Creation: How God Makes Unity in Diversity

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalm 139:14

You may be familiar with this passage of scripture. We like to quote it a lot—and for good reason. It’s a great reminder of the intimate connection we have to the Father. He took the time to lovingly, thoroughly create us into being, expending his boundless intellect to instill each of us with the unique personality, gifting, and appearance that would bring him glory and reflect his image.

The stamp of God’s beauty, wisdom, and creativity is present throughout all of creation. Everywhere we look, we see his masterpieces designed precisely and intricately so that life may be sustained. This is evident in the process of the world’s creation itself. Genesis 1, which details God’s formation of the universe out of nothing, shows us his ingenuity and demonstrates that we are not here by accident.

Let’s open our Bibles to Genesis 1 and take a deep dive into the process of creation together.

 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Genesis 1:1-2

We’ll stop right here for a moment. Notice the first sentence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Think about that. God was right there at the beginning of everything. In fact, he was there before the beginning. Before time and space. Before the black void of outer space began expanding. Before all of that, he was. And he brought all there was and is to be into existence from absolutely nothing. This means time, earth, and the structure of the universe are a work of God and God alone. He designed everything from DNA to the laws of physics to the constellations in the night sky: all of it. He authored the blueprint and then carried it out.

We also see that at first, the earth was an unformed, uninhabitable mass. There was no order or cohesion to it…yet.

This brings us to the enlightening topic of binaries in creation. Through the creation process, God establishes order using binaries, which are, in terms of our subject matter, a pair of complimentary yet distinct elements of creation that work together to sustain life.

So, for example, land and sea are known as the land/sea binary. They are polar opposites, but they both work together to keep life going! They also make each other distinct: would land really be land unless there was the sea to sharply contrast with it? Another example is the night/day binary, and the same principle applies here. They are utter opposites, with one characterized by light and one characterized by darkness. However, they work relentlessly to keep the cycle of life continuing and to point out the differences in each other. Again, in the same way that land wouldn’t be land without the sea to make it distinct, would daytime really be daytime if we did not have evening coming later on?

With that said, continue reading Genesis 1 and observe how God uses binaries in the creation process to support life.

day/night:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:3-5

earth/sky:

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” ⁷ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. ⁸ God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

Genesis 1:6-8

land/sea:

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:9-10

sun/moon:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

Genesis 1:14-16

light/darkness:

God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Genesis 1:17-19

The pattern should be clear at this point. Within these relatively few passages, God creates many binaries that are pivotal to existence on earth. In all this binary talk, though, we have yet to discuss the most important one.

male/female:

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;  male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27

This passage introduces us to the male/female binary, which is central to life. Theological writer Gary Brumbelow calls it a “manifestation of the complimentary nature of creation.” I would go a step further and call it the ultimate manifestation of creation’s complimentary nature.

Genesis 2 goes into more detail regarding the events of those last two verses:

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” ¹⁹Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” ²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Genesis 2:18-24

It was not good for Adam to be alone. Yet, no suitable helper for him existed. Nobody was there to be his partner, for him to compliment and for them to compliment him.

It is through the binary of male/female—this pairing of two mentally, emotionally, and physically distinct beings—that life is produced. They are so drastically different, and yet they compliment each other in their difference.

I cannot stress enough how in the process of creation, male/female is the most significant binary God created. Without it, the world would cease to be. Future generations would not be raised up to glorify God in a caring, protective family structure.

This creation binary also demonstrates the Lord’s intentions for the order of nature. Upon reading about God crafting the world together, we see what a God-ordained marriage is supposed to look like: one man and one woman joining together in an exclusive, life-long intimate relationship of love and loyalty.

There are profound implications behind this. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright explains them well:

The binaries in Genesis are so important—…heaven and earth…sea and dry land…male and female. It’s all about God making complementary pairs which are meant to work together. The last scene in the Bible is the new heaven and the new earth, and the symbol for that is the marriage of Christ and his church. It’s not just one or two verses here and there which say this or that. It’s an entire narrative which works with this complementarity … [as] a signpost or a signal about the goodness of the original creation and God’s intention for the eventual new heavens and new earth.

N.T. Wright

The symbolization behind the marriage of a man and woman is beautiful beyond words. The complimentary, life-sustaining marital covenant—the center of every healthy society in creation—is a reminder of the sacred union Christ will one day enjoy with his Church.

Application

To wind things down, let me give you two encouragements you can apply to your life.

Appreciate the Order of Creation

Under the natural order God has established, we are free from having to determine the fabric of reality by ourselves, which is an immense burden for which mankind was not created. We are free from having to make things up and endlessly create our own reality.

In the world we live in, it is not popular to acknowledge that there is an objective truth about what is right and wrong, or what we are here for, or how nature is structured. God’s Word tells us what is and what isn’t right down to our makeup, our marriages, and our gender. These are all unchangeable, absolute truths. Nobody can bend them to their will.

We sometimes don’t like this because we want the freedom to be our own God. In actuality, shaping the world our way creates a nightmare. If we have no unifying agreement about truth, reality, and morality, then that leaves it completely up to us in deciding what truth is. This leads to a never-ending, unfulfilling cycle of remaking our reality.

Appreciate the Unity in Diversity

God has made so, so many elements of creation complimentary: moon/sun, land/sea, light/dark, and of course male/female, showing us how he takes two vastly differing things and then brings them together in harmony to create something good. They, in their wonderful, amazing distinctiveness, work in unity.

This fact of creation brings to mind God’s Trinitarian nature. God himself consists of three unique Persons who work in glorious unity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are not carbon copies of each other. They have different roles, with the Father being the creator and judge of the world, the Son being the savior who pays our debt and reconciles us to God, and the Holy Spirit being our helper and ultimate guide so that God may build his Church. It only makes sense God’s handiwork reflects this unity.

In Closing…

Praise God! In his infinite wisdom, he has formed a world so awe-inducingly complex and majestic, with each piece of the multi-faceted creation puzzle snapping into perfect place with the next, that we should have no doubt we came from a thoughtful, loving creator. Because of this, we need not doubt that we or anything else in the universe occurred by random, arbitrary chance. We were intentionally made with a divine purpose.

Fearfully and wonderfully made indeed!