Saturday 5 November 2011

The Seed of the Gospel

This blog entry comes to you from my smartphone on the train as I'm trying to maximise my use of time and fit everything in! What a frenetic world it is!

It seems to me that one of the nasty bi-products of the otherwise good debate that continues between creationists and evolutionists is that we spend so much time trying to shoehorn evolutionary theory into Genesis 1 (or vice versa depending on our starting point) that we lose sight of what God most importantly wants to tell us in Genesis 1, namely about his glorious gospel.

Genesis 1 is like a seed, out of which the great Tree of Life that is the gospel of Jesus Christ grows and flourishes.

A seed may not look like the tree it will one day become, but the essential DNA is there, all that's needed is water, food, sunlight and a gardener.

The world of Genesis 1 is like a seed which the eternal Son shines upon as he takes hold of it, feeds and waters it, with the ultimate aim of seeing his loving Heavenly Father's purposes flourish.

Genesis 1 has all the elements of the gospel, it's just that we need new eyes to see.

4 comments:

Nidhi said...

You have a beautiful blog...

Anonymous said...

ummmm do you think we can 'shoehorn' Jesus into Genesis 1 just like we shoehorn creationism and evolution? Just a thought! Just as the first readers of Genesis wouldn't have seen things in terms of our 'absolute truth' mindsets and been fixated on the 7 days of creation. (Me thinks they would have been more focused on the fact that the sun wasn't). I wonder if we shoehorn Jesus into far too much of the Old Testament. Just a thought Walker.

Anonymous said...

...meant to say 'the sun wasn't God'

Richard Walker said...

Pippa, you should get a profile so you can own your comments here. ;-)

My concern is that you then don't do justice to texts like Col.1:16 & 2:2-3 (and these are just the tip of the iceberg) regarding Christ's presence in Gen 1.

Granted his name is not Christ there and the whole thing is bound up in symbolism, but I still think people were smarter back then than we give them credit. If they can't see him, it's cos they don't want to.

Whatever our scientific method has given us in terms of knowledge, when badly handled, it has been used to justify ignoring God as Trinitarian poet and lover expressing himself/themselves in images and pictures to the world.