The Deeper Meaning of Day One of Creation: Let There Be Light

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-5

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God 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.

Isaiah 45:2-3 & 7-8

I will go before you

   and level the mountains,

I will break in pieces the doors of bronze

    and cut through the bars of iron,

I will give you the treasures of darkness

    and riches hidden in secret places,

so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,

    the God of Israel, who call you by your name.

I form light and create darkness,

    I make weal and create woe;

    I the Lord do all these things.

Shower, O heavens, from above,

    and let the skies rain down righteousness;

let the earth open, that salvation may spring up,

    and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also;

    I the Lord have created it.

The Deeper Meaning of Day One of Creation: Let There Be Light

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Read the message below. Video premieres today at 8 pm EDT, click here to watch on YouTube with live text chat

It's said in the Christian gospel that Jesus ("God-with-us") only spoke in parables - symbolic stories that tend towards poetry and imagery to convey a deeper message of spiritual growth. There's something profound about that for me, as it seems to speak toward the nature of Divinity around us in the metaphors of life, nature, and even science if we're willing to see them. It says that perhaps God is always speaking to us through the poetry and parables of the universe and, like God did in the gospels as Christ, inviting us toward higher life, awareness, and acceptance of Divinity and love into our lives.

Further, if "God-with-us" always speaks in parable, then how else should we read what is said to be God-given stories like the creation story, the exodus from Egypt, and the book of Revelation? It makes sense that the Bible's often cryptic, majestic images are striving to invite us toward greater mental and spiritual health, rather than give us an account of literal history - even if that is part of what it's doing at times. We see this also in many indigenous creation stories and others, using metaphors to speak to profound truths about our personal spiritual creation and growth journeys, instead of strictly adhering to scientific principles about the material realm.

This is how we as a community will read the Genesis creation story in the following weeks, and how our 18th century unintentional namesake, Emanuel Swedenborg read it - as well as many others, such as Jewish Kabbalists. Further, we'll find that the way that the Bible is constructed fits together like a puzzle, and although many poetic parables or metaphors seem random, scriptural metaphors are interconnected and verify each other, illuminating the spirit as they point to a larger hand at work throughout most of the history of scriptural cultivation.

For example, you might have heard that seven is a holy number - pointing toward the presence of the renewing Spirit of Divinity throughout scripture. And so, at first glance we may ascertain that a seven-day creation story taken as a spiritual parable has something to do with God being with us and advancing (creating) us spiritually. More specifically, as the days progress sequentially in the story, perhaps it's about us receiving more and more of God in our lives until we ultimately find peace (Sabbath) with God on the seventh day and our true humaneness and humanity as well. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, so let's dive in!

As the Bible is often about spiritual genesis (see what I did there?) it gathers that, "In the beginning" might have something to do with our spiritual beginnings or awakening, but we might have too little evidence to say that for certain so far. Next, the phrase, "God created the Heavens and the Earth," seems to have a clear reference to what's above in a spiritual sense (or within) called Heaven, and what's below and material (or external) called Earth - which is our material lives and where our thinking is sometimes centered. Thus, we have the two aspects of ourselves being created and defined: our deeper, inner lives - which are more heavenly; and our shallower, external lives - which are earthlier.

Next, we hear that here on day one, "the earth is without form and void, and that darkness is upon the face of the deep." If this is about spiritual growth, this description seems relatable - pointing to how we start from a place of spiritual void, of darkness or a lack of spiritual light, and of formlessness (at the same time having no light in the heavens or sky - our inner self). In fact, I didn't even have to define what a spiritual void is for us to get it! This interpretation is also supported as these are all terms repeatedly used throughout scripture to describe us when we are absent goodness and spiritual truths, such as in Jeremiah 4, "They are wise in doing evil but do not know how to do good. I looked at the earth, and there - void and emptiness; and to the heavens, and these had no light."

So far, Genesis 1 is painting us a picture of what many of us can relate to, a place of void and spiritual emptiness. In my life, when I was deep within such a state, I would have never called it emptiness - thinking that, "No, this is life at its fullness!" Believing that all other people are just the same, but perhaps dumber as they have allowed religion and their fear to dupe them.

And yet, thank the Heavenly One, one day God said, "Let there be light" in my life and I started to wake up (another popular spiritual metaphor). As God does all of us, Divinity had been hovering over me like the scriptural image of God as a hen brooding over her eggs, and eventually started to cast away the darkness of my self-conceit and shallow vision with internal light.

If we allow it, God brings this light to our lives in greater and greater ways. This Divine light that we're told God sees as good uplifts goodness and starts this entire process of spiritual creation: drawing us away from anxiety and void toward spiritual wholeness, diversity of life, and peace. Like with the sun and all material life, this light helps us and invigorates us along a path of seven days of creation, and similar to how it takes seven years to replace all the cells in our bodies, these seven "days" will bring a complete renewal of our spiritual bodies.

The history of Christianity is fascinating to me, and it's a tradition that I believe is on its own oscillating path of seven-days of creation. People that call themselves adherents of the faith have had such an impact on the earth in positive and negative ways (like with many other traditions). The positives seem to be centered upon the social justice that Christ's words often encourage - loving others, giving to the poor, uplifting the downtrodden, and ultimately, perceiving the light of goodness and embodying it. Or, we can see many of the positives in those historical movements (often in South America or other areas subjugated by Christian dictators) when the oppressed peoples revolted against tyranny due to the influence of the recently introduced Bible. Funny enough, like with black American slaves, it was the same text that subjugators brought to justify their domination that the populace would use to defy that subjugation: fighting for life, freedom, Godly embodiment, and caring for everyone in the light of goodness.

Unfortunately, as it is for us in our voids, the negatives in all of our traditions tend to center on our love for ourselves and the abyss and darkness that creates. This leads to a tendency to use the Bible or any worldview as a battering ram - forcing others to bow or be dismissed (often to hell), and leading us to read our literature in such a way that serves our tastes and our dominance, instead of paying attention to how the text asks to be read and what it calls on us to embody.  

This is true for many of the scientific and the anti-science religious, the atheist and the dogmatic. Instead, may Divinity wake us up to the light of life that opens our perspective away from just ourselves and further and further towards the heavens and the center of our beings: invigorating us to walk another day's journey away from the self-made pit of our destruction, towards finally finding Sabbath.

Next week, look forward to day two! 

Peace and care,

Rev. Cory