thus divide things even further. Whole people see things in their
wholeness and thus create wholeness ("holiness") wherever they go and wherever
they gaze. Holy people will find God in nature and everywhere else too. Heady
people will only find God in books and words, and finally not even
there."
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