The Bible starts with two accounts of the creation of the world by God. The first one (Genesis 1:1-2:3) details the order in which God created the world and life on earth. At each stage, the narrator tells us that God looked at his work and saw that it was good. The final stage is the creation of human beings: "God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). God then blesses humankind, tells them to multiply and fill the earth, and gives them dominion over the rest of creation. After the creation of human beings, God looks at his work and considers it very good. Up until now, everything was called good, but now that human beings have been created, creation is described as very good. Humanity is shown to be the pinnacle of God's creative work, the height of the order of creation on the earth.
The second account of the creation of the world (Genesis 2:4-25) focuses on the nature of humanity. We see from the account that neither man nor woman is whole independently on a natural level, but that they are meant to complement each other and form one whole through the union of marriage. In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, Jesus states: "from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh" (Mark 10:6-8). The first account of creation shows that human beings are the greatest of God's creative work on earth. The second account shows that our nature is designed for man and woman to complete each other on a natural level through marriage. Thus, taken together, the two accounts of creation that open the Bible tell us that the marriage of man and woman is the height of the natural order God created in our world.
Read more...