Genesis 2 zooms in on what Genesis 1 zoomed out on. The same God who said "let us make man" now kneels in the dirt and shapes one. He does not speak humanity into existence; he sculpts it. And he gives it life not by command but by his own breath. The detail is intimate to the point of being scandalous — a Creator on his hands and knees.

From the writers we read together

J.P. Moreland

philosopher of mind, professor at Talbot School of Theology

Moreland's life work has been to argue that consciousness — the simple fact that there is something it is like to be you — cannot be reduced to neurons firing. Materialism, he says, has a self-interest reason for trying: if minds are real, then a Mind making minds is no longer absurd.

Genesis 2:7 says the same thing in pre-philosophical Hebrew. The dust does not become a person until the breath of God enters it. Whatever your body is doing today, it is doing on borrowed breath. The proper response to that fact is not anxiety about losing it. It is gratitude for having it.