Genesis 1:1-31
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
If you’re a father (or mother for that matter) there’s a good chance that somewhere along the way you spent a Christmas Eve putting together a new bicycle or some other toy for which “some assembly” was required. And, if you are like me, you wrestled with screwdrivers and hex-wrenches and pored over instruction sheets that were confusing in all four languages in which they were written for one purpose, and one purpose only. You wanted to see the look on your child’s face the next morning when they saw the gift you had prepared for them! You wanted to see their joy. You wanted them to know something of the depth of your love for them, so you spent a most of a night fumbling with maddeningly small screws and pins and tools to create a gift they would think was good.
In a way, that’s what Genesis tells us God did.
Five times in the first five days of creation the story is punctuated with the phrase, “and God saw that it was good.”
Then, on the sixth day, God creates humankind and we read in verse 31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
You get the sense that the phrase “very good” means two things. First, it seems to point to the creation of humankind as the pinnacle, or ultimate goal, of the entire creation process. And second, that everything God made in the first five days that was “good” became “very good” with the creation of man and woman.
So, as I think of it, in the same way that a shiny new bike is “good” in and of itself, but becomes “very good” when a child finds the bike on Christmas morning; so also the creation of sun, moon, sky, water, mountains, plants and animals is “good” but becomes “very good” when the man and woman are created and proceed to discover their beauty.
This leads me to something called the “anthropic principle.” This is rather complicated astrophysical stuff, and I don’t claim to begin to understand it all, but, simply put, the anthropic principle says that the entire universe appears designed for the sake of human life.
Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross writes:
More than a century of astronomy and physics research yields this unexpected observation: the emergence of humans and human civilization requires physical constants, laws and properties that fall within certain narrow ranges – and this truth applies not only to the cosmos as a whole but also to the galaxy, planetary system, and planet humans occupy. To state the principle more dramatically, a preponderance of physical evidence points to humanity as the central theme of the cosmos...Many researchers have commented over the past 20 years that it seems the universe “knew” humans were coming.
Furthermore, Ross says, our scientific understanding of the anthropic principle is increasing dramatically:
In the early 1960s astronomers could identify just a few solar system characteristics that required fine-tuning for human life to be possible. By the end of 2001, astronomers had identified more than 150 finely-tuned characteristics.
Ross’s conclusion:
Of all the gods, forces, or principles that people have proposed throughout human history to explain the existence and operation of the universe, only the God of the Bible is consistent with the characteristics of the cause established in these space-time theorems. Only the Bible predicts and explains the anthropic principle.
Back to the Christmas bike.
Why would I spend hours painstakingly putting together a bicycle in my basement on Christmas Eve? The answer is obvious: because I love my child and want them to know my love! Because I want them to experience “very good!”
Why would the eternal God invest billions of years (according to some) creating and fine-tuning the entire unfathomable reaches of the cosmos just so one tiny planet on the outskirts of one tiny galaxy would have exactly the right temperature, atmosphere, light, water supply, land mass and vegetation so that human beings could thrive for a few thousand years?
Same reason.
Brian Coffey
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