“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 God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
I love my Christian tradition’s creation myths for a myriad of reasons. Every so often, something new jumps out at me and I cannot help but adore the depth and complexity with which these ancient legends can breathe newness into my religious and spiritual life. Today it was a simple reflection email my friend and pastor, Grant Romoser-Claunch, sent out last week. He used a portion of this passage for his reflection, and it was in rereading this old, but familiar passage that something new stuck out to me. I’m sure it’s not new to some people, but it felt new to me.
If you read carefully, the myth says that when God created the earth, it was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. God created darkness before God created light. Then, God called the light good. God never placed a judgment upon the darkness, but rather it was part of the earth’s initial creation. God didn’t create light because the darkness was bad. But rather, God created light to give boundaries to the darkness. God separated the two, creating a boundary for light as well. In the first creation account in Genesis, God is neither light nor dark. God exists outside and separate from the two. The two were created just as we were created.
“The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God (other translations say God’s Spirit) swept over the face of the waters.” Here, God co-exists alongside darkness. God sweeps through it, hovers above the waters amidst the darkness. God is not afraid of the darkness, but lives with it. Then, suddenly, God creates light and declares it good. God separates the two bringing about the first sense of order. We find that light and darkness are not pitted against each other, but rather co-workers in bringing about rhythm and order.
Just as the Old Testament offers multiple accounts of creation, so too does Scripture offer us varied understandings of light and dark. In the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as the light of the world. 1 John claims that God is light and that in God there is no darkness. Over and over again, the New Testament moves away from the notion that God exists beside light and dark. Instead it moves towards an understanding of God as light and dark as something to be avoided or overcome by light. Our Christian understanding, I would argue, is most often influenced by this New Testament notion that light is good and dark is bad.
There have been plenty of Christians through the ages who have written about light and dark, and about many different understandings of the two. One of my favorites, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “I have learned things in the dark that I never could have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” Her book Learning to Walk in the Dark has helped me find comfort in the darkness. It has helped shift my understanding and made me look out for the ways in which Scripture speaks about light and dark.
So when I reread the creation story this morning, what stuck with me and brings me comfort is the understanding of God existing in the darkness. I’m uninterested in a god who is the light, who does not allow me to enter into the dark places of myself and others. If God is the light and if God is always with me, then there is no darkness. And that simply doesn’t add up in my experience. Rather, God meets me in the dark. God hovers over the waters of the deep when the world is in deep darkness. God isn’t the light that made the darkness go away. God created the light to give boundaries to the dark. Who I’m interested in is a God who is with me in the dark. I’m interested in a God who walks with me at night, who sits next to me in the depths of my despair. I’m interested in a God who says “While the light and dark come and go, I will be constant. I will be with you through it all, from light to dark and dark to light.” Now this God, this is a God whom I can worship, whom I can love, and with whom I can share my life. This God of Genesis 1 is the kind of God I have come to know throughout my life. This is the God who shows up when I’m drowning in insecurity and says that I am enough on my own. This is the God who showed up with my family and friends the night my brother died. As a young gay teenager wanting to end my life, this is the God who whispered that I was worthy of love and belonging just as I was. This is the God I have come to know and long for in my life. God isn’t the light, but rather the One who walks beside us in the darkness until the light comes again.
Timothy Burge-Lape 