The Science of Life Points to Godಮಾದರಿ

Good Work

When I was a child, we used to go for summer vacations to the small New England village where my grandfather owned a house not far from the ocean. During one walk along the beach, I found a nice piece of driftwood, which I whittled into the shape of a boat. I added a mast and glued on a small block as a cabin. My parents said it was wonderful. My grandfather, an old-world craftsman whose ideas of child rearing were from the century before last, looked at the boat critically for a while and then gave it back to me. “Does it work?” he asked. We went to the shore and put the boat in the water. It floated, it didn’t capsize, and it moved. He picked it up, nodded, and pronounced, “Good. Good work.” That high praise stuck with me.

But what did he mean when he pronounced my handiwork “good”? Did he mean that it was the opposite of evil, that my small wood project had some inner moral quality? Of course not. He meant that it worked well, as intended.

What does God mean when he describes his own (slightly more elaborate) creative efforts in Genesis 1? The text repeats, again and again, that God saw what he had done was good. Does that mean the world he had made and populated with fish, birds, animals, and people was morally good, without evil?

God declares his creations of light, plants, the moon, sun, stars, fish, birds, and animals to be good. But, we might wonder, good for what? Could it have meant good for something still to come?

God then makes humans and does not say humans are good. God looks at everything, including humans, and pronounces it all very good. I believe that when God saw that each of his creations was good, he saw them in the same way my grandfather saw my boat—he saw that they worked. And what does God’s creation work for? For us. For the coming of a conscious, intelligent, spirit-bearing, God-praising creature. The light; the land; the sun, moon, and stars; the plants and other animals—all of this was good for us.

Because God’s design of this universe; of this planet; of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology that govern it all—all of that is good for our existence and our thriving. And as we study our world and learn its secrets, all we can do is agree and worship the one who made it possible for us to be here, to live, to love, and to praise his glory.