also to those who have read even some part of some version of the manuscript for this book along the way. My wife Larissa, my brother Steven, my colleague Chris Friesen—thank you all for your input into this project. The book is certainly the better for it.
Finally, I must thank all those who first endured the ideas of this book in their rawest form: my “Revelation” classes at Prairie Bible College and in the adult Sunday school at Mount Olive Evangelical Free Church; my “Theology of Creation” class at The King’s University College; my “Digging Deep” adult Sunday school sessions at Lendrum; and most recently my art retreat sessions on “A Theology of Creating” at King’s Fold Retreat and Renewal Centre. Many of the ideas presented in this book were worked out in my study in preparation for teaching these classes and seminars, and then fleshed out in the sessions themselves. The next stage of “working out” and “fleshing out” these ideas—bringing them to bear in the daily grind of real life—is still ongoing for the teacher and (I hope!) for the other participants. Thank you, my students and friends and sisters and brothers in Christ, for engaging these ideas, asking good questions, and pushing me in new directions. For all these things, this book is dedicated to you.
Beginnings and Endings and Where to Find Them
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
– lao-tzu (ca. 604–531 bc)
If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
– laurence j. peter (1919–1988)
In a journey, beginnings and endings are crucial. The end is the desired goal, the place you are trying to get to; the beginning, of course, is where you start; and both the beginning and the end determine the path you take. Sure, journeys can take unforeseen detours, venturing into unmapped territory. And sometimes the journey itself becomes more significant than the destination. Still, every journey you will ever take is in some way defined by where you have come from and where you are going.
So it is with life. The way we understand our beginning and our end, our origins and our destiny, where we come from and where we are going—all this is crucial to our identity, our purpose, our being and living in the world. This is true for us in our relationships, in our careers, in our societies, really in all of the dimensions of who we are. Families celebrate births and grieve deaths, and mark anniversaries for all these beginnings and endings, precisely because these are so essential to our understanding of who we are and what “the meaning of life” is all about. Every year countries around the world pour millions of dollars into creating nationwide celebrations in memory of their origins and crafting detailed plans to shape their destinies—all because how we understand both the past and the future determines how we live in the present. We all need a beginning and an ending, with ourselves in the middle.
Beginning, middle, and end—those are also the most basic elements of a good story, and human beings have told stories of their perceived beginnings and anticipated endings for as far back as we can know. Indeed, this is the most common way human societies have developed their collective identity and purpose and values, and passed these on to subsequent generations: telling stories of beginnings and endings, with ourselves in the middle.
All of us tell stories in order to make sense of our perceptions and experiences. The man who tells the story to his wife about his coworker’s most recent failings, the patient who tells the story to her doctor of her progressing mystery illness, the boy who tells the story to his friend of his football hero’s rise from injury to championship—this kind of sense-making storytelling is happening all around us, all the time. And this happens on a collective level as well, in both formal and informal ways. In churches, synagogues, or mosques, in classes, seminars, or rallies, in theaters, bookshops, or homes—in all these venues groups of people are continually telling stories among themselves to make sense of the world they experience collectively, to establish and reinforce who they are and why they do the things they do.
But the stories that give an account of our origins or a vision of our destiny are especially powerful. A nation may tell stories of the religious faith of its founders in order to emphasize to its citizens and others that such religious faith should be a necessary part of the fabric of the nation today. A company may describe a vision of its prosperous future in order to foster a culture of excellence and success in the present. A family may repeat the account of how their grandparents immigrated to their new homeland in order to reinforce the values of adaptability and hard work that made their life possible. An athlete may visualize achieving a new personal best in her sport in order to give her the confidence she needs to actually realize that goal.
Our lives are filled with stories, and the stories of beginnings and endings with ourselves in the middle are especially vital to how we make sense of the big questions of life. Indeed, it could well be said that the one who tells the stories is the one who shapes the world.
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If stories of beginnings and endings are so crucial for us in defining who we are and why we are here, where should we go to learn more about these ultimate origins and final destinations?
There is no shortage of options out there. Science may fill in some of the picture, particularly if you are interested in precise thoughts on the when and how of the earth’s beginnings and of human origins. But this scientific perspective does not have much to say about who we are and why we are here in light of our past and future, or our identity and purpose and values as human beings and human societies—even collectively as a human race. The scientific enterprise is an important one, to be sure, and science is a critical dialogue partner in these kinds of meaning-and-significance questions of human existence. But science is ill-equipped to consider such questions fully, as these questions assume that there is something more going on in being human than merely what can be observed and hypothesized and experimented and reasoned, that humanness is more than proteins and chemicals and neurons and organ systems. And thus, even in our scientific age many reach beyond science to answer these kinds of questions, looking to everything from ancient religions to inner intuitions to charismatic leaders to a myriad of other options.
While Christians may legitimately turn to a variety of resources for guidance in all this—human reason, personal experience, and Christian tradition, among others—Christians have always in a special way looked to the Bible to address these kinds of questions, the big “meaning of life” sorts of questions of human existence. This is because Christians throughout history have described this collection of ancient sacred writings, these Scriptures, in line with the description of the Jewish Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) provided in 2 Timothy 3:15–17:
The Holy Scriptures . . . are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
According to this text the Scriptures are “God-breathed” or (to use the technical theological term) “inspired.” The Greek term used in this text (theopneustos) was a brand new one, apparently made up just for this statement, and theologians have expended much effort in attempting to understand and describe what this word means. I would suggest that the term was intended to echo a biblical story, one which we will explore in more detail in a later chapter: the story of God shaping the human form out of the ground—everyday, ordinary earth—and then “breathing into” this sculpted soil the “breath of life” so that the human form becomes a “living being” (Genesis 2:7). In a similar way, God has “breathed into” these ancient human writings we call Scripture, so that they are “alive and active,” as another New Testament author describes any true “word of God” (Hebrews 4:12). Thus, the biblical writings are very much ancient human writings; this “inspiration” does not diminish the historical,
