Genesis 1 (human equality) and Genesis 2 (recovering our original vocation)

Genesis 1 is a claim for freedom and human social justice by the Jews whilst imprisoned in Babylon, encoded in a story. Although it has one blindspot, it was originally a call to human equality, which we might reclaim. In modern times, powerful humans have turned the story on its head.

To use a horrible misquote, "This is a story Hugh Morgan stole from the Bible. We're stealing it back."

The second story (Genesis 2) is an even more ancient, Dreamtime like story. It has a broader vision of God's concern for the whole Earth, and a call to humanity to a proper relationship with the rest of Earth, acknowledging our limits...

Although I believe the evolutionary story of life offers great depth to my faith (which we will explore in a few weeks), today I want to explore the creation stories in Genesis, and what these faith stories say about the Earth and our place on it. 

There are two creation stories in Genesis, and we lose a lot if we try to harmonise them into one, let alone try to harmonise them with the science stories. 

Genesis 1:1-2:3 describes a seven day creation. Genesis 2:4-2:25 is the much older, earthier, story of Adam and Eve. As Norman Habel emphasises, the two stories present very different ways of understanding our place on Earth.

The first story: Genesis 1

This is the passage classically blamed for the destruction of the environment by Judeo-Christian societies. I am persuaded by arguments that it is, rather, the passage most co-opted by people in Judeo-Christian societies who were going to plunder the environment anyway,

‘God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it (tie it up, tread it down, bind it); and have dominion over (rule over, control) the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)’
The story culminates in Genesis 9 with the tale of Noah and the ark, where God blesses Noah and his sons,
God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

It gives me the shudders.  Unless I remember that this is a story, written in Babylon during exile, which is primarily aimed at asserting an egalitarian vision in which all humans, not just the king of Babylon, are created in God’s image. All people have been given the earth and its creatures for food, not just the king of Babylon. All humans, not just the foreign king, have the divine right to exercise dominion.
This is a powerful social justice story: to the extent that some people are exercising control over large parts of the earth, and denying others the ability to exercise their God-given mandate to dominion over their patch, they are disobeying God’s will as expressed in Genesis 1. 
Also in earliest Christian times, the statement that humans are created in the image of God was emphasised in a Roman society where many humans were considered to be of no value whatsoever. In both its original setting and subsequent use, the motivation was to widen the egalitarian circle. There is a trajectory being established which we will come back to later.
This is where the notion that all people are created equal, with a right to freedom to pursue their own liberty, emerges from.  Reading the American declaration of independence gives a sense of how revolutionary Genesis 1 itself was when written, in captivity in Bablyon,
It opens by stating that all people are entitled to a separate and equal station according to the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
Then follows:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness (which is to exercise dominion or rulership over their own lives). That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
Genesis 1 expresses, and inspires, egalitarian revolution.
Nonetheless, in modern times it has been cited as a divine sanction, even command, to exercise dominion or control of the planet, because humans are the only ones of any great worth, since we alone bear God’s image. As one head of an Australian mining company said in the 90s,
...bridges, railway stations, even large dump trucks and front end loaders. These things are the results of carrying out the injunction given in the first chapter of Genesis 1, verse 28 .
The new kings of this world, those who control multinational businesses, have twisted the very story which was meant to bring them down to size, and instead used it to justify their exercise of dominion over vast swathes of creation, its resources, and the people who rely on them.  And all of us, to the extent of our ability to wield power, that fall for the temptation to exercise power over creation and other humans, even if just in our shopping choices.

I suspect that whenever we say “I’m going to get it because I can afford it,” and stop there, we are toying with exercising dominion and treading down creation.  When I bought a cheap target tshirt instead of a fare trade organic cotton one because it was quicker and more convenient, I was doing the same. 

But there is a difference between backsliding into a treading down mindset, and pursuing it as a religion.

If we meet someone who is doing that, you might be able to persuade them that actually Genesis 1 is a radical story which undermines their position.  But probably not.  We might have more luck moving straight onto the second creation story. If like the mining magnate they cite the bible as some kind of justification, now its our turn!

The second story: Genesis 2

Genesis 2:4-2:25 is a completely different story! Committed literalists will have a hard time accepting this one, but bear with me.  The conclusion is the same. 

This is a much more ancient story, and reads more like many of the Aboriginal dreaming stories which we have in Australia. God wanders around in the garden in the cool of the evening, makes a clay person and breathes into it to bring it to life, and wonders where Adam and Eve are after the talking snake leads them astray.

This story, which gets far less airplay except in cute picture books for kids, contains the seeds of earth salvation amongst people who claim to take the bible seriously. 
Humans and earth are connected.  Adam is a play on the Hebrew for earth (adamah). So ‘The Adam’ is an earth creature. From the earth God creates an earthling. From the humus God draws forth a human. The word play emphasises our connection to the earth.
This earthling is then given the task of tilling and keeping the land. At least that’s the way us agricultural, property obsessed types like to translate it. God gives us the garden to farm it and keep it.
I’m willing to bet that every garden variety Western Christian who reads about keeping the land reads it in terms of private property, at least subconsciously. We certainly act as if we do. We can imagine that this was a very useful text for those wanting to dispossess indigenous peoples in newly invaded countries, who weren’t tilling, or farming, their land.
In the rest of the scriptures, however, ‘till’ is overwhelmingly translated as ‘serve.’ And ‘keep’ has the meaning of ‘keep safe,’ or protect.
God put the earth creature in the garden of Eden to serve and protect it.’
God then sets limits on human ambitions: we can eat anything we like, but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Imagine if that was our starting point as humans.  We are here to serve and protect life on earth, enjoying its goodness, and accepting our limitations. Not a bad story.
And although in coming weeks I’ll argue that there are better ones, this one has great potential.
For one thing, it covers the part of history where we assume everything interesting happened (from the start of human agriculture onwards). Of the many creation stories written in the world, Genesis 2 has power (and Genesis 1 even more so) because they were privileged when the Roman empire subsumed Christianity, but without severing its roots in Judaism.
Despite a revival of interest in Aboriginal creation stories around the world, none of them will ever be adopted in the West, deliberately or even subconsciously, to the extent that Genesis 1 and 2 have been.
150 years after the Origin of Species, we have barely begun to explore evolutionary based creation stories. 
So we have two to pick from. Imprisoning and dominating creation, leading to fear and dread, or serving and protecting. How do we encourage people to start choosing the latter?
One thought; Jesus made it clear that his disciples at least, were to reject the power mongering of those around them, and be servants instead of dominators.
Jesus said,
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and their great ones wield power over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. .
Jesus continues, ‘[t]he greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted’ .
Eve and Adam exalted themselves, with eth fruit of knowledge, and were duly humbled.  Human history is a long legacy of civilisations expanding as fast as possible, exceeding their limits, and being humbled.  Their empty ruins lie under the sands of the world.
We see Genesis 1 and 2 being played out around the world, not as God ordained lifestyles, but as ones which humans have chosen, in making themselves gods. These two stories clash whenever some humans want to treat an intact ecosystem, or even a farm, as a commodity, and others see it as something which must be protected, which may have needs which are more important than human greed.
We will see the clash play out in our local region, as we decide where developers will be allowed to build new towns, what limits will be set on them.  We can ask what is their motivation?  To rule, or serve and protect?
So here we are.  With a choice between two powerful mythological stories.  Knowing we have a choice is something.
If you have ever felt a bit marginalised, or held in suspicion of nature worship by dominion loving, human focussed Christian communities, hopefully you might draw some strength from knowing that the second path exists. That to walk the path of serving and protecting life on Earth is a fully biblical, fully Christian path.  Indeed, of the two, its the Christian path.
Imagine what would happen if we could persuade some of the tens of millions of powerful, rich Christians in the world that both paths are biblical, and that Jesus’ followers ought to lean to the latter one.
Imagine a world in which law was based on Genesis 2, and a recovery of the Sabbath laws, rewritten for our context.  A place where earth-lings asked first how they could best serve and protect the garden in which they lived, and from which they had been drawn forth. Where they created laws to help them do that, given that it was too late to turn back time and spit out the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

But can the billions of people who claim that Genesis is part of a book which has authority in their lives, be persuaded that Jesus’ teaching about servanthood and dominion are relevant to the Genesis stories about servanthood and dominion?
Can our modern kings: those who are too powerful to have to change, be persuaded to change anyway, because God says so? 
Or will the pessimistic prophecy of Isaiah, which came true in his day (and in so many other eras), also come true in ours:
"Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand... Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate (Isaiah 6:9)
Is there hope? (in church show the hope movies)
Well, I see it all around me, in the greening of American evangelicals, in the transition town movement and thousands of other efforts by humans to get together and live Genesis 2.  Anyway, we can try!
In Isaiah’s vision he is struck by the glory of God in all the Earth.  His instant reaction is to feel guilty and inadequate.  Perhaps when we look at our clothes and cupboards and cars we feel the same.
Yet still, when God called out for someone to warn the people, saying “whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?” he still managed to say, “Here I am God, send me.”
May we, backsliding hypocrites though we may be, be inspired by this wonderful world and all its creatures to say the same.