Going Back to our "beginnings"

The worrying statistics that we have seen compel us to ask: what happened? We have seen God's beautiful purpose for our bodies and sexuality. So what happened? Why is it that we seem to have such a distorted view of sex nowadays? Of course there are so many factors that account for the present state of confusions regarding the purpose of sex nowadays. But sacred Scriptures tell us that these distorted views on sex that we have in our world today and are wrecking so much havoc in the lives of many can ultimately be traced to the distortions introduced by sin into the world.

So John Paul II invites us to go back to our sacred beginnings, and there to ponder how God intended sex to be and how it was distorted by the entry of sin into the world. When the Holy Father refers us back to the "beginning," he is inviting us to once again reflect on the story of our creation in the Book of Genesis.

It might surprise you that in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, we have two creation stories, not one (according to biblical studies. We have there what we call the Elohist story of creation (the first creation account that we encounter when we start reading Genesis), and the Yahwist account.

Without going into much detail, let us just point the distinctive characteristic and the salient teachings of these two creation accounts. In the Elohist account (Gen 1:1ff), man's creation is inserted into the seven-day cycle of the creation of the world. Man, therefore, is created together with the visible world. However, although man is bound to the visible world, the Elohist account does not speak of his likeness to creatures of the visible world, but to God and to God alone: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him..." (Gen 1:27). This means the man cannot be understood solely in terms of what is physical and visible. Rather, says John Paul II, man is defined primarily by his relationship with God, in whose image and likeness he has been fachioned. It is imperative that we reflect on this very important revelation in Scriptures. This means that we are radically related to God: we are God's image in this world and we cannot do away with God in our lives without impoverishing our human existence and its meaning.

The Yahwist account, on the other hand, describes to us the first inner human subjective experiences of Adam and Eve. What is charateristic about it is that in this account, the creation of woman is separate from and happens after the creation of man (Adam). We will see more of the details of this Yahwist account as we go along.