Arts & Crafts

Why are people? What are we here for? In the first chapter of Genesis, we read, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Later, we read about the human tendency to do everything so wrong that God decided to wipe us out, and then changed His mind. Why did God make humans, and why does He continue to put up with us?

I want to clarify here that whenever I present my own ideas on God’s motivations or how He structured time and space, I am doing just that — presenting my own ideas. I do not claim to have any divine insight and I am fully aware that I can’t possibly comprehend the Almighty. This is just one way of thinking about something that can’t be apprehended. I will always try to be clear when I’m just going out on my limb of imagination.

When we get to the verse quoted above, Genesis 1:27, we’ve learned a couple of things about God — He is omnipotent and He creates. That’s all the information we’ve been given so far. The narrative focuses on one planet in the universe that God made — because that’s the one that the Bible writers were concerned about.

Let’s digress — I am fully open to the possibility that God has created life on other planets. He may have made innumerable planets with creatures that defy our concepts of what life is, and He might have made intelligent life in a few places. It’s entirely possible that God interacts with His living creatures in different ways on different planets. There could be a planet where the intelligent creatures never turned away from God’s wisdom; another where some version of the “fall” happened and redemption has occurred. We haven’t been given any information on any of this, quite possibly because we don’t need it. At the moment, interplanetary travel is impossible — I suspect it will be so for a good while yet.

The word “image” in Genesis 1:27 does not mean we look like God. It means that we are God’s representatives on this planet. We were created to rule this planet with God. One can assume that if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — that is, if they had not decided to decide for themselves what was good and what was bad — God would have taught them how He wanted things to go. God created and ordered a world where everyone had all they needed; where there was no conflict; and where people lived in harmony with nature, so it’s reasonable to think He would have taught people how to maintain that. But we know that the planet we live on is a self-regulating thing. When people aren’t actively interfering with natural systems, they do perfectly well. We are not here to maintain the balance between lions and gazelles or keep tectonic plates moving on schedule — we’re not omnipotent, so we couldn’t do those things if we tried. The other characteristic of God that we identified is creativity, and I think that’s the answer.

God is creative, and we are supposed to be God’s agents on this planet. Adam and Eve — the words mean “humanity” and “life” — were not to be confined to Eden forever. They were to start in Eden, learn God’s wisdom, and then spread out. God, having taught His human creatures as much of His wisdom as they could absorb, would then be able to step back and watch them use their intelligence and creativity to solve whatever problems they encountered as they went into new environments and faced new challenges. The world such humans would make for themselves would have very little in common with the world we know. There would be cities — concentrations of humans — but they would not be cities like we know. Some things might be about the same — almost all human civilizations have come up with bridges as ways to get to the other side of the river — but better, even if only esthetically. As it is, some artists and engineers have been able to do breathtaking things, but most of their works are only enjoyed by a privileged few.

I’m thinking of people living in yurts that blend in beautifully with the mountains, have solar power and no pollution. Those people spend their days gardening and playing with children. They watch the sunset and think about God’s goodness. Occasionally, they get together and make a spiral jetty or some other whimsical monument. I would like to live with those people.

But I’m not. I’m sitting on a plywood platform behind a plastic table, looking out over a bunch of sleeping homeless people. We’re in a building that used to be a grocery store. We try to keep it tidy, but there are fifty guests to two staff and a lot of them just leave trash anywhere. Some are mentally ill, others drunk and/or high. This is America, so there aren’t any effective systems in place to help these folks.

There was a shooting in a nearby town a couple days ago. A mentally ill man killed two police officers on a college campus in a town five miles from where I live. I was partially raised in that town. The church I attended as a kid is in that town. The congregation outgrew the old building and built a new one. The old church, where I was baptized, is now the chapel for the college where the shooting happened.

My kid goes to a Montessori school now, but they used to go to a public elementary school in Charlottesville, VA, a few miles from the downtown mall where the Unite the Right riot happened in 2017.

I remember a headline on a satirical news site — something like “Residents Blissfully Unaware Their Small Town Will Be National News Next Week”. Acts of senseless violence happen more often in big cities, but eventually every town and every person in America will be directly affected by a shooting or a riot or some other such event. All of us will be affected by man-made climate change.

I would change it if I could. If it would give my kid a better world to live in, I’d go to Jerusalem and get crucified. What I actually do is work here, contributing to the local homeless people having a place to sleep — or stay up all night on meth — and food to eat. I make quilts and listen to podcasts that help me understand the Bible. I go hiking, swim in rivers, take naps with my cats, hang out with my kid, write, and make candles. I do art — mostly watercolor pencil and ink, but sometimes I do collage. I take online classes — chipping away at my MA. Eventually, I hope to be ordained as a Minister of Word and Service in the ELCA, but that’s a few years off.

If enough people want it, we can live in a world where everyone has all they need; where there is no conflict; and where people live in harmony with nature. We can then hang out, walk with God in the cool of the evening, do a bit of gardening, maybe some arts and crafts. That is what we were made for — maybe, I’m not pretending to know for sure. Until enough people want that to form a critical mass, I’m going to do the best I can to keep it going.