The Bible study class was over, and he was heading straight for me.
I had watched the expression on this man’s face the entire time I was teaching, and I had a good idea of what was coming.
I had been talking about Genesis 1-2, what it said and did not say about God’s miraculous Creation. My main point was that those chapters were far less concerned with the “when” and “how” of Creation than the “Who,” and “what,” and “why.”
I had purposefully left out any conversation about the possible age of the earth—that wasn’t the point, and those discussions can cause divisions and arguments.
Desiring unity on the topic, I wanted—needed—to emphasize what could be agreed upon from the biblical text:
- That God created.
- That God created everything.
It wasn’t good enough.
By the end of the conversation, the man essentially said that I was not a Christian and that if you don’t clearly start in the right place with a young earth, six-day Creation, you can’t ultimately get to the right message of salvation.
I told the man that I thanked him for his opinion and for being open enough to share it with me—and that who was or was not saved was the purview of God alone.
Probably a bit snarky, but I was frustrated. What I had intended to be a unifying approach to Genesis 1-2 had only stoked a fire in this guy.
Honestly, few issues cause more strife within Christianity than belief concerning Creation. Some claim Creationism is a top-tier doctrine, and others relegate it to a lower tier. While some followers of Jesus who disagree on the matter find ways to coexist, it is often because they have found silence to be the smoothest sailing waters.
But here I am, once again, probably going to create ripples where tranquility is desired.
Thankfully, however, this piece is not about the how or when of Creation but of the importance of the Creation story.
While I may not agree that if you don’t start from a certain place, you cannot be saved—surely many people are saved by Christ without giving a first or second thought to the doctrine of Creation—I do agree that the story of Creation is incredibly important, and for the same reason that I gave those years ago in a Sunday School class:
The Creation story tells us Who created, and what was created.
And therein lies the importance of the story.
But to see that, we have to fast-forward a bit from Genesis 1-2. Just a book and a chapter further down the line: Exodus 3.
The Creation story tells us Who created, and what was created.
Take a moment to read the chapter. It’s perhaps familiar: God calls Moses from the burning bush and charges him with returning to Egypt and leading the descendants of Abraham to freedom from slavery.
Why move a discussion of Creation to there?
Because of the question Moses asks God in Exodus 3:13:
“Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” Then what shall I tell them?’”
This question was not looking for the answer of a proper noun or name; it was asking, “Who is this God I am speaking to?” and likely, “Where has He been all this time?”
Moses wanted to be able to tell Israel Who was sending him.
We often chalk that line up to Moses’s reluctance to go. As the rest of Exodus chapters 3 and 4 unfold, it is clear that Moses is not terribly excited about the prospect of returning to Egypt, even after 40 years. He fled as a fugitive for murder. Suppose he would be greeted as a criminal?
But it is possible that the question was sincere.
Moses was meeting God for the first time at the burning bush, and if he were to return to Egypt, he would be re-introducing this God to the Israelites.
Israel had been slaves in Egypt for centuries, just as God had foretold Abraham (Genesis 15:13). And while it is possible that they maintained some worship of Yahweh, inference from the text (see especially Joshua’s challenge in Joshua 24:14-15) suggests that Israel was worshipping foreign gods at the time—probably the Egyptian pantheon.
More than likely, they knew very little of the God of their ancestors. This would be an introduction in the truest sense. After centuries, the current people of Israel would be personally meeting her God for the first time.
It is to that group of people that the Creation account was first given.
Israel, coming out of Egypt, likely having worshipped Egyptian gods and believing their own creation stories, needed to be told an entirely different account. The true account.
It was not the work of the Egyptian gods who created, but one God.
Humans are not the offspring of unions of the gods; they are the special creation of the one true God.
The Creation account was first written to a people coming out of slavery to reorient them to the truth. To disentangle them from the web of Egyptian creation myths and to help them understand the God who was delivering them from slavery.
But even so, it is important to remember that this was not how their walk with Yahweh began. First, God worked through Moses to deliver them. Their powerful, miracle-filled deliverance was their first introduction to Yahweh, then came the Creation story. Israel heard the Creation account only after God had delivered them. It was given to help them understand who this God was.
For a recently delivered Israel, the first hearers of the Creation story, the biblical account was important because it orientated them to who God is and who they were. The same is true for us. This is our God.
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