The Church starts reading from the first chapters of Genesis which are not meant to provide historical or scientific explanations for our origins but spiritual ones. The first chapter of Genesis makes two major points. First, unlike the philosophers who claim that things are “eternal and necessary” the book of Genesis says that everything is the result of a choice. God chose to create. “Then God said…” As human beings we are not trapped by fate which pre-determines outcomes but instead have elevated choice as the driver for the events of this world. The second major point: God created everything and everything is good. God saw how good it was. This was unlike pagan explanations of the world which saw creation as a battle between good and evil. No, all of creation is good. (In chapter 3 Genesis goes on to describe how evil came into an all good creation.) Keep these two lessons from Genesis in mind — the centrality of choice and the inherent goodness of creation — as the key to reading about human origins.
