A Creation Sandwich.

(The bible I'm using is the King James version, by the way, which is widely considered by some to be the definitive version of the bible. I figure the definitive one would be the original, but since I can't get my hands on that, well, I'll work with what I have.)

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)

Interesting that before there was anything, there was water. There's a complete universal void going on, and yet there's still a bunch of water around. I'd suggest that it's metaphorical water, but yet...

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:6-10)

No, those would be literal waters, then. So before there was anything else that we can comprehend today, there was God, and there was water. The jury's still out on whether God and water were created simultaneously, or which one came first, but one thing is at least certain: water existed with God, before the world was fully formed.

This rarely gets a mention, I've noticed. It's always, "Before anything existed, there was God, because God created everything." But it's clear right from the get-go that while God manipulated the waters (and everything else, for that matter), the waters still actually existed for him to manipulate.

Interesting.

I also find it interesting how we're on the bottom slice of a creation sandwich, according to Genesis. It goes water (and subsequent land) --> Heaven --> water again. There's a layer of water above Heaven.

Perhaps this is where people originally thought that rain came from. Water's coming from the sky, but given that I highly doubt they understood cloud formations and water vapour that much, maybe people used to think that the falling rain came from the layer of water that was above Heaven. It makes a degree of sense. Following the belief that God lives in Heaven, and that Heaven is a firmament (stable place), why would a creator deity choose to live in Waterworld?

I'm sure that some people may choose to argue that the top layer is also the bottom layer, that this isn't a creation sandwich so much as a representation that the world is round. An interesting theory, I'll grant, but that then means that Heaven (and God, if you believe that he lives in Heaven) exists between the two layers, which aren't layers anymore so much as one connected circle. That would mean that Heaven is in the centre of the earth.

Now, I'm sure some people may be arguing here that God created all those waters because it says right at the beginning, before God moved across the waters, that he created heaven and earth. So God creates earth, and then there's water. It wasn't there before him.

But on some level, how does that reconcile with the fact that there's the Heaven layer and the layer of water above that? Earth gets created, and it's full of water. God sticks Heaven in the middle. You've either got to take this as meaning that when God "created the earth" he actually created the whole universe, or else Heaven really is a place on earth.

Unless you ignore the top water layer, that is.

This is why I have such a hard time taking biblical literalism seriously. Questions like this often get ignored. Literalists take everything in the bible to be 100% literally and factually true, without exception. But they ignore the top layer of creation that Heaven is sitting between. Sure, it can be explained away by saying that the top layer is where people used to think water came from, but that isn't literalism. That's being subjective. And if one thing in the bible is subjective, why can't more of it be?

And that line of thinking leads to dangerous heresy and can't be spoken of.

But the information is there. Why people choose to ignore it, I don't understand. It raises a bunch of questions for me. Is the top layer another layer to aspire to, after Heaven? Does it have land beneath it too? Is it a symbol for reincarnation, in that after going to Heaven to rest up for a bit we can go on to another place and live again, constantly shifting back and forth between two planes of living? Is that layer a mirror world that God's playing around with right now? Why is it?!

This is why I chose to start reading the bible and making notes of my adventures through it. There's a lot in here that I didn't know. There's a lot in here that most people don't know. I'm halfway through the first chapter of the first book, and already there's something that stumps me.

I wonder if the reason that top layer gets ignored so much is because it stumps everybody else, too. We have our earthly lives, and we've got Heaven to aspire to, and beyond that, well, why should there be a "beyond that"? Aren't we supposed to spend the rest of existence in Heaven, after all? Why needs to be beyond that.

But there is something, if you believe that what the bible says is true. There are people who believe that everything God does has a purpose. So what's the purpose of that other layer?

Even if it's metaphorical, it's still there, and thus still means something. Maybe it means that even if we're good in life and get to Heaven, we still have to strive, because there's something else out there to strive for. Maybe it's not better than Heaven, but it's still there, and human curiosity being what it is...

Maybe God put it there to stop us from being complacent. Maybe those in Heaven will get a little slack, thinking that they're in Heaven now so everything they do must be perfect and that there's nothing else worth doing, and when God sees them lose their motivation, he can say, "You know, there's something above Heaven. Don't you want to know what it is?"

To me, this is actually a powerful motivational symbol. Even when things are good, we have to keep working and avoid getting complacent because who knows, the next thing could be even better. It could be worse, sure, but unless we actually get there and find out, we'll never know.