myth-one.com wrote:
If a formless, empty, dark earth is good, why did God begin changing those conditions [...]?
Because he can!
Just because God changes something that doesn't mean that it necessarily has to be from "bad" to "good". Especially as the bible indicates clearly that everything God does is perfect (ie without fault) and to imply that God changed things because they were previously "bad" would imply God intialy made a mistake and the changes were "
corrections" which again cannot be the case since anything he creates is already perfect. So reasonably, God changed the earth because it was his will to do so. He created the earth initially in the condition that he it was because that was how he wanted to do things.
Besides ...
If the state of darkness was fundamentally "bad" then a perfect God would not have allowed any 'bad'
darkness to remain in his universe or on the planet that he finally pronounced "very good". However Genesis not only says God allowed for some darkness but even named it, calling the darkness "night" and the "light" day.
And if not having form (being
formless) is "bad" or corrupt, then God could never have allowed anything that is without form exist on his planet, and yet gasses, oxygen, all liquids are without form, taking on the form of that which contains it but not having a distinct form itself.
And while our planet is indeed teaming with life, it is doubtful that anything living exists in its core where temperatures make life impossible. Does that mean that since it is
void (without life) that God allowed a centre of bad in his planet of good? And what of the moon. While the moon may reflect the sun's light, as yet it seems it is completely "void", empty of life. Yes it was part of the arrangement God finally declared good (even though it is void).
The idea that God made the earth one way and that it magically made itself bad presumably while he was not looking, only for God to desperately scramble to repair the damage is, quite frankly absurd.
Perfect doesn't necessarily mean "finished"
Imagine if we could observe the best cook in the world making a perfect cake. He or she might take the best flour, the freshest eggs, the sweetest sugar the smoothest butter. Mixing them all together he makes "perfect" batter, perfect consistency to eventually make the most sublime cake ever made to man. At what stage is the mixture "bad"? Just because the batter is liquid and the finished product will be cooked and solid, just because the liquid is "without form" and the finished cake will be shaped into the form or a flock of seagulls, does that mean that observing the cook the liquid batter is
"a mistake" that needs correcting? So why does the Perfect cook put the liguid in the oven and change it if it wasn't "a mistake" and "bad"?
Because it was not finished! He has a vision of the finished product and liquid without form is not what he wants the finished product to be. It wasn't bad as batter (it was perfect batter), it just wasn't what he wanted in the end. So he changed it.
Obviously from the Genesis account we see God
progressively preparing the earth for human habitation not running after himself, correcting a series of his own botched mistakes. The earth went from being dark to having light, from having no vegetation, to having abundant vegetation and plant life, from being empty of life to eventually having much land and animal life .... none of this is presented in terms of "reparation" of mistakes, so why conclude that the planet that evidently went from being a mass of liquid and gasses to solidifying and having dry land emerge and taking on form as a "solid" globe anything other than a privileged view of the Master at work?
Another illustration: A skilled sculpture may begin molding a crude lump of clay, applying pressure, liquid, until slowly gradually observers see him form it into a beautiful vase, which after baking it in a kiln he may decorate to present the finished product. Should an observer of the early stage of his work say say "Oh look, he made a mistake and made an ugly lump of clay and now he is trying to repair is error and make that "bad" clay a good vase? Are we watching a skilled worker doing what he wants with the raw material as he sees fit. Or a desperate repairer trying to fix his ugly mistake?
God of course could have clicked his divine fingers and the entire planet would have suddenly appeared in a nanoasecond fully finished with Adam and Eve in place, but he chose to have recorded the progressive stages of creation and allowed us to have a birds eye view as he skillfully created physical elements and manipulated those elements, step by step into the awesome planet we call home.
Early earth was never "bad"; it just wasn't finished!
JW
