Gold and the Glory of God

Why did God create gold? Answers to that seemingly idiosyncratic question can illuminate important insights into the nature of creation, providence, wealth—and, notably, human action. As we probe this topic, we will see how God has graciously invited us to continue with him the works he has begun. And that gives our daily work—including our investing—extraordinary significance.

The opening chapters of Genesis tell us about a part of creation called Havilah, “where there is gold” (Gen. 2:11). Gregory of Nyssa, the fourth-century father of the Eastern church, apparently thought that gold was meant to remain underground. Reflecting on the confession from the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces” (Ecclesiastes 2:8), Gregory asks, “Why did he disturb the gold mingled in the earth and poured out in those places in which it was put from the beginning by its Maker? What more did the Creator make the earth owe you, besides its crops?”

The answer for Nyssa is that those who seek out gold in places like Havilah are motivated by greed or that they are mistaken about the nature of happiness, seeking it in material wealth rather than obedience to God. Nyssa challenges those who believe that it is the responsibility of human beings to delve into the depths of what is hidden in the earth: “Why do you overstep the bounds of your authority? Or else, show me that these things too have been granted to you by your Creator, that you may mine what lies underground, and dig it up and refine it with fire, and gather what you have not sown.”

The artist and theologian Makoto Fujimura, in his book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, provides a different perspective on why God created gold and why human beings are called to cultivate the earth. Noting this intriguing detail about Havilah, Fujimura asks, “Was there an anticipation that the narrator of Genesis wanted the audience to understand?” He continues, “It may be that Adam and Eve were to eventually find the materials and build something outside of Eden.” Fujimura admits he is speculating, but a look at where gold appears in the Pentateuch suggests his imaginative conclusion has real merit.

After the Israelites were liberated from bondage in Egypt, the Lord gave detailed instructions about how to make a tabernacle. Constructing this special dwelling for God’s own living presence among his people called for all kinds of creative work and artistic genius. God specifically appointed Bezalel and Oholiab, as gifted craftsmen, to lead this work. These two became the first people in the Bible explicitly said to have been “filled” with God’s Spirit, in this case, for artistic labors. Specifically, they, along with the other craftsmen, were “to devise artistic designs and arranging gold, silver, bronze and carved wood, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (Exodus 31:4–5). Bezalel, Oholiab, and all of the other craftsmen and artists tasked with constructing the tabernacle are also provided with the materials with which to ply their trades, including precious metals, gemstones, and wood. In fact, Exodus 38:24 reveals that more than a ton of gold was collected and used to build God a temporary earthly dwelling! Much in the same spirit of Bezalel and Oholiab, Fujimura’s own artwork uses gold to create modern cultural expressions of worship and beauty through the traditional Japanese art of Kintsugi.

Creation in Three Keys

It’s not only the artists like Bezalel, Oholiab, and Fujimura who are called to creativity. As image-bearers of God, all human beings are created to be creative—and given the task of improvising and expanding upon God’s own creative work.

The German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer offered a helpful description of the dynamic between God’s own creative action and that of human beings. Most fundamental is God’s work of creating something out of nothing (ex nihilo). This is God’s work of primary creation. Next comes God’s work of ordering, arranging, dividing, and defining that primary creation into more diverse and particular expressions. In the descriptions of the later days of the creation account in Genesis 1, we find God separating light from dark and land from sea and filling these new areas with life. This is God’s work of secondary creation, his sovereign ordering and arrangement of the cosmos.

Left to human beings is creation in a tertiary sense, that work of discovering and making manifest those things that God has left implicit or latent in his own direct work of primary and secondary creation. “The work founded in paradise calls for co-creative human deeds,” writes Bonhoeffer. “Through them a world of things and values is created that is destined for the glory and service of Jesus Christ. It is not creation out of nothing, like God’s creating, but it is the creation of new things on the basis of God’s initial creation.”

This derivative creative work by human beings must be in accord with God’s original design. But the fact that God created human beings with further work to do is made clear from the creation account itself. Though God is perfectly capable of bringing all of creation to completion, he stops short of doing everything he desires and instead charges humans with the command to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) and to “cultivate and tend” it (Genesis 2:15). This has often been called the “Cultural Mandate,” and it is God’s blessing humanity with purposeful, creative activity. 

We see this “creation of new things on the basis of God’s initial creation” in the work of invention, discovery, and cultivation that still occurs after the fall into sin. Cities are founded, musical instruments are fashioned, and indeed, even gold is made into fine works of art and adornment. None of these things are unmixed goods, given that they occur within the context of a fallen and fractured world. But they are ongoing expressions of God’s primal plan to involve his creatures in the ongoing work of creation.

And there are new kinds of work that are needed after sin has entered the world. So, we see Jesus giving his followers a great commission to evangelize and to bring the gospel to all nations, teaching new Christ-followers to observe all of his commands (Matthew 28:18-20). Not only has God created human beings to be creative and to further explore and enhance his original work, but he has also graciously deigned to include us in his work of saving that creation from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. 

God’s Investment–And Ours

A few chapters before Matthew concludes his Gospel with Christ’s commission of his disciples, he relates one of the parables Christ used to teach them about the nature of obedience and the kingdom of God. In Matthew’s account we read of the parable of the talents, in which an owner leaves three servants in charge of different amounts of money: five talents, two talents, and one talent, respectively. Talents were an ancient measure of weight, and some English translations make the story easier to grasp by calling these talents “bags of gold.” And so we read that there was “a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:14–15, NIV).

In this parable we can see the intimate connection between the ongoing work that God has commanded human beings to undertake both in terms of creation and the cultural mandate as well as in redemption and the Great Commission. In creation, God entrusts human beings with all manner of gifts, skills, talents, and treasures to be cultivated as offerings used to God’s glory. In redemption, Christ reclaims those lost co-creators, made in God’s image, and restores them to their God-given purposes, now pursued within the context of a fallen and redeemed world. 

Why did God make gold? The answer is in some sense for the same reason he made anything and everything: for his own glory. And as we learn from Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, God is glorified not only in the great and the grand, but also in the meek and the weak. “Just like the art of Kintsugi,” writes Fujimura, “what once was broken is repaired not to hide its flaws but to celebrate them as part of what it is to become beautiful.”

Yet while God empowers us to be faithful stewards of his good gifts, we can also squander his investment in us and in this world. Consider, for example, what humans have done with gold—gold that God says is his (see Haggai 2:8). The same gold that God provided for the Hebrews from the wealth of the Egyptians was used not only to create the Tabernacle but also to fashion the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:3–4).  

God invested in this world in his work of creation, and he reinvested in the incarnation. And like any good investor, he wants a worthy return on his commitment. It is our task—as made clear in the scriptural mandates to cultivate and keep God’s creation and to proclaim his kingdom—to make productive use of the gifts he has given us. Those gifts include material goods, such as gold and silver. They also include spiritual gifts, such as worship and hospitality. If we truly believe that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1), then our work must embrace the gold that is in this world as well as all of the other means that God has given for his glorification in this life.