By Marisa Young | Focus Editor
Like many students at Baylor, I grew up reading the Bible.
I spent Sunday mornings in the pews of my Baptist church, fueled by early wake-ups and cheap coffee. From the time I was coloring in church pamphlets with crayons, I knew the creation story (Genesis 1) by heart.
After transferring to a Christian school, I even memorized the order of creation for Bible class — light on day one, sky on day two and so on. I thought I knew it all. It was not until my sophomore year of college that I encountered a grave realization: I had completely missed the point.
From my Western point of view, reading the creation story as a somewhat literal narrative always made sense. Most nonfiction I consumed explained how things happened in concrete terms — whether describing the structure of a nucleus or how a person moves from Point A to Point B.
And this makes sense, given that the Western mind is always trying to find meaning in the “what.” Our society likes prose, outlines and bullet points, prioritizing efficiency in getting to “the point.”
But the people who first received the book of Genesis did not think this way.
As Hebrews — part of an Eastern culture — they looked for meaning primarily in the why. Ancient Eastern literature relies heavily on poetry, imagery and symbolism. Rather than treating learning as a simple transfer of information, they approached it as a journey of the mind.
I first encountered this distinction through the BEMA podcast, which is key to understanding the true meaning God is communicating through Genesis 1.
When the Hebrew people first encountered this text, they would have immediately recognized it as a common poetic form called a chiasm.
A chiasm forms a sort of linguistic sandwich, where if you fold the story in perfect halves, each half will match up and parallel the other.
A big signal that you are reading a type of chiasm is the repetition of certain phrases, such as “and there was evening and there was morning” or “and God saw that it was good.”
The exact middle (Genesis 1:14 in this example) is where the most central meaning, or “the point” in Western eyes, is stored. In Genesis 1, the exact middle is the Hebrew word “mo’ed,” meaning “festival” or “season,” signifying a period of rest.
To the Hebrews, who were exiting a period of intense slavery and persecution when they first received this text, this meaning would arrive as a groundbreaking signal of God’s love and provision for them to rest. The point of this passage is not for God to describe how Earth came to be; rather, he was telling his people about his own character — what kind of God he is. He is a God who wants his people to rest in his presence.
When I first discovered the inadequacy of my own Christian education, I was honestly a little angry that no pastor or teacher had ever preached the Bible from this perspective. How much meaning had I missed in my years of studying Scripture blindly? But that disappointment quickly turned to gratitude for the friend who opened my eyes, and I hope to do the same for others.
Now, maybe you were unlike me and have heard this version of the creation story preached from the pulpit growing up, but Genesis 1 is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Western Christians have missed throughout Scripture.
Abraham and Sarah’s relationship, Isaac’s taking of the birthright, even that weird story about Noah’s kids finding him naked — these stories all carry meaning so much deeper than just what happened.
I encourage all Christians to look past the surface of Scripture and lean into the meaning God intended to convey in his word.
