The Genesis Jeopardy!

     The category is “Man’s Questions for God”
Man’s Questions for $600, Alex.
     Answer: God lovingly created man in his own image (1:27).
Question: Why am I here?
     Right!

Actually this is the just the end of the answer in Genesis 1. The fuller answer is this: God creates with His Word (“God said”), He blesses, He names, He sees, He makes, and He rests—all out of love for mankind (2:8). So we also do these actions because we are Godlike. He made us to belong to Him as a son does to a father and be like Him in loving others by speaking, blessing, naming, seeing, creating, making, and resting.  

 “Man’s Questions for God” for $800.
     Answer: God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation (2:3).
Question: Why do we gather together to worship God on the Sabbath day?
     Yes!

On the Sabbath we are called to be with Him and rest. Like him we rest from our labors on the day He did. God finished his work, and likewise we also hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant….Enter into the joy of your Master” (Matt 25:23). And we answer with Eucharist, an act of grateful worship in which a person encounters the presence and power of God ("thanksgiving" in Hebrew is todah.)

“Man’s Questions” for $1000, Alex.
     Answer: The LORD God gave her to you as a partner because it was not good that you were alone (2:18, 20).
Question: Why do I leave my father and mother and marry one woman and stay with her for my lifetime?
     That’s it!

Genesis 2 shows that the LORD God gave you a purpose in life, to name and order with him. But you were still alone and it was not good. So he made someone who is part of you and gave her to you for you to love and be loved as your “partner and counterpart” (TOTC; literally “like opposite him,” WBC).
   
     Theologians often see in Genesis etiologies or the answering of the question of how certain principles or towns were begun. The Jewish people are brought up to ask questions. For instance, they teach their children to recite four questions in the Seder. In Genesis, I see God as answering our big open-ended questions. Likewise, chapter 1 of the book I’m reading alongside our trip through the Bible (Conversationally Speaking) is “Asking Questions That Promote Conversation.” In it the author Alan Garner emphasizes that we can ask closed-ended questions or open-ended questions:

Closed-ended questions lead to dull conversations followed by awkward silences when they are used exclusively…You have to follow up your closed-ended questions with open-ended ones if you want to keep your conversations going and allow them to achieve greater interest and depth (underline mine, 5). 

 In choosing which questions to ask, keep in mind two considerations: First, only ask questions when you genuinely want to hear what the other person has to say. No matter how skillful you are, if you just go through the motions, others will sense that you’re merely trying to trick them into liking you….Second, strive to maintain dual perspective…thinking not just in terms of what you want to say and hear but also in terms of the other person’s interests (underlines mine, 8-9). 

     Garner ends the chapter with this final note: “It will require deliberate effort for you to begin asking open-ended questions. But as with walking and handwriting and all the other skills you’ve ever learned, after a while you’ll be doing it automatically" (Amen! See here). He says, "Researchers in the fields of communication and psychology have identified several specific skills vital for social effectiveness. Further, they have found that these skills can be learned in a relatively short time" (xiv).

     Conversing with others out of love, as the God of the universe is willing to do with us, takes practice but through it we become the divine-image bearers He has created us to be.