No Wonder Creation Groans

Thanks to a book I'm reading, I just had an epiphany moment about the creation story in Genesis.

In the past, I'd always struggled a bit with what it means to be human – by way of comparison with animals. I'd taken from the first chapters of Genesis this notion that God made us humans special and different from the animals. Unlike all of them, we were given souls and, needless to say, a heaping amount of intelligence to keep the soul company. To make us God-like. Thus in this fashion we were created in God's image.

The problem was, and is, that we are getting more and more clear understanding that the animals are not entirely lacking in these things. We have a lot more in common with the animals than we like to admit.

The secular world includes many people who err on the other side, of course. Many enlightened souls (pun intended) think we're all animals at the end of the day. No wonder things are going downhill on planet Earth. Once it is accepted that we humans nothing more than rather smart animals, we begin to behave in approximately that fashion. Not a pretty scene. But I digress.

We have come to realize that animals with higher intelligence literally mourn death (duh... why did it take that long to figure that one out?), and, of particular note to me, know how to intentionally deceive. Even birds know how to do that, it turns out. Never mind the apes.

Knowing that some animals mourn death and know how to deceive, I begin to get uncomfortable with the great divide – the assumption that animals ain't really thinkin' and they ain't really got no soul. Maybe they have spirits too. Immortal ones? Perhaps. God never said they didn't. I love the verse where God rips into his prophet Jonah for wishing that God would hurry up and wipe out the ancient city of Ninevah.

Jonah 4:11
But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?

God cares ever so dearly about the animals too.

Which takes me back to that mystery. I'm not fool enough to think we're all just a bunch of animals. But I'm not happy with the line some Christians take either – the one that pretty much buckets all animals as another class of critters because... because... because they're critters. And we're not. So critters don't matter. Because they're critters.

Thus the epiphany moment as I read these words:

Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image as God’s sovereign emblem. He is really only God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth. The decisive thing about man's similarity to God, therefore, is his function in the nonhuman world.

Lightbulb moment.

It's not that "we think and have souls [and animals don't]... so we get to rule and are special to God." Rather, it's that God chose us to rule over all other animals [and of course equipped us to do so] – and for that reason we are special. As God rules over the entire universe, we rule (in a limited fashion) over a small corner of his creation. It's the fact that we rule at all (and that only by God's decree and decision) that makes us special.

This approach does not detract anything from the animals. They can still think (as they obviously do) and even have spirits (which the higher ones seem to have). We bear God's image because we rule over them. We were appointed for that task.

Which leads me to my final reflection. No wonder creation groans.

Romans 8:22
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Creation has a right to groan. The appointed regents are lousy administrators. We are doing an awful job in our care over this corner of creation. And we know it too.

Romans 8:23
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

We are fallen humans leading fallen lives, ruling in a fallen way over a fallen world. No wonder creation groans. No wonder so many animals flee from the presence of their appointed rulers.

One day God will make all things right. Until then...

Creation groans.