Creation And Separation

Tearing apart in an effort to be like God

As the people of God, we are used to trying to imitate our Lord in all things. We strive to love as He loves; we try to teach as He teaches; to live where He lives and so much more. For the most part this is good and even required, but when it comes to creating we must act decidedly unlikeGod.

For God, the Father of all, Creator of heaven and earth, creates by separating one thing from another. By distinguishing light from darkness, sea from sky, male from female, God the Father actually creates something whole and unique in the world of things. And this new object, even if it is at the same time a subject, must be catalogued.

The Lord God “…brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” Genesis 2:19

Our act of creation is then a discovery, a naming, a building and even a combining...

Our act of creation is then a discovery, a naming, a building and even combining, but when we try to play God by separating we walk a dangerous path, for the result is hardly ever something new and certainly not whole. The separation of man from his wife; the separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage; the separation in our minds of one’s body from one’s gender, and of course, our first decision to separate morality from God’s ways in the Garden of Eden (which brought about that painful separation known as death). All of it is a potent reminder that we have the uncanny ability to destroy what we could have never brought together in the first place.

“What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” Mark 10:9

We learned that from the enemy didn’t we? The devil or diabolos, whose very name means to ‘throw apart,’ has from our first encounter with him made this his mission. If he was a carpenter you might expect him to favour the wedge. If he was a designer you would see him favour the partition. He neither likes whole things nor the God who joined them together. And if you are to be hated by the devil too then you must be one who is like God by acting unlike God. You must keep yourself together and stick to the plan.