By Quin Hillyer at PJ Media;
“And God saw that it was good.”
Again and again in the Genesis creation story that is this week’s Old Testament lesson, God stops after each day’s work to look at His handiwork with a discerning eye. Each time, he sees that is is good.
There may be two lessons in this.
The first seed of a lesson is that even God, at least in this account, feels the need to assess His own creation. Far from being sure of his own perfection, the Lord pauses, each “day” of Creation (“day” surely being as the Lord’s time works, not ours), to make sure He has done it right. Like an artist re-checking a painting after a night’s sleep or re-assessing a piece of pottery after taking a break to clear his head — or like a writer re-assessing her paragraphs, after an intervening meal, to see if they flow as well as she intends them to do — God double-checks Himself.
Not only that, but God seems to be making it up as He goes. He engages in a deliberate, step-by-step fashion. It’s almost as if He isn’t even sure about the need for animals on the Earth until He has already separated the waters, created light, created the Earth, and created dry land.
This is not a God who seems to know from the very start exactly what He wants, all at once. Otherwise, He would just create the whole thing in one fell God-swoop — wouldn’t he?
The lesson is that ours is a God not of certainty, or at least not of certainty in our limited time span, but rather a God of ongoing Creation, of mid-course adjustments and even in some senses of experimentalism….
[The rest is here — and no, it’s not heretical at all.]
