It’s so much easier to embrace a functional reading for Genesis 1 than it is for Genesis 2.
There’s just so many niggly things in that first chapter that don’t add up in a material story but which make total sense in a functional narrative. And any struggle to imagine this new way of reading God’s creative activity is made worth it for the revelation that arrives on day seven about God and us and our world and how they all fit together. God moves in. And you suddenly get it.
Your jaw hits the floor as you see the implications of day seven being the pinnacle of creation rather than humans.
Once you’ve seen that, it’s hard to return to a material reading that has largely ignored day seven.
But chapter 2? That’s different.
It has named materials going into humans in this second chapter, even if those materials are as poor as dust and as random as a rib. But they’re there. And that makes it harder to let go of the material framework we’ve grown up with. I get it.
Fortunately, there’s another jaw-dropping moment coming at the end of Genesis 2 which may help convince you a functional understanding of Genesis 2 is a better way to read the story.
To get there, we need to take the most physically real material yet mentioned in our two Genesis creation stories—a man’s rib bone—and show how it’s not what we think it is. Not even remotely.
The journey may be uncomfortable, but it’ll be worthwhile. Trust me.
