Where did the universe originate?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  ( Genesis 1:1)

       

     Who hasn't overheard a kid asking that? We regrettably lack available eyewitnesses to provide an answer. Nonetheless, we do have a record.

    The world and its heavens were created by God, according to Genesis 1. Genesis is not meant to be an exhaustive, in-depth description of how God created everything. The narrative is told in broad, sweeping strokes. Yet, it provides answers to two key concerns concerning when and who - in the beginning and God.

    The majority of world religions agree that the world could not have come into being by itself. That would require the cosmos to have existed before itself, which is illogical. The universe must have been created by something else, outside of and existing before the universe. According to the Bible, that object is actually a person—God.

    God did not have to decide to create. The choice was a manifestation of God's relational, creative, and loving nature. In order to express Himself, extend His relational nature to include beings who bear His image, and engage in communication with them, God created the world.

    There is no scientific account of the creation of the universe in Genesis. Christians who want to dispute science on these issues get sucked into a debate between empirical evidence and scientific inference that the book of Genesis was not written to settle.

    The universe emerged from God's nature and will, according to the book of Genesis. Physics, chemistry, and biology are significant branches of science that God used to proclaim His will, but like other academic disciplines, they occasionally, regretfully, forget about God.

    But both the genesis account and science are essential to our comprehension of God's creation. Genesis specifies the God we should worship, and science makes use of God's gifts of intelligence and curiosity to find out how God works.