Why were We Created?

Scripture: Genesis 1:27–28 (NRSV)

²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

 

Meditation:

            The creation of humankind from the book of Genesis is one of the most maligned and misunderstood passages in the Bible in my opinion. Modern science claims to speak with one voice and say that humans were not created as Genesis states, but we are rather a product of evolutionary forces acting in a totally random universe. It is just understood on college and university campuses that evolution is the sole mechanism that determines the survival of the species.

            Indeed, much of our modern world revolves around the assumed truth of evolution. Humanity must be the product of blind chance and random events. If there is any fixed purpose and plan by which human beings were to order their lives then we would be accountable for our actions. We would have to live by an external standard and that would mean giving up our “right to choose” to live as we please.

            God created males and females. God created them as moral equals. God created the man and woman as sexual partners. The first humans were instructed to use their sexual nature to be fruitful and multiply. The human couples were to care for the earth and each other. God set for humanity the pattern of one man and one woman couples and God has never revoked or reworked that pattern.

            God entrusted into human hands the care and raising of their young until the children were capable of living on their own. God sees each human being from the moment of their conception in the womb. The psalmist David tells us that he was sinful from inside his mother’s womb. (Psalm 51) It was to be the pattern that parents would care for their children from conception to adulthood. The purpose of this pattern was that our children would be raised to make wise choices about their future as governed by the Biblical narrative.

            However, as evolution as a controlling narrative has supplanted the Biblical narrative in our world we can see the damaging effects of this shift. There is now confusion about how humans should couple. Alternate sexual lifestyles have resulted in much pain and suffering in the world. As a result of people making poor sexual choices many millions of children have been aborted.

            We are marching to the beat of the evolutionary drummer. So many people no longer believe that humanity was put on this planet for a purpose that great atrocities are being committed daily. Many try to remain ignorant of the cost of living lives that are based solely on our own whims and passions, the costs will continue to mount until they can no longer be ignored.

            Reviving our society is going to take a fundamental shift in our thinking about the Bible and the world. We need to understand that we were created for a purpose. God has a will and a design for human life. God gave us the Bible to guide us in making choices about our lives.

            If we would repent of the sinful way we treat each other and seek Jesus first and foremost in our lives then God may see fit to have mercy upon us and deliver us from this hell which we have made. May God have mercy on each of us and bless us as with the love of Jesus that is stronger than all our sin. Amen.