Bible Observations: Genesis 1 and 2

The church that I attend with my family has an excellent, devoted pastor whose calling is the missions field. At any given time there are projects going on at different places scattered over the world that my church is actively involved in. Another area that my pastor emphasizes is that we read the Bible from cover to cover. The Bible is, according to my own church doctrine, perfect and without error. I believe that he meant for us to read the Bible reverently, with this in mind. But it didn’t take me very long in my reading (which naturally started with Genesis Chapter One) to find areas that are confusing, to say the least.

Genesis 1-2 is about God’s role as the creator of the universe, earth, life, and humans, as well as the beginning of the story of the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) and their initial placement within the Garden of Eden. So far, so good. Whether or not the events told in these two chapters actually happened as described is something that anyone is welcome to speculate on. But my problem is that I see some apparent contradictions within the text:

--In Genesis 1:3-5, on the first day, God created “light”. After separating light from darkness, He named the light “day” and the darkness “night”. But it wasn’t until the fourth day, in Genesis 1:16-18 when God created the Sun! And the plants, which depend directly on sunlight for survival, were created the day before!

--All of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:1-2 deal with God’s six days of creation and seventh day of rest. Plants were created on the third day and man was created on the sixth. But in Genesis 2:4-6, it is revealed that before there were any plants, God formed man from the earth! [Although it must be said that this passage may have just been referring to plants cultivated in fields by people.]

Now, by bringing these “glitches” out, I mean no disrespect toward the religions whose adherents strongly believe everything that is in the Bible is 100% accurate. I’m simply asking someone out there to reconcile the discrepancies that I see here. After all, if the people who are targets of missions work start reading their Bibles, I wouldn’t want them to get tripped up “coming out of the gate”.

All that aside, I didn’t begin to read the Bible just to nitpick. For me, Genesis 1 presented the then-revolutionary idea that there was one God who created everything, as opposed to the multitudes of Gods that people of the time worshipped, and which were represented by man-made objects or natural objects like planets, the sun, volcanoes, the sea, the weather, the Earth, or a multitude of other things. And Genesis 2 brought forth an important concept on which everything else in the Bible is based: God is personal, and seeks relationship with humans both individually and collectively.