Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (4/50) – It was good

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the fourth of the fifty emails…

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Genesis 1:31

Good.

There can be no mistaking how God evaluates his creation. The affirmation comes six times – to make sure we don’t miss it. The repetition makes it clear that each part is good, climaxing a seventh time with the statement that the sum of the parts is ‘very good’. God doesn’t just create the world; he creates the world good – very good.

That the word is applied to stars and seas and trees and turtles suggests that something more than moral good is in mind. Think good in the sense that Genesis 1 itself implies: a well-ordered, beneficial, fitting, beautiful, teeming-with-life, everything-in-its-place goodness – from the intricate parts to the immense parts – all of it good.

Nor is the goodness of creation to be limited to ‘nature’. Human society and culture are also embraced, with the goodness of work and marriage affirmed as spheres in which we may serve God – the architect at her desk, the baker in his kitchen, the mother in her home, the teacher in his class, the husband and wife in their bed. All of it good.

Alas, things don’t stay good. But the evil that comes later is not an inevitable or necessary part of the fabric of the world, or of human beings, and the Bible anticipates a time when evil will be removed. Meanwhile, we have a strong clue that salvation is not about being released from an evil body for a non-material existence. We may expect that the salvation Christ brings is not from the world but a salvation for which the world was made in the first place. A new creation no less.

For Christians, it is a reminder on the first page of the Bible that our faith is world-affirming, that we may delight in the goodness of God’s created order. And it should come as no surprise when God wants to show up in areas of our lives from which he has sometimes been excluded – our careers, our friendships, our studies – since it has all been designed with our well-being in mind, as a place of blessing for us.

Much more than a claim about the process by which life came into being, a biblical perspective on creation involves a response of praise to the God on whom the whole of life depends, and who is the source of all things good.

For further reflection and action:

1. What do today’s different ‘voices’ say about the physical and cultural and social world in which we live – think politicians, media, pundits, lobby groups, etc? How far do these square with Genesis 1?

2. Reflect on the actual difference the ‘goodness’ of creation will make to specific areas of your life this week – work, rest, family, money, time…? How do we live distinctly as servants of God in his good creation?

3. It has been regularly noted that on days 1-3, God forms the world (Genesis 1:3-13), and on days 4-6, he fills the world (Genesis 1:14-27). What he separates on days 1-3, he stocks on days 4-6, first making the ‘realms’ and then assigning their ‘rulers’. What might this suggest about the literary qualities of the creation account? And what might this careful structuring of the account teach us about the nature of God’s work in creation, and creation itself?