On Reading Genesis
Southern Landscapes, Sally Mann
The most uncomfortable class I had in college was an introduction to anthropology course I had to enroll in my sophomore year. A mix of prospective anthropology students and people, such as myself, who needed to fill a course requirement were crammed into a too-small classroom twice a week in the late afternoons. Our professor peppered our discussions of readings with tales from his studies. The majority of his work consisted of ethnography on two islands: a secluded community off the coast of Japan and Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. He compared the in-group behavior, distinct dialects, specific customs, and tiny populations of the two. Both groups treated him with suspicion and knew that he would never really understand their ways.
These stories were welcome detours from our main work in the class which was learning about early humans and their predecessors. Lectures on the differences between Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, and Neanderthals would drone on for the entirety of the hour and a half. We looked at photocopied pictures of the famed bones of “Lucy” and were told to discuss what we noticed with classmates. There was a clear divide among the group. The two rows closest to the windows were occupied by freshmen who took every chance they got to flex their anthropology knowledge. They made sure in their small group discussions to speak loud enough for the entire class, and our professor, to hear their endless stream of facts. My side of the room was vastly different. I sat next to a “super Senior” who came to class red-eyed and drowsy. In front of me were two sorority sisters who shot each other knowing glances all class long. And behind me was a group of fellow communication studies majors. (We were often put together in these classes, and developed our own bond over four years based on commiserating.) The discussions on our side of the room were markedly different; filled with awkward silences and genuine struggle to understand the course material.
Although at that time I would have taken the monotonous lectures, the intellectual showboating, and the awkward silences over the worst part of that semester: whole group discussion. When small groups concluded our professor would open up the floor for students to share what they gleaned from the readings and discussions. Inevitably, the try-hards would raise their hands and begin to lecture the rest of us ignoramuses on anthropology while weaving in anthropology related jokes aimed at our professor, who would wince. This condescension would anger the two sorority sisters who stiffened in their seats and prepared for their rebuttal by whispering to each other in code. Once the enlightened ones stepped off of their soap boxes, an expertly manicured hand would lift primly into the air. The rebuttal was usually prefaced with an admission of ignorance and then would pointedly take issue with the topic of the freshman’s lecture. Our professor would allow this back and forth to happen for an uncomfortable amount of time, and my stoner partner would rest his head on his desk.
This tension was inevitable. It is objectively difficult to let your mind ponder the beginning of humanity, and whatever was before that, for too long. We have nothing of which to compare to the plight of the Neanderthal. When we consider the fact that humans walked the earth without civilization for hundreds of thousands of years we find it inconceivable. Learning that species of humans that were not Homo sapiens lived alongside our earliest ancestors does not fit within the linear view of humanity many of us are taught in history classes. In fact, most history classes start just beyond the beginning of civilization and do not even address prehistory. For my Lily Pulitzer clad classmates all of this would have been difficult enough to conceptualize, but beyond that, the information we were presented with was at odds with their Christian upbringings. Like many of us, they were raised to believe the earth started with Adam and Eve and progressed in a clean line down to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, etc.. Their faith-based concerns elicited snarky eye-rolls from the junior anthropologists, but I felt genuine sympathy for those girls. I too had to contend with my perception of the world in this class. And perhaps, like me, these girls were having a crisis of faith.
In Marilynne Robinson’s expertly written book, Reading Genesis, she does not avoid the fact that the Christian faith is built on stories that are at odds with modern scientific thinking. For atheists and critics of Judeo-Christian believers, Genesis has been an easy target. Storybook images of a serpent who speaks, neat pairs of animals boarding a ship, and visiting angels have been used to discredit the validity of the very first book of the Bible. Robinson, smartly, does not address this book to that audience. She isn’t proving the credibility of Genesis to skeptics, rather she is deepening our understanding of the text and helping those of us who believe, or want to believe, in reconciling the brain-stretching aspects of theology.
At the start, Robinson clarifies the purpose of the Bible as a whole, “a work of theology, not simply a primary text upon which theology is based.” As a child, I had a Sunday school teacher that would tell us that the Bible is the greatest history book ever written. Of course, one could read the Bible through such a lens, but you would miss out on the best parts. The Bible is not merely a recounting of the past, it is a philosophical, mystical, and confusing literary text. It is not straightforward and does not pretend to be. Genesis struggles with many of the same questions we have about God and faith. Truth is revealed to us through the tension between divinity and humanity; Genesis relays the acts of God (the creation, the flood, etc.) as well as the acts of man (murder, deceit, theft). From a literary standpoint, this is a beautiful foundation on which to establish Truth, even if it is not logical. God is capable of love and wrath, judgment and forgiveness, He advises and He is silent. Humans are perfectly made in His image and deeply flawed. But as Robinson writes, “sustaining paradox is the genius of the text.”
Unlike many a preacher and devout, Robinson does not ignore the fact that the Bible is a work of literature. In order to get us to buy the text wholly, without question, many of us have been told that the Bible is the direct word of God. Not inspired by God. Robinson gives a new foundation to work off of:
But the Bible itself names human authors for most of its books, meaning no more perhaps than that a collection of writings shared an affinity for the thought of a particular teacher or school. In other words, whether or not these attributions reflect authorship as we understand it, the Bible itself indicates no anxiety about association with human minds, words, lives, and passions. This is a notable instance of our having a lower opinion of ourselves than the Bible justifies.
Of course she’s right. What is the Bible but a promise from God about how much He loves us? The reason we have faith is that we know we were created in His image, made from love, and given the capacity to love. During the creation story when God endows us with consciousness, He is no doubt gifting us with the ability to access His own perceptions, albeit in a minor way. As Robinson notes, “Even Abraham did not achieve righteousness through his own virtues but received it in the eyes of God as a gift of God.” It is my belief that, as an act of oppression, the words of the Bible have been used to maintain our focus on suppressing the human parts of ourselves, instead of encouraging us to access the God parts of our minds and souls. Robinson reminds us that, “we are made to be companions with God.”
This is not to presume that we are equals of God. We can never match His knowledge and power. But God is not capable of carrying out His will without us. It is clear in Genesis that God relies on man to be a willing actor on the stage that He set. Adam is sent forth to populate the earth. Later, Noah is tasked with reshaping the earth. God tells Abraham that he is to be the father of the patriarchs, and it is his duty to set the foundation for righteous generations to follow. Unlike other religious traditions, these men are not demigods. They do not possess fantastical powers, nor are they infallible. Adam is disobedient. Noah is gluttonous. Abraham is deceptive. Yet God never turns His back on them. He maintains His promise that as mankind we have free will, “His intention toward us, which is also His loyalty to us, has valued our autonomy.”
Of course God must be disappointed in us, but that does not cause Him to intervene in the way that the gods of other religions do. As Robinson notes, in other early religious traditions not only were humans flawed, so were their gods. The stories of the Babylonian gods are full of lust, greed, and selfishness. Of course these traits are present in Genesis, but they serve a higher purpose, “Biblical anthropology begins with an exalted conception of humanity, then ponders our errors and deficiencies and our capacities for grace and truth, within the world of meaningful freedom created for them by an omnipotent God.” He could come to earth and enact His revenge on us for our defilement of His creation. But it is clear from the act of creation that God is granting us the grace to live our lives, and He will be there when we need Him. He is waiting for His plan to be fulfilled.
As I was reading I found one concept to be the most difficult to wrap my head around: providence. As a Calvinist, Robinson is preoccupied with providence which is clear in her masterpiece Gilead, as well as her other work. In the terms of Genesis this means that “God lets human beings be human beings, and that His will is accomplished through or despite them but is never dependent on them.” How could God have a plan for the entire history of the earth at the moment of creation? How does He know everything that has happened and will happen? Through the stories of Abraham and his descendants, Robinson teaches us how God’s providence can seem like chaos or suffering in the moment, but it will always serve to protect humanity, “The mind of the text hovers over a very long span of times, during which an absolutely singular providence works itself out through and among human beings who are fallible in various ways and degrees and who can have no understanding of the part of their lives will play in the long course of human history.” The story of Isaac and his sons shows us that in spite of deceit and treachery, God’s plan for our survival and our flourishing persists.
Isaac has two sons: Esau and Jacob. Esau is a nomadic hunter while Jacob is an agrarian. In true biblical fashion, the brothers have competing interests and Jacob, in an act of elaborate deception, deprives Esau from his inheritance. To escape the wrathful Esau, Jacob flees and falls in love with Rachel, but he is karmically deceived, which results in prolonging his time in exile. While far from home, in bondage to his uncle, and kept from his true love, Jacob receives word from God about his role in God’s providence. Jacob is told that he will be father to many sons that will go on to establish the tribes of Israel. For Jacob, this must have seemed inconceivable at the time it was conveyed to him. He was spending his days laboring for his duplicitous uncle, not laying the foundation on which a nation could be built. Of course we know that Jacob does free himself from his bondage, reach a detente with the vengeful Esau, and go on to father sons who are the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel.
The story of Jacob, although grand in scale, grapples with the most basic human experiences: familial strife, suffering, love, triumph. He is a model for us of how to redeem ourselves and how to be implements for God’s will. What God knew, and what Jacob did not know, is that Jacob’s offspring would be the fathers of the tribes of Israel, but before that could happen they would repeat some of the same mistakes their father made. His sons betray their brother Joseph: reenacting their father’s sins. In fact, brotherly betrayal is a theme of Genesis starting with Cain and Abel. What are we to learn from this? Perhaps it is to show us that no matter our conniving ways, God intends for us to love one another, and when we don’t there will be consequences. Joseph’s brothers cause him to be enslaved to Egyptians, which explains the Israelites long suffering in Egypt and sets up the story of Exodus. Of course the Old Testament would be robbed of much of its potency without the story of Moses, therefore, Joseph’s suffering serves a purpose that would have been unclear to him. This is why providence is important, and why it is difficult for us to contend with. He has plans of which we cannot see, “This is an understanding of God and humanity that has no equivalent in other literatures, God both above and within time, His providence reaching across unnumbered generations. The character of everything, good fortune and bad, is changed when its ultimate meaning awaits the great unfolding of His intention.”
Of course this is why people lose their faith. How, when you look back at history and look at what happens in this world, can you make peace with the fact that God’s will is being carried out? Robinson is aware of this and addresses the human desire for God to intervene in times of unique evil and destruction, “If God had dispersed the collaborators who made up the Manhattan Project, or any analogous project, this earth might be the better for it, or at least viable in the longer term.” But she makes it clear that God’s ultimate promise, His true providential wish, is for us to have free will. It is not His fault that in the possession of His gift we’ve chosen to misuse it. No matter how much He might want to intervene, He cannot and will not go back on His promise, “It is sustained by the will of God, which is so strong and steadfast that it can allow space within providence for people to be who they are, for humanity to be what it is.”
It is easy to slip into a state of resentment for God allowing us to have that free will when you look around and see what it wrought upon the world. Like many others, I’ve been watching the events in the Middle East with horror and disbelief. What’s happening to Palestinians is grotesque, and what makes it even more disturbing is the fact that their genocide has been cloaked in faux-religous allusions to God’s promise to the people of Israel. This distortion of God’s word in the Hebrew Bible is disingenuous and heretical. Even a superficial reading of Genesis would leave anyone with a firm understanding of God’s desire for us to be loving to one another in the way that He has loved us, “good is intrinsic to the whole of Creation.” The creation story is not over. We are still actively shaping this world with the pieces that God gave us, and doing a disservice to Him and ourselves.
The creation story emphasizes beauty and wonder, setting a blueprint for how we ought to look at the world. God instructs us to enjoy life and all the pleasures that it brings, “This world is suited to human enjoyment – ‘out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight’ – in anticipation of human pleasure, which the Lord presumably shares… The beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food.” In our humanness, we decided to defile his gifts and to rob ourselves of true pleasure. Christianity, not the Bible, tells us that God has strict rules for us that supersede pleasure, “Historical Christianity has tended to seize upon prohibitions and condemnations to the neglect of matters of greater importance.” The more important parts of the Bible are focused on a way of being and thinking, not a way of acting. He did not create us to be adherers to dogma. If we live with a disposition for love, an appreciation of the natural world, and a purity of heart, then we will be living as God intended:
The Christian belief in life after death–I share and treasure this belief–can distract attention from life itself, which is, after all, an ultimate good in the next world as in this one. Minus life, this planet is a grain of sand, a tiny captive of gravity, one of endless quadrillions, no doubt. We have no evidence that there is anything like earth, any other bearer of life. We create life and we destroy it, but we don’t know what it is. If it is the essence of everything, a breath of the very Spirit of God, it is fit and right that, first, as the basis of all understanding, of all righteousness, life itself should be properly felt and valued. Though this is by no means possible.
We will never be able to view creation in the way that God does. Our minds cannot comprehend the vastness, the beauty, the improbability of it all. However, the striving to understand, the desire to internalize the beauty of nature is the key to God’s love. Not only did He create the mountain ranges and oceans that inspire awe in even the most ardent nihilist, He created the trees that shade us, the sun that warms us, the food that sustains us. He gave us everything that we need to achieve happiness and meaning. And most importantly He created us.
Robinson believes that as we look at the sky in wonderment of life and this world, God does the same. Our gaze is fixed on the heavens, while his is earthward, “Then imagine, in God’s sight, every star a human soul. If ever God exulted in His power to create, if ever the sons of God shouted for joy, surely it would be in His foreseeing this second universe of minds and spirits, whom, in fact, only He knows how to value.” Religion teaches us to build personal relationships with God, which is necessary and life-affirming, but it shifts our minds away from this powerful thought. God of course can see us in totality as well as individually. Therefore, He must be disappointed in much of what he sees. My stomach turns when I see images of children emaciated, sick, charred, and dying in Gaza, and my view is quite a bit more limited than His. He can see and feel everything. He hears the cries of pain and the prayers for relief. He sees the men, women, and children who are left with nothing. He despairs for their souls which will never heal, and he despairs at the souls of their tormentors who refuse redemption. He knows each individual’s pain, and he knows of all of the pain yet to come.
It is clear throughout the entire Bible that God loves us. But it is never more clear than in Genesis. Through the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we clearly see that God wants humanity to succeed. He wants their families to thrive. He wants them to teach the generations about His love and His plans for them. He is able to look at us in a way that we are unable to look at each other, “Would we not be struck by how absolutely unlike everything we are, excepting God Himself?” It’s a great paradox that we cannot understand our immense uniqueness, while maintaining narcissistic, navel-gazing lives. We both think too highly and lowly of ourselves.
As I mentioned before, Genesis shifts fundamental beliefs held by many of the other contemporary religions, primarily the Babylonians. One of the largest shifts is the conception of what humanity actually is, “We are not the images of angels or lesser gods but of the Creator Himself. And we are crowned ‘with glory and honour.’ I propose that our conception of humankind is too anthropomorphic, too narrowly defined–as physical, mental, or moral–as mortal, either damned or saved, but not as the overwhelming power we are as a creature, a species. Every day we are confronted with the actual and potential effects of this power, but we are never properly in awe of it.” We see this clearly now during the climate crisis as our earth begins to wither and we, in the face of devastation, insist that it is beyond our power to rectify the problems we created. It seems to me that we recognize our power when it is used to destroy, but never when it has the potential to heal. We must think beyond limitations and see what potential we have to collaborate for good. As Robinson reminds us, “God is the giver of dreams.”
It’s only natural that we should be overwhelmed by our worldly problems and that in the face of obliteration we should withdraw into ourselves, but that’s not what Genesis teaches us. Noah faced the flood. Joseph was steadfast in Egypt. Abraham spent many years lost until he received direction. We cannot expect the heavens to open and God to speak directly to us, but we have something that those men did not: the Bible. The answers are there. God’s word is clear: it is our choice whether we want to be part of his plan, or to resist it in futility. It is not unfair for someone to reject God in the state of this world, but that wouldn’t help anything.
He knows that we feel lost and that we fear the future. That does not mean that He has abandoned us, “It is not always obvious that God does love humankind as such or that He should, but this is, of course, a human view of the matter.” We have the tools we need to fix the earth, and we’ve always had them. One day, perhaps, we will be up to the task of starting all over, at the beginning.
