One overarching takeaway from reading Genesis is that it is equally important to question the lens with which I approach the text as much as it is to evaluate the lens of the authors, editors, redactors, and compilers. I have learned this about two truths more specifically: (1) it is our duty as followers of Jesus to care for the earth, and (2) it is important to read and interpret the text through the lens of the marginalized.
On the first page of the Hebrew Scriptures the author gives us a glimpse into God’s purposes for humanity:
And God created the human in his image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it, and hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and every beast that crawls upon the earth.” Gen 1:27-28[1]
Unfortunately, throughout Christianity the words translated “conquer” and “hold sway” have been used to justify lack of care for the earth as if humanity were given free reign with no consequence. Christopher Wright points out in The Mission of God’s People that “hold sway” means that “God is passing on to human hands a delegated form of God’s own kingly authority over the whole of his creation”. Wright goes on to point out that the way God reigns in creation as depicted in Psalm 145 is “characterized by wisdom, power, goodness, grace, compassion, faithfulness, generosity, provision, protection, justice and love”.[2] As his image bearers we ought to emulate his character in our care for his creation.
Connected to this task as image bearers is also seeing the image of God in one another. This does not often happen in the Scriptures. Take for instance the story of Hagar. She is used by Sarai and Abram to fulfill their desire to carry on the family name. In The Africana Bible we are given a valuable vantage point from which to read this text, “this nonconsensual contact should remind us of enslaved Africana foremothers and forefathers raped by masters and enslavers who used their bodies for sexual gratification and their offspring as slaves.”[3] The text does not give us insight into the vantage point of Hagar, but if we are reading it from her perspective as the starting point we can begin to see it in that way. It thus becomes a text that should be treated with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” since it does not explicitly call into question the actions of the patriarchs and matriarchs against the marginalized.[4] Womanist theologians Renita Weems and Dolores Williams see in Hagar the center of the black woman’s experience, “The themes of the meaning of motherhood, poverty and homelessness, the expendability of black women and children, and the ongoing use of black women’s bodies for assorted forms of surrogacy correlate the story of Hagar with African American women’s experiences.”[5] Theirs is a story of survival, even if it means returning to the abuser. They see in the story of Hagar their own experience at the hands of the oppressor, and their own hope for liberation, even though the story of Hagar does not explicitly tell of her own liberation. Following the example of Womanist theologians can help us see the experience of those on the margins and then begin to ask the hard questions of our own theology and its impact on our systems, cultures, governments, and personal actions.
Genesis does not so much seek to offer us a motion picture account of the origins of humanity, but the truths of its purpose, mission, and eventual liberation. I see in it calls for the care of creation, as well as calls for the care of the voices not heard or seen. I pray that the church continues to seek out these interpretive lenses to fulfill the mission of God’s people.
[1] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture passages referenced are from The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 1st edition (New York ; London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).
[2] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, 1st edition (Zondervan Academic, 2010), 50–51.
[3] Crystal Downing and Rodney S. Sadler Jr, The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press, 2009), 75.
[4] Ibid., 76.
[5] Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Introducing Womanist Theology, 7.2.2002 edition (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2002), 82–83.
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