Wednesday, 02 September 2009

• Bible Study Reflections: Genesis 1

  I'm not a theologian.
  I'm not certified or degreed.
  I didn't graduate from my christian high school because I moved across the country
  .I graduated from my christian middle school and I grew up with a bunch of Catholic Italians, Irish girls and boys who went to CCD every week. I didn't really know what they were learning but we just knew we believed in the same God.

  So everything I write on my blog is really a reflection of my experiences, thoughts, and some bits and pieces of theology that i did learn from people who graduated with degrees in theology and some with degrees for education and theology.

  I feel it's really important that whoever writes about the bible, make their seat of perspective very clear otherwise who knows how many numbers of people can be led awry in their understanding; which is an enhanced skewed understanding, where a public eye can look and interact with the text.

  So I'm writing about my experience today with Genesis 1.

  Genesis 1:1-31 (New International Version) for those of you who haven't read it or need a refresher, click here

  What I understand and draw from this is a creation account. Six days are listed, and the day's time frame described as evening and morning--based on the first commands of creations for light during the already existing dark.

  Different things were made on each day, going from vegetation to moving forms to finally human beings. Only human beings were made in God's image, the rest were simply spoken into being. only human beings were blessed and told to multiply, the rest were simply regarded as good. These are observations based on pure text, no outside commentary and outside knowledge of social history and the various disruptions and debates that occurred. Just giving the text its due respect, as any other piece of literature is given--to speak for itself.

  Now, with some knowledge of how people react to the bible et cetera, I am going to draw out a discussion for myself based on this reading.

  First, the word 'good'.Second, visuals.

  1- The word good is often used these days. It is like the word 'love', very overdone. and thereby not recognizable for its .. original worth. I won't say much more, anyone who reads this probably gets what is being communicated.

  2- Visuals. When it comes to visuals, people argue a whole lot, since they all imagine differently. artists generally are regarded to have a greater capacity for visual thinking, so some discredit artists for being "too imaginative" and taking risky leaps and bounds for how something must have APPEARED as it happened. and then according to each own's speciality, they will imagine accordingly. I am an artist, but not a typical artist. So whatever that means to you, we'll leave it at that. However, when I imagine this creation account, I never know what to really imagine for the visuals. People talk about evolution and big bang theory, things that seem to discredit creation accounts. but hold up, let's backstep a bit. Taxonomy. People organize things by naming them, labeling things, and putting them into groups. It's a general no-brainer that putting things into groups facilitates understanding--putting things in general terms facilitates communication, but a lot gets lost in the process of simplification. So back to this first chapter of the Jewish Torah and the Chrisitan Bible that I just read. There are different ways of imagining this account--who's to say they are TRUE in what they say? They may be truthful in intention, because they are honestly speaking according to whatever they have been taught/educated or researched on their own, but it doesn't mean the content of their words is actually true. This is where belief kicks in. We all imagine differently, we believe in what we imagine--even if we are physiologically blind, we have a mind that puts together conceptions of something because it is by what we imagine that we comprehend or try to comprehend.

  Why am I reading thrugh the Bible? Because I want to know it for myself. I've never read it cover-to-cover in a go, and only read around and probably have read the entire text.
  I have tired a one-way relationship with my dad who is not fatherly to me at all, who tries to indoctrinate me with his thinking. Thinking based on Augustine, Calvin and a couple other thinkers. Thinkers whose texts I have read, and do not completely find "God-inspired". Other people I speak with as well, and they speak but they do not know everything.Of course nobody knows everything, and nobody will ever know everything, because bodies are temporal and to know everything requires eternity encompassed within;but I am searching for the reasons for gripping conviction I once had in the bible--not that my conviction is completely obliterated, but when I gave the time to develop a relationship with the text it formed my identity. Along the way, I no longer gave it the time of day, because of "business". "Busy-ness" that really wasn't satisfying. Even "business" still convicted me of the living word, and art (which often seems to
  hate God/JC), and archaeology (the science which does not acknowledge a living God) still proved to me the existence of God and my perpetual ignorance of it.
  I was happier when I was so convicted by the Bible and the God of its word and i want that happiness back.

  What are your some reaction after having read this Genesis passage? Do you connect with what she's saying? What are some of the things that struck you in this passage?

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