Life Before Us

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Now, the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis 1-2

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. -John 17:4-5

Oh, hey, this blog! My head has not been in this space this week (thinking about God). Schoolwork, friends, and family kind of took over. But this blog really helps suck me back into this stuff, even when I’m not in the mood to spend time with God, so maybe I should write the promised post on what was up before the world began.

I think it’s important to note here that God created the heavens. He wasn’t floating around in space; he made space. He created the heavens, then a water-covered earth to put inside the heavens. That means that God created the universe and is outside it. I remember C.S. Lewis pointing out that this means God is likely outside the rules and laws of the universe and that he created those. Things like gravity, distance, speed, and time were all created by God. This means God is outside time and can exist on a plane without time, where everything just IS. 

I like Lewis' suggestion, because it means a) the concept of eternity is less foreboding and long-sounding, (Eternity might be a word for another plane, not a measure of time/forever and ever and ever, even though eternity will always be around) and b) it explains the whole “then who made God” question. If there is no time, there is no beginning, and God didn’t need a start. God created time itself and outside of that, God just WAS on a level of reality that we can't comprehend or measure yet.

I also like it because it gets me excited that there are things outside the universe that wouldn’t fit into our laws and reality. One day, we are going to get to see things our minds aren’t able of even imagining. Everything we know about or can build on comes from this bubble we are in, and all of that stuff is amazing by itself. Scientists know that we haven’t come close to plumbing all the truths and mysteries of just our bubble. So, for people who love to discover and hate the thought of cynically realizing one day that they’ve “seen it all,” the possibility of another world just as rich as ours is exciting. I already get excited reading about scientific discoveries and theories HERE. We tend to think of God’s world, outside of space, as some airy-fairy place, rather than a solid, powerful, warm, possibly physical, and interesting place. We think of nothingness when we think of before the world. It's probably better to think the opposite. I bet it's quite full.

So, what does this mean to us, here and now? Understanding what life was like before us and why God made us will affect how we live here. Notice that the Spirit of God was present in Genesis 1. In John, the Bible talks about The Word being there too (The Word being Jesus). So we have all three involved in this (Father, Son, HS). The Holy Spirit was hovering over the water. According to multiple commentaries, the word “hovering” in the original writings was more like “fluttering,” which is a verb used in association with a mother bird fluttering over her young. The verb signifies a protective hovering. In Jesus, we see the bridegroom and God is always called “Father” or “Abba.” Is the Holy Spirit the mother aspect of God? 

My pastor crush, Tim Keller, thinks John 17:4-5 means that the three glorify each other and have since the before the world began. C.S. Lewis agreed and compared God’s life to a dance, where, before we came along, the three were pulsating with life, loving each other, encircling and enveloping each other, serving each other, communing with each other, and, as Keller puts it, “infinitely seeking one another’s glory.” Before we showed up, God had a good thing going and he was everything we know him to be now. 

Lewis writes, “This matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this…is to be played out in each one of us. Joy, power, peace, and eternal life are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.” Keller says, “Lewis chooses to dwell on the image of the dance because a self-centered life is a stationary life…it wants to be the center around which everything else orbits.” If everyone is always just thinking about themselves and reacting to how things affect THEM, everyone is just standing there and the dance is ruined.

Keller points out that in the Godless version of the creation story, everything is about power and violence. With natural selection and random chaos, without God's guiding hand, strength is the ultimate reality. In the Genesis story, self-giving is the “ultimate reality.” God practiced love since before time began and created us out of that. Keller asks, “Are you in the dance, or do you just believe God is out there somewhere? Or are you looking for someone to orbit around you.” You know that’s a convicting question. We all think we are the stars of our own lives. 

Someone once told me that if they could ask God any question, it would be, “Why did he make us at all?” Life is hard. God isn’t lonely (clearly). Why put us through it? The answer is so that we could be a part of this thing that God has experienced before the universe was made. To “enter into a divine trance” with the F, S, and HS. That experience and reality is worth all of this trouble and the long road to get there.

Other notes:

-The world was not created out of God, but out of nothing. The ancient Hebrew word bara (created) indicates this.

- Darkness was on the face of the deep: This may describe a sense of resistance to the moving of the Holy Spirit on the earth. Some speculate this was because Satan was cast down to the earth (Isaiah 14:12; Ezekiel 28:16) and resisted God’s plan.- a commentary

Next week: Creation, probably. Unless I encounter something else this week that I just have to write about.

This week: Comment on Gen 1:1-2 with any teachings, additions, observations, disagreements, arguments, or questions. You know you want to. The stats say I get around 100 visits a week (I sure wish it had the numbers my TV blog does, haha). This does not translate into 100 comments. I mean, you could at least make fun of me for how much I quote the same two dudes (who are awesome and that's why).