It’s about God, stupid

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | November 3, 2009

In this slim book, Marva Dawn takes us back to the beginning to ruminate on the first three chapters of Genesis. Central to the book is her fundamental question: what does the text tell us about God? It's an attempt to remedy the narcissistic reading many of us are used to, where we read to figure out "what does the Bible say to me?"

Scripture, she says, points us towards God and worship, not to ourselves.

Most of the book focuses on the two creation narratives in the first two chapters of Genesis. Dawn writes more as a pastor than a scholar. She considers the abundant goodness that God made, the wonder of being made in God's image, our place as keepers of the garden and the implications for worship.

She makes it clear that worship is about much more than 20 minutes on a Sunday morning. It's how we live everyday, our love of others, the pursuit of justice, our care for creation.

Over and over she reinforces the message of God's goodness and love as the basis for creation. This world is not junk, and it's blasphemous when we treat it as such. Eventually she gets to Genesis 3 and the story of sin, but not before she is satisfied that we've carefully considered creation with wonder and deep gratitude.

Thankfully, Dawn doesn't touch the usual hot-button question of Genesis—whether creation was a literal six days or not. She's far more interested in helping us form a biblical worldview. The first three chapters of Genesis are foundational for our understanding of creation, ourselves and God, and what those three things have to do with one another.

Her writing is sometimes a bit dry, perhaps the unfortunate curse of many academics and theologians. But the wisdom and care in these few pages reminds me of Eugene Peterson's writing, reflecting not only careful biblical and theological scholarship but also a pastor's heart.

She has taken on a big task, trying to reorient our worldview and direct our attention away from ourselves and towards God. But for such a small book, its message is truly radical.