A Foundation Established in the First Eleven Chapters of the Bible

With different God given personalities and a diverse array of backgrounds all of us have different ways we look at life and the world around us. We have different opinions and mindsets about the specific or broad questions life causes us to ask. Our worldview is shaped by so many different factors such as upbringing, personality, environment, family influence, and experiences just to name a few. Even with all these factors in play our main influence should be the Word of God. When we look at the first eleven chapters of Genesis we can see how God sets the tone and creates a foundation for many basic things that every generation, past and present, see and live out in day to day life. I have found in my own life that many questions I have are answered in black in white in the very beginning of history. Four subjects, which are the natural world, human identity, human relationships and civilization are laid out in Genesis Ch. 1-11 and I will show what the Bible says regarding these subjects and how it can shape a person's worldview in our modern day lives. When we look at the natural world we can see how everything works in cycles. We can look at the first chapter of Genesis where God says “let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth and it was so” (Genesis Ch. 1:11 KJV). He built the natural earth to continuously produce and sustain its existence by creating it with seed within itself. He states several times in Genesis 1 for every living thing he created to be fruitful and multiply. This is true in vegetation, animals and humans. It teaches me that God is such a strategic God and does everything with intent and purpose. It helps me to understand that God wants things to grow and multiply and he created every living thing to have the capacity to do so. I look at other things such as the beauty of this earth, the sun, the moon and the stars and how God created them each of them with purpose. The Bible is so descriptive of what God literally created and everything is still in existence today. We can look at who we are as humans and understand what the foundation of our identity should be by the following verse “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis Ch. 1:27 KJV). We are created in the image of God to exemplify who he is. After the fall in the garden this becomes a struggle for mankind because sin and the curse is now a factor. We look further down the road and see things like hatred and murder rise up in mankind “…..that Cain rose up against Able his brother, and slew him” (Genesis Ch. 4:8 KJV). Cain became angry and jealous of his brother and decided to kill him which was a choice to walk in an ungodly way. If we keep going we see all kinds of character flaws rise up in mankind. Present day personal identity is in question because we have to decide, do we walk in the ways of God and who he is or do we take on the identity of the enemy and who he is. I look around at the human race today and realize that we often have an identity crisis issue in mankind because the enemy has tainted our understanding of who we are and what we should look like. I look at the scripture above and realize that if God created us in his own image then it is possible to look and be Godlike but so many either refuse this or make excuses not to live up to this standard of identity. We can also see all kinds of human relationship dynamics and standards in the first eleven chapters of the Bible as well. God is a relational God and he begins to show us this when he says “…It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). He did not want Adam to be alone so he created him a wife to help and compliment him. He wanted a healthy relationship between the two of them to work together for the purpose he created them for. After the fall we begin to see how sin starts to cause unhealthy relationships when negative emotions and sinful nature begins to trump God’s intended purpose of what he created to be healthy and prosperous. I look at our world today and see when we model our relationships to include Godliness in them they are successful but when we exclude God and allow sinful attitudes, acts and character flaws like many in the Bible, to run rampant it ruins them. We can also look in Genesis 6 in which God was displeased with unapproved relationships. Demons began to produce children with mortal women and out of this the world became wicked and evil (Genesis Ch. 6:1-5 KJV). I have learned that every relationship is not ordained or approved of God and we have to pray about every relationship we enter in to. We can look back in the beginning at civilization as well and realize that things still are much like it was then. Although we have progressed greatly, have technology, have grown in numbers and have quite different set ups of government and the way we live our day to day life we still in some ways exhibit biblical ideas of civilization. We have a diversity of people and races. We have different languages and different lands. There are different types of governments and different religions. I believe God intended for there to be diversity, cultural differences and different races. What I don’t believe is that he intended for us to be diverse in what we believe in if it contradicts His Word or pulls us to worship any God but him. We look around and see different cities and countries just like in the book of Genesis and realize that along with several other similarities between then and now there is a similar underlying tone of what civilization is and looks like. It is hard to put everything in a short blog of how God shows us the foundational things of our world today in the first few chapters of his Word but as you can see in some of the things I have talked about Genesis chapters 1-11 really introduces us and teaches us about most major life issues that matter. He helps to lay foundational concepts, ideas and rules to answer many of the questions we have in our day to day life. He really helps us to understand the big picture of the basic things in life.