The Story of Humanity — Genesis 1
What difference does it make that God has made humanity in his image?
The following article was a Sunday School class lesson I did on May 27, 2018 at my home church for an adult class. It was part of a four-week series I titled, “Beginnings, Endings, & Everything In Between: A Series on Nature, Last Things, Sparks Of Divinity, & Craftsmanship.”
In this class, I attempted to dissect the power of stories from the Genesis creation story, creation’s renewing found in Revelation, the image of God, theology of work, and the imaginative power of stories and narratives that guide our lives.
This lesson (and the whole series) was a lot of fun to do and brought me great challenge in writing and giving this lesson. I hope it is challenging for you too!
Stories shape us. Stories are what ultimately orient our lives. Stories point us to what we truly desire in life, what we truly worship, and what we truly strive for and toward. Stories encapsulate us and captivate us towards what we are living for and why we live the way that we do. We do not live our lives because someone convinced us of certain platitudes, principles, or facts. Rather, we live our lives because we have been moved by stories that we want to imitate and be part of.
Of course, each one of us has a story. Each one of us has a story of where we came from, how that influences how we got to where we are, and how we have overcome things that have made us into the people that we are today. Our stories are always active as we are currently in the middle of them.
Yet, our stories — the stories that captivate us — are not always written by us. Sometimes, our stories are just small plot-points that serve a larger, greater narrative. The world offers many various stories that encapsulate, captivate, and move us. Each story the world offers gives us a picture of what it means to be human, the purpose of life, and gives us a picture of what is the good life.
So, imagine yourselves as exiled Judeans taken captive into the land of Babylon. It’s 586 BC. Prophet after prophet have come before your exile warning you and the rest of your people to turn back away from the idols that you hold captive, to return back to the Lord who truly saves, and to live lives of justice by uplifting the poor and unfortunate in your midst. Yet, you and your people still didn’t listen. Now, Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon have come to Judea. They have exiled you and the most important, educated, and affluent people of Jerusalem into their land. They have destroyed the countryside you once called home. They have tore down the walls and infrastructure of the great city of Jerusalem. They have killed thousands in the streets.
Then, they came to the Temple, the holiest and most important site of your life and your nation’s life. All civic, political, governmental, and religious life reverberates from the pulse of the Temple’s activity. The Babylonian army defaced and defiled the Temple. Important priests and Levites have been murdered. The holiest objects and relics of the Temple are taken back to Babylon as war booty and rewards for another land conquered. The Temple was then completely obliterated, with only the remnants of the stones standing, scattered around the mount of where the Temple once stood in glory.
As you are being dragged east into the unknown and horrid land of Babylon, you discover that the prophet Jeremiah survived the invasion. He then sends a letter with the word of God on what is going on and what to expect. Yahweh tells his exiles: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and vineyards; marry and have children and have your children marry; take care of the city you live in — in Babylon; pray to me, the Lord, for Babylon’s welfare. But you will be in Babylon only for 70 years, then I will bring you back into the land of your ancestors. For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, one of a great future with hope (Jer 29:4–11).
Yet, you just witnessed murder in the streets, destruction of the great city, the Temple ransacked, and you are being dragged by force into the bastion of God’s judgement in the form of Babylon. You walk through the cities of Babylon with reliefs, paintings, and statues of Babylon’s great stories of the gods. Marduk, the great god of the Babylonians, is commemorated throughout the city, with statues, reliefs, and ritual festivals devoted to him. Marduk created the whole world by conquering and killing the goddess Tiamat. In triumph, he ripped Tiamat apart and made one half of her the sky and the other half the earth.
Marduk then created humanity for the purpose of slavery. “I will establish a savage, / ‘Man’ shall be his name… / He shall be cursed with the service of the gods, / That they might be at ease.” Humanity was created for serving the gods in their needs. Human beings were savages whose only good in this life is to build temples and gather food and good drink for easing Marduk and the other gods’ needs. Pray and worship Marduk for Babylon’s success. If you do, then the armies of Babylon will be able to conquer her enemies just like Marduk conquered Tiamat. This is the good life.
Yet, you being an exile from Judea, you remember that great story of creation. Though you probably worshiped and served other gods and lived unjustly to others, you still remember this story. In the beginning, elohim — God — created everything. God tamed the waters of chaos. God brought about everything in the world to be ordered by his word. God did not create other gods worthy of worship. God did not create the cosmos for the purpose of people to worship it. Rather, God created the cosmos to be his temple of inhabitation. God ordered everything for the success and affinity of his creations that reflect and model him the most. God created these little “idols” that are like him. These “images” are given a great mandate to be partners with God. Though God tamed chaos and brought out order, the creation he made was not perfect, but good. God wanted to rule, create, and cultivate with his little imagers — these human beings he declared to be in his image. As partners with God, he gave them a royal designation to rule and have dominion over creation. They are then to act as priests to the creation by tending to its needs, protecting and caring for it and all the life within God’s cosmic temple.
Yet, the first humans, the royal priestly couple, failed to live out this great mandate. They chose to make themselves the center of all order in the world. They chose to make the decisions on how to cultivate, fill, and rule. Disobeying God’s order brought chaos into the Garden. This sounds eerily similar to your story being in exile. Though the first couple were where they were supposed to be, the Garden of Eden, they were exiled for failing to live out God’s command. Though you were in the Promised Land of Abraham, where you are supposed to be, you have been exiled for failing to live out God’s command.
God has tried time and again with person, people, and nation to save humanity from themselves. He called a man named Abram, whose progeny will make a numerous nation to inhabit the Promised Land and to be a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen 12:1–3). He saved a people from slavery in Egypt to be his treasured possession acting as a holy nation and priestly kingdom to the whole earth (Exod 19:5–6).
But now we are here. We are in exile. We are in a land that has a story of violence, triumphalism, victory through slaughter, pleasure through exploitation, and all signs of value for human life is essentially pointed towards idols who do not give life, let alone do anything at all.
As exiles, you remember the great creation story of God ordering everything for a purpose and giving all of humanity a royal and priestly responsibility and vocation to care for everything — the ground, the plants, the animals, and each other. Now, you are in a land attempting to train you to follow their ways and their paths. The narrative of Yahweh and the narrative of Babylon are at war. They are at war, but are at war in you. The narratives of creation are clashing. The narratives of the value of humanity are locking horns. The narratives of the job for humans are battling.
Now, imagine yourself back to where you are today. Today, you are worshiping at the Catlin Church of Christ. You live and work in Vermilion County. You live in 2018 in the United States.
Though the ancient world had narratives that clashed and were at war over the purpose of creation, life, and work, our world is strikingly similar. There are thousands and thousands of narratives in the marketplace of culture that woo you to follow their paths, that seduce you to partake in their rituals of the good life, that shape and train you without you even thinking about it. We can hypothetically ask, What is the purpose of life as stated by our world?, and we will have answer after answer. Yet, these answers do not come in platitudes or facts that convince us. These answers come in stories, come in feelings, that move us in our core and inner being.
The culture offers so many choices of what is the good life that it is ridiculous to count. We read books and hear stories that resonate with us; we watch television shows and movies that make us want that kind of life; we watch the news and listen to our favorite political commentators that point us to what we want the world to be like; we see advertisements everywhere of things we supposedly need to fulfill some inner craving that we believe we are lacking; we go onto Facebook and Instagram to see our “friends” posting updates and pictures that make us jealous of them, which makes us want to one-up them with how cool our lives are.
Maybe one or many of these things you find captivating. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe you have experienced those feelings in each of these mediums. There’s that show or character that you wish to emulate. There’s that book that takes you into a fantasy land where you can live out your desires there. There’s that certain product that is tempting and seducing you to purchase it so that you can feel pleasure. There’s that friend or family member of yours that you think is living life well, just doing the coolest things, going to the most interesting of places, and getting all of the likes and positive comments.
Yet, we come gathered together on Sunday mornings to worship Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus is another narrative and story on the table that captivates and moves us. The story of Jesus is that God has become flesh incarnate on earth. Jesus modeled a wonderful and faithful human life, living it out perfectly to the pleasure of God the Father. Yet, some shenanigans of the religious elite conniving with Roman officials lead to his unjust death. Somehow, his death is the atoning on our behalf. Jesus’ death saves us from sin, from ourselves, and reconciles us back to God. The story doesn’t end with his death, but that Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form. Ascending back to the Father, Jesus is the king of God’s kingdom and has put to shame anything or anyone that attempts to compromise or claim his power in glory. Jesus’ is dwelling with us always by sending the Holy Spirit to be our advocate and helper as we await his return in glory reconciling the whole creation to its glory God had in mind at the beginning.
Many of you probably have heard this story dozens and dozens of times, through attending many worship services, listening to hundreds of sermons, and talking with your closest friends and family. As we gather in worship, we are wanting to know and experience Jesus through our worship. Through our worship, we are asking the Spirit to make Jesus’ story our story. Through our worship, we are asking the Spirit to make and mold us more into the person of Jesus. The more often we do this and the more often we worship in such a manner, we will discover something interesting and even frightening.
It is important to preface Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount before proceeding. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt 6:24).
As we worship asking for the Spirit’s molding of us as Jesus’ story, we will discover that we actually may be serving two (or more) masters. We actually may be serving multiple stories that captivate us. Our culture today trains us, unbeknownst to us, to live, act, behave, and serve in a way that is contrary to the ways and person of Jesus. The first step in this is to always repent of it, to turn back to follow God’s ways. The second step is to ask for the discernment of our helper and advocate, the Holy Spirit, to reveal to us the other contrary narratives we live for and serve. The third step is to ask the Holy Spirit for the endurance, wisdom, and power to turn from such a way and live in the way of Jesus. We cannot serve two rival narratives. For we will hate and reject one while serving and loving another. Too often, if we are attempting to serve Christ and another narrative, we will hate and reject Christ each time.
All of this raises a question: What are some of those narratives persistent in our culture that we may be serving? What are some of the stories that are captivating us that are contrary to the way of Jesus Christ?
As I have mentioned him before, James K. A. Smith helped to uncover these stories that drive our lives, whether we like it or not. He goes in depth with several major narratives that orient our lives. Smith uses the matrix of Christian worship to “read” these stories to see them as idolatrous worship of other “gods.” Of course, the major narrative that encapsulates the lives of Americans is this abstract and indefinable concept of the “American Dream.” It seems that each generation redefines the concept, but the country attempts to live for this narrative. Yet, Smith gives us some other narratives that drive us. As a university professor, Smith has noticed how the university and education systems of all varieties (secular or religious) tends to orient that success is brought about through human reason and the gathering of knowledge. But also, the “college life” outside the classroom orients and educated young adults to live for and worship other stories.
Yet, one other narrative that is striking is how the shopping mall has captivated us. The power of consumerism is incredibly subversive. No matter if you disagree with someone else on religious or political matters, it is an almost one-hundred percent guarantee that both have been accommodated by consumerism and the “worship service” of the shopping mall. Smith notices four features of consumerism’s transcendence over our lives. Listen to the worship elements of each one.
The first feature is that humans are fundamentally broken. Thus, the healing of humans is done through shopping. I’m broken, therefore I shop. This is where the power of advertising and commercials comes in. Literally everything we come into contact with is advertising. We turn on the television, go online, surf through Facebook or Twitter, read the newspaper, and on an on — there are advertisements reminding you that you need a new car, a new dish set, a new personal care product, an upgrade with your technology, and something else to buy. The mall tells you that these wooing advertisements for products and services will bring you pleasure and fulfillment. There is an implicit bias in all this advertising telling you to buy more and telling you what you need. That is, all of these images are telling you — the person holding the bottle of Corona, the person driving the new Buick, the person building a new fire pit in the backyard, the banking option promising you great benefits — that that’s not me! Because that’s not me, I am broken. So, I shop to mold me into that image I saw in the ad or on the infomercial.
The second feature with the “worship” of the mall is that we shop with others. Often, I go to Walmart with a friend or two so we can buy some snacks, clothes, and toiletries. Many of us find pleasure and joy by going shopping with our friends on the weekends. Yet, like social media, this produces two issues. First, when we go to the shopping mall with a friend, we are implicitly competing with them on what we are buying. “I got the better product for a better deal!” “I have more money to spend on shoes, clothes, and tools than you!” Of course, I say this tongue-in-cheek, but the point remains. We try to one-up the other on the nicest shoes, clothes, or products. Second, when shopping with a friend, we are objectifying them. Instead of viewing them as a person with a need for things like clothes, toiletries, and groceries, we view them as an object that we must compare ourselves to. We also objectify ourselves. In this competition, we are trying to make ourselves objects of image that contain the latest fill-in-the-blank for people to admire and be jealous of.
The third feature is using shopping as part of our function as human beings. I shop, therefore I am. We often use shopping as a therapy. Had a long week at work? Go shopping! You deserve it! Your family stressing you out? Call up a friend and hit up the mall. You got a bonus at work? Spend it on a new purse or golf club. We use shopping for enjoyment with the thinking that this new purse, golf club, or other thing will solve all our problems. Yet, there’s one issue with shopping: you eventually come home. Ever buy a new thing only for it to lose its luster after a week? What’s the point of buying the new iPhone that’s out now when a newer one will be released next year? Yet, we still line up outside the Apple store to buy it. No matter what “new” thing we buy now, a new toy, model of car, tool set, or what-have-you has already been designed and will be on sale for the upcoming holiday season. This way of thinking implies that our function as humans is to find pleasure through purchase. Our function of work and being thrifty with our finances is to be able to buy stuff we want.
The fourth feature is not to worry about where the stuff we buy comes from. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Too often, we go to the grocery store or department store and see a great deal on that roast or that shirt. This shirt is $7! These eggs are only a quarter! What good deals! We often go into stores trying to find the good deals, the most bang for our buck, the highest in quality for the cheapest price. Yet, we never ask: where does this product come from? How was this product made? How are the workers who made or produced this product being treated? We look at the aesthetics of that t-shirt design, that good deal on jeans, and the affordability of that good-tasting meat at that prominent grocery store chain. We never ask, how were the animals treated?, are the goods being produced in an environmentally-friendly way?, are the workers making these products getting fair wages, working humane hours, and in humane conditions? Yet, we ignore all that because of aesthetics, convenience, and price.
So, what is the Christian answer to the persistence of consumerism, of the worship of the shopping mall? Some “Christian” answers have been to accommodate this very system by hijacking the same tactics. As Christians, you should consume “Christian” products, services, and versions of the very same things. Yet, the issue still exists. In such a hijacked system, the “Christian” answer still explains that shopping fixes brokenness, to shop with friends, that shopping is just a functional part of who we are, and don’t you dare ask how these products were made!
As much as the shopping mall gives us a vision of their “good life” by the pleasure of the purchase, it’ll eventually be to our detriment. We will buy our way to our destruction. We will buy to ignore and fix our problems. We will buy to be at “war” with our friends and objectify the masses. We will buy at the expense of our family members and friends, at the expense of the treatment of the earth and its resources, and at the expense of others we don’t care anything about just so we can have an “affordable” product.
Thus, we need to repent, turn back to the ways of God, and ask for the Holy Spirit’s work to make our story into Jesus’ story. Jesus lived the perfect human life. He was righteous before the Father, relied on the power of the Holy Spirit for all of his needs, and lived a life of prayer. He helped people follow the ways of God. He restored those broken. He dined with the least of society. He reconciled people in their sin. He healed the sick. He created order in the midst of chaos. He showed a way of humanity that is contrary to the way of the world. He showed that strength comes through weakness, that justice comes from self-sacrifice, that love comes from dying for others.
Once again, Smith puts it incredibly well: “Jesus is our exemplar of what it looks like to fulfill the cultural mandate. And he shows us what that looks like when the world is broken and violent: the shape of such image-bearing will be cruciform. Imaging God to this world we now inhabit — this world ‘between times,’ suspended between the ‘already’ of Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom and the ‘not yet’ of its consummation — will require following Jesus’s perfect image-bearing as the new Adam, an image bearing-that was not triumphant conquering of the world but submissive suffering for the world. This is central to Jesus’s vocation of being the fullness of the image of God, thus accomplishing that creational task given to Adam — which remains our vocation as humans.”
But Jesus’ story does not stop there. The book of Revelation shows the universal (and even political) implications of Jesus’ world-altering death and resurrection. Through the matrix of Jesus’ work on the cross and out of the grave, John’s vision gives us a symbolic and encouraging glimpse of the righteous life of the Church in the midst of a chaotic world. The God who is working in the world has done so as the person of Jesus. Now, John’s revelation is showing the churches that their God is the God of renewal, of restoration. At the conclusion of John’s vision, a loud voice from the throne of God proclaims this (Rev 21:3–4):
See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
Death will be more more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.
This announcement is not of us going to dwell with God in heaven. Rather, it is God coming and bringing down heaven to dwell with us — on earth. And God, sitting upon that throne, said this: “‘See, I am making all things new’” (Rev 21:5).
This picture of the world to come is not us living in some sort of “bliss” in this disembodied land we call heaven. Heaven is only the stepping stone to what God envisioned in the beginning. It is what God always had in mind, all the way back to the creation story and the Garden of Eden — for God to dwell, live, and work with humankind. Though God began everything with a garden, it all ends with a garden city. Coming down from heaven is this new Jerusalem. The seas of the earth, once representative of chaos to an ancient person, are completely gone. Order is now over the face of the entire earth. This new Jerusalem is described by an angel as the bride of the Lamb. John goes into detail recounting the city’s beauty full of precious metals and stones. The city has great walls but with a dozen gates that are always open.
Though the old Jerusalem was the site of the Temple of God, this new Jerusalem contains no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb is the temple. Kings and rulers and peoples from all across the earth enter into the city to proclaim their worship to the Lord and the Lamb. Out in the city is the river of the water of life. The tree of life is next to the river, and it produces fruit each month. The leaves of this tree will bring healing to all the nations. “See, I am coming soon!” (Rev 22:7).
So, the questions come: What story do you life for? What story is moving you? What story does our culture offer that has captivated your imagination? What story should you be living for? Are any rival stories holding you captive away from Jesus? How has this happened? What can you do to change that?
