In His Image

If one reads the first chapter of Genesis carefully one is struck by the fact the Creative Narrative is a series of separations. When God commands ‘Let there be light!’(vs.3) there is light and it is in terms of darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. Corollary of this shows up in Day and Night. Day is in terms of Night. Creation Day is to be set in direct context of Creation Night and the two components are Not to be interpreted either mystically or in spiritual sense. God intended the coupling of both by same standard of His creative judgment.
What about the Sun, you might ask me. The Sun He set in the firmament to give light on the earth. The Moon is introduced in keeping true to His creative judgment as a celestial sign in terms of the Sun. Of this I shall come in a moment.

In verse 6 the separation of waters created Heaven and the waters of the Earth. The latter is gathered to form Seas. If we go back to the verse2 we shall understand that while God separated Day from Night, various other events were also concurrently happening. The Earth that was without form, became organized or to use an expression we are all familiar with, evolving into the form that we know of. The point we need to keep in mind is that Creative process for the heavens was no less different from that existed below on the Earth. God is not the God of Chaos but as St. Paul says is of Order. As with living creatures that came later God’s creative Mind has made His creation to fall into a certain pattern.
Heavens and the Earth
The Sun and the Moon.
Order is in the same sense we may make of a mirror image. The substance and its shadow should not sow chaos over one another but remain beyond shadow of doubt connected to one another. It is in this context we need to understand the creation of man. He created man in His image (vs.27). ‘Male and female he created them’, does not mean any transgender issue but of God being reflected as in a mirror. Man and woman as one. Of equal standing. God has not set man head over the woman but in His image. No more no less.
benny

Illogical Route of Events

Suppose I compare mankind to an ocean of humanity do you think I could be far from wrong? Each human being as a drop of water and could be as lethal and powerful as water in its full force would demonstrate. The analogy is apt I dare say, since we are part and parcel of collective experience. How we singly as individuals and as nations corrode or build up our future can be well seen from our post WWI history. The Balkans was a powder keg made up of many ethnic groups, the Albanians, Macedonians, the Jews, Serbians and Moslems and what not. The weakening of the Ottoman Empire at the end of 19th century had made the past history of conflicts, pogroms and ‘ethnic cleansing’ freely waged by lawless bandits from these groups a very volatile situation. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke was a reason for the event that we now know as the First World War. One answer I can hazard to give is this: so many little wars or bloodletting on ethnic lines coalesced into one major war. Another, a historian, and with all his persuasive power of scholarship and insight shall give yet another. I do not dispute the validity of his arguments or verdict as much as I am also right.
As in the case of ice that I cited in the outset there cannot be any simple cut and dried answer to most of our experience.
Tailpiece: given the interplay of so many layers to any event as WWI, a single answer may be too simplistic. Reason is a good guide for anyone to hold in one’s personal conduct but rarely works in practice.
benny