Out of Nothing? (Part II)

Be sure to read the first part of this creation series before continuing here.

"... and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

God first speaks in Genesis 1:3.

He speaks light.

But before He speaks, there is something.

The Hebrew text describes this “something” unapologetically:

"MAYIM, TOHU VA VOHU, TEHOM, CHOSHEK*" … or, in English …

Dangerous waters.

Wild and waste.

The abyss.

Darkness.

There is no softening what this entails:

Before God speaks, there is Evil.

Christianity has long wrestled with the concept of Evil:

Where does it come from?

Why does it exist?

Did God create it?

How could a good and perfect God create Evil?

The answer lies in plain sight on the first page of every Bible:

God goes to war against darkness.

“Let there be light,” He commands, and it is not the light of the sun or the moon and stars.

It is Godliness, goodness.

And it pushes back the Darkness that has existed.

The creation account in Genesis does not depict Darkness as a result of divine error.

God does not say, “Oops, I made something bad.”

He attacks Darkness.

First there was darkness.

And there was Light ... in the midst of Darkness.

Now, obviously, this approach is well outside the traditional Christian understanding of this topic. It may, in fact, contradict much of traditional Christian theology. But I would find it hard to understand the creation account in any other way.

And the implications are far-reaching:

Darkness is real.

God declared war on it.

And the battle rages on.

*NASB translates this line as “And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep …”

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