Post-Modern Creation Stories

Improved Essays
Ultimate questions have always been perennial in their discussion. Within Christianity, the Genesis creation stories have provided comfort to adherents surrounding the beginning of the universe and our destiny. The themes developed throughout the Genesis stories are still valid in the post-modern era. This is because, they provide foundational morals and guidelines which are important for society, and innate to our being. These stories are used by Christian adherents as a structure for solving post-modern issues such as climate change, evolution, and morality. Likewise, creation stories in general can be used as a guideline by all of humanity to face issues in the post-modern world.
Firstly, Genesis 1 challenges our responsibility to the world. This is demonstrated in the story, through the care and compassion God embodies for the Earth.
…show more content…
It supports the notion of a cosmic God, who develops a relationship between humanity and himself. God represented as majestic and transcendent, is direct evidence of priestly authorship in Genesis. Evidence from scripture states that, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:1-2). This passage is implying that the world was formed with order from a “void” of watery chaos. In addition, this is further supported by, “And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” (Gen 1:30). God creating the world in a structured and logical manner, across 6 days, asserts the sense of order embedded within Genesis. On the seventh day, the author states, “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1.31). By God creating a world which is ‘very good’ through order, he illustrates a supernatural relationship between humanity and himself. This divine partnership is inherent to any logical explanation for creation, such as

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    The Navajo Creation Story

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Genesis says that God created the heavens and the earth, but in the next few verses the distinction is made between the sky and the heavens. This distinction is made when God creates a “vault” to separate the water from the water, which created the sky in between these two sets of water (Genesis 1). In the Native American story the touching of sky and water caused the creation of the First World (Navajo Creation Story). In the Christian tradition the end of God’s six days of creation signified the creation of Earth and of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1). This is important because both of those locations were considered holy places and were signified as perfect.…

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Roman Ovid’s creation story is easier to comprehend because it contains only five primary characters Chaos, an unknown god, Prometheus, Saturn, and Jove. Similar to the Works and Days, Ovid’s god Saturn, Cronos' counterpart, has supremacy over the Golden Age [Metamorphoses I.77-112]. Whilst Zeus’ Roman equivalent, Jove has dominion over the last three ages Silver, Bronze, and Iron [Metamorphoses I.113-126]. In contrast to the previous tales, which all feature multiple gods; Judaism and Christianity take a different approach to the explanation of creationism. These cultures practice a monotheistic belief (one god, Elohim/Yahweh).…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The literary form and genre of the book of Genesis is prose: biblical and historical narrative. Biblical narratives in Genesis show that “God is active in His world” and these narratives typically “chose certain events to reveal God.” For instance, this element is apparent when the Angel of the Lord speaks to Hagar, granting her the promise of descendants (Gen 16:10). In the same manner, this element is reinforced in subsequent chapters (Gen 17:19; 18:10). In describing this book, it is significant to note that most of the characters in the narrative are flawed.…

    • 94 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Divine Nature Theory concisely argues that the nature of God is what is morally good. Skeptics may argue that since God is transcendent, morality is transcendent. However, because God has made His nature known through the Bible and nature, people could know what is morally good. Therefore, His revelations teach what is morally good. Through comparing the Divine Nature Theory with the other theories, one can better comprehend the strengths of the Divine Nature Theory.…

    • 1340 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With many religions and beliefs, comes a variety of creation stories. Through stories mankind has learned all kinds of lessons as well as where they came from, and these two creation stories are no exception. The similarities and differences between the Iroquois and Judeo-Christian creation stories are uncanny. Genesis 1-4 describes how God made the Earth in technically six days, since he took the seventh day off and made it holy; as well as several unfortunate events that took place involving Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. The creation story perfectly demonstrates their belief in the concept of sin.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As I explained one, of many similarities creation myths and literacy narratives share, there will always be lessons learned. It can simply by discipline to oneself that can lead to more opportunities and with opportunities led to learning things your own way, for example, Graff’s learning how to enjoy books and the text the books hold, in his own way giving him the opportunity to major in English, something he otherwise would have no interest in. The differences between creation myths and literacy narratives I have provided are pretty obvious as to why they are based on believes or proof, we generally have a hard time explaining something that happened so long ago because of all the different times they are told. But literacy narratives are fist-hand (proof) narratives that the author provided therefore making us more inclined to think that what the author is conveying is true. Differences between literacy narratives are a whole other story.…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As Goheen says, “The first chapters of Genesis picture a cosmos of exquisite beauty, harmony, joy, and pleasure.” Just reading this sentence gives people ten times more clarity on what the first chapter of Genesis would be on. Plus it’s amazing how the book falls back on redemption, rebellion, etc… These are things that people can relate to and understand a lot more in this text. This book gives great stories of the…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The creation story I decided to compare with the two creation stories if Genesis is the African Bushmen creation myth. In this story, humans originally lived underground with the Lord of All Life; Kaang. While the humans were living in bliss, Kaang was above ground creating the rest of the world. He eventually brought up the humans and instructed them to never build fire before he left the humans and animals to live on their own in harmony. Since the humans had never experienced darkness before, they became frightened when the night came, so, forgetting Kaang’s instruction, they built a fire.…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist is written by Joan Roughgarden, an evolutionary biologist and Christian. The purpose of this book is how to understand the conflict between science and Christian faith. Roughgarden wants to explain what evolutionary biology is and is not as well as what the Bible says. She believes that there is a relationship between the Bible and evolutionary biology and she investigates this relationship. The first few chapters discuss facts of evolutionary biology, the middle chapters present the explanation of those facts by evolutionary biology, and the last chapters focus on the limitations to evolutionary biology.…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Normally, as someone who is highly invested in the idea of science and creation, there is a lack of understanding when it comes to thinking about the different myths of creation. For me, creation all started when a group of molecules happened to join together and eventually evolved into the many organisms that are seen every day. It never occurred to me that there is such a difference between different creation myths. During the first couple of weeks in the semester it became clear that creation is rooted in many cultures in diverse ways.…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Genesis 3 and 4 are how things got to the way they are. God’s wisdom is ordering creation by calling humanity to cooperate and follow His vocation; to serve, cultivate, and to care. Although, a cunning serpent always gets in the way to strew the ability to manipulate and dominate, creating never ending hills of destruction and creation. This is demonstrated first in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, there is a tree in the middle which God declares the Tree of Life, representing God’s wisdom.…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Origins. What are our origins? Where do we come from? How did we get here? These questions are some of the most highly debated and controversial topics, to this day.…

    • 1670 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Hebrew Bible is the sacred book of the Hebrew people, and the book of Genesis is the original book of the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible is the world’s oldest text that appears from the eleventh and twelfth centuries BCE. The book tells a story of God’s creation of the universe in seven days and the establishment of human civilization. In this short persuasive essay, I am going to discuss Genesis I, and want to talk about the Hebrew people and their significant belief in God and creation. The Hebrew society believes that their God is omnipotent, omniscient and loving.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Genesis, the book provides an explanation about the creation of the world. The Bible talks about how everything on Earth was created, from the fish in the sea to the creation of man. This historical event demonstrates an extreme impact of the work. One reason might be, for years, scholars have argued about the significance of the Bible and God. Many individuals believe that since Adam and Eve were God’s only witnesses, how could someone else write that part of the Bilbe besides them?…

    • 1031 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout our lives we are taught different stories that can affect us dramatically, either in a positive way or negative way. During our childhood we read the Tortoise and the Hare, which is a story that taught us the moral, “slow and steady wins the race”. We also read things such as: The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which taught us essentially not to lie, because if you lie enough, you won’t be believed when you tell the truth. These stories taught us valuable lessons growing up, but not only do these children books teach us lessons. As we get older we start reading things known as creation myths in our classes.…

    • 1715 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays