Everything he created was good. It’s important you know something about God. He is good. Human beings do good things. We become good. God is good. Philosophers would say God is the ground of all morality. We live in a moral universe because God himself is a moral being. Some things are right and some things are wrong. Why? Because God is good. God’s nature sets the standard. Not in an arbitrary way. The opposite. In an unchanging, completely reliable way.
This part of the Bible is an origin story. Origin stories tell us why there is something instead of nothing. They tell us the nature of good and evil and our place in the universe. Every religion or ideology has an origin story and it colors ever chapter to follow.
The Bible says there is something instead of nothing because God exists and chose to create. Metaphysically, we live in a world that is material and immaterial. The seen and unseen. God is immaterial (until later in the story, we’ll get there) and good. Everything, ultimately traces its existence to God. God is good and what he created is good.
Which raises the question, what has gone terribly wrong? Evil exists and if God created everything, did God create evil? God is not the author of evil. Evil is either a lack of good, or a corruption of good. It is never a separate entity. No thing called “evil” simply exists. Rather, evil exists when something that was created good has lost goodness or been twisted into something that it was never intended for.
When you see a sunset and something in your soul explodes with joy, that is goodness you are beholding. The kind of goodness that once, without blemish, filled the earth and beyond. That is what creation by a good God looks and feels like.
Into this world, he brought us.
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 a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “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 vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault 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 vault 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 vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, 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: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the 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. Genesis 1:1-25
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