The Genesis Five

The Genesis Five (1,228)

August 4th, 2011

God needs a good public relations representative.

Considering all the things He does for humanity, starting with the rising of the sun, you would think there would be a level of appreciation and that He wouldn’t get blamed for everything. But a tornado comes through and we call it “an act of God.” What is the message here? God gets bored and decides He is sick and tired of mobile homes blighting the scenery, so He decides to wipe out a few of them? If there were any truth to this it would be difficult to worship this individual.

Or we attribute to Him that He hates homosexuals, blacks, whites or any particular group that has fallen into disfavor in the present climate. If He were really like that, what chance would any of us have if we had a particularly ugly week or a bad hair day? God is the source of mankind’s dumping ground for all the confusion and frustration that we, as a race, have failed to take responsibility for ourselves. Tornadoes could be caused by climate change. Maybe mobile homes need better moorings. If it’s true that God looks only on the heart and not the outward appearance, maybe He doesn’t even know if people are homosexual, black or white. You see what I mean?

I think it all begins with the misconception that there is an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. The Old Testament God supposedly walked around whacking people for choosing the wrong barnyard animal to sacrifice. The New Testament God apparently learned how to play acoustic guitar and somewhere along the line, wrote Kum BaYah. This is human understanding at its very worst—because within the first five chapters of the first book of the Bible (which, by the way, is in the Old Testament), we are given five attributes of God that never change.

1. “In the beginning, God created.” The very first verse of the Bible tells us that we are dealing with a creative being. Creative people do not destroy anything—even if it’s not their own creation. Artists respect art even when it is out of their field of understanding. God is creative. Death and destruction are not His chosen weapons of recompense. He would just create something that would boggle our minds and make us understand that there’s a better way.

2. “Let us make man in our own image.” That’s what God said. It is not wise to create a child if you are not prepared to have someone who looks a lot like you walking around on the planet earth for the rest of his or her life, representing you and possibly humiliating you. God could have made man in the image of evil or darkness. Positive in nature as He is, He chose to spawn us from His own DNA—in His image—to create a permanent bond between us. So it’s going to be very difficult for Him to separate Himself from us—when He really owes child support.

3. “Here’s Eden. It’s perfect. Be fruitful and multiply.” Not only did He give us Eden, with fulfilling work and beautiful scenery, but he also gave us sexual pleasure to end the day, begin the day or even for afternoon delight. So we have a physical release of sheer ecstasy to accentuate the spiritual joy of Eden that surrounds us. Wow. What a guy. He not only knows we need emotional support and a spiritual heritage, but is also aware of our need for sexual release.

4. “Why are you hiding from me?” That’s the question God posed to Adam and Eve when they were scared and shivering because they had broken the one rule of the country club. He didn’t scream at them for breeching the regulations. He didn’t even ask them why they did it. He just wondered why they were hiding from Him in their hour of greatest need. Doesn’t sound like a guy interested in raining fire and brimstone down on the lunatic fringe.

5. And finally: “If you do well, won’t you be accepted?” These are the words spoken to a murderer named Cain who had just killed his brother over a religious matter in a family feud. (You see, it didn’t start with the Palestinians and the Israelites.) God certainly could have been angry. God certainly could have inflicted capital punishment right on the spot. But instead, He reasoned with Cain. He said, “Cain, life is not as complicated as you make it out to be. I built a system, and if you’re willing to learn it, you can discover how to do well in it and receive the same acceptance as anybody else. Or you can rebel against it, be rejected by those around you, get angry and be an outcast.”

All five of these attributes of the Most High happen within the first five chapters of the first book of the Old Testament. After that, what we have in the rest of the Old Testament are human beings trying to use God to justify greed, lust, nationalism, envy and just mood swings.

God has not changed. He has simply made His neighborhood bigger—and has decided not to be locked into one particular group of people, but instead, offers the possibility of “whosoever will may come.”

Don’t ever forget the Genesis Five. They portray to us a creative God who is proud to be our Papa, who wants us to have a perfect world filled with pleasure, who does not understand why we hide from Him when we fail, and only wants us to learn how to do well to gain the acceptance we desire.

That sounds like the same God that Jesus taught—except this one was around to talk to the dinosaurs.