Let Us Make People
A story for children ages 4-12 about the creation of people.
God stepped back and looked at his brand-new world. Bees buzzed, birds sang, and cows lowed softly in green meadows. A gentle breeze carried the scent of flowers through the warm air. The angels looked around and smiled. “What a beautiful world!” they sang.
“It’s a good world,” said God, “But it’s not done yet. My new world needs one more kind of creature: people. People to take care of it, the way I take care of the universe. Help me make them!”
Watch,” He said. He gathered clay from the corners of the world—red clay, yellow clay, black, brown, and white clay. Then He took one little bit. He pulled and pinched it until He was happy with its shape. “Help me make lots of these to put in the world,” He said.
Photo by Julia M. Cameron on Canva Germany GmbH.
The angels began. “Look, this one’s tall and skinny,” said one angel. “
Mine’s short and fat,” giggled another.
“Oh dear, mine’s crooked!” sighed a third.
God looked at the different sizes and shapes and colors of people. “They’re all beautiful,” He said with a smile. “Make me some more.”
“Look at the stick-out ears on yours,” teased one angel.
“Stick-out ears yourself,” snapped his friend. “This brown clay makes much nicer people than your ugly red.”
“This red is beautiful!” shouted the first angel.
“Well,” sniffed another angel, “I think the brown and red are both ugly. This black makes much prettier people.”
“Black’s too dark,” shouted someone else. “This yellow is best—it’s bright and cheerful, like the sun.”
Another angel stood up and shouted, “The white is best! It looks like moonlight.”
Everyone took sides. Shouts of “Black!” “White!” “Brown!” “Yellow!” “Red!” filled the air. “Take that!” screamed an angel, throwing a lump of clay.
“Stop!” God’s huge voice boomed through the heavens like thunder. The angels froze.
“I can’t put these people in My world,” He roared. “What a mess that would be! They’d argue, just like you. They’d scream, ‘I’m best’ and throw things at each other.”
He pulled all the clay people to Him in a heap. He slammed His fist into the heap. Smash! The angels shook with fear. Smash! Smash! God mashed the clay people together. Then He started to knead the clay.
Slowly all the colors blended together.
Slowly the clay became smooth and even.
And slowly God stopped being angry.
“Now,” said God, “I’m going to make one person out of this yellowish-brownish-blackish-reddish-whitish clay.” Carefully He pinched and pulled the clay until it looked just right. The angels nodded.
“I’m putting just this one person in the world,” God explained. “It will make other people. Maybe some day the colors will separate again. But the people will know that they are all from the same First Person.”
“They won’t argue about their colors,” said one angel.
“They won’t throw things at each other,” said another.
God looked seriously at the angels. He thought of how even they fought.
Then He sighed, and breathed life into the First Person.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
This is the first half of a story I wrote about 35 years ago, “The Sixth Day,” for the anthology, Spinning Tales, Weaving Hope, which was published by New Society Publishers in 1992. It is loosely based on Genesis 2:7, “And Hashem God formed the man of dust from the ground…,” on Midrash Rabbah, Genesis 1, VIII:1, “And God said, Let us make man,” and in MR, Genesis 1, VIII:5, “Love and truth fought together, Righteousness and Peace combated each other,” from Psalm 85:11. The word arms in Hebrew can mean fight and the word kiss is related to weapon. In this second midrash, Love says man should be created because he will be loving, and Truth says he should not be created because he is compounded of falsehood; Righteousness says he should because he will do righteous deeds, and then Peace says he shouldn’t because he is full of strife. I focused on the arguing.
I wrote this for secular and Christian educators who were teaching for the kind of color-blind world envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the target market for the anthology. The story reflects the philosophy prevalent in the 1980s, which was the antithesis of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion philosophy that has been taught in colleges and universities across North America and much of Europe for more than 20 years. I think this is a good partner for this week’s essay, The Slippery Slope Leading To the Hamas Rallies.
I have felt for a long time that The Sixth Day should have been two stories, and I am glad to have this oppotunity to separate them. Since this was originally half of a story, I had to add a few sentences for an ending. And because this story can be read at several levels, I suggest a much longer than usual age range. I will publish the second half at a later date.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Activities
Each culture has its own story or stories about how the world came to be. These stories answer different questions. If you are a teacher using this story with a group of children, ask them if they know any stories about how the world was created, perhaps from their cultures.
If you can find creation stories from other cultures, share them with the children. Ask them:
How are these stories similar?
How are they different?
What do the similarities say about people all over the world?
What interesting things do the differences say about different cultures?
Get several colors of food coloring. Make vanilla cookie dough. Divide it among the children, giving each child (or small group) a bottle of food coloring. Have them put a drop or two in their dough and mix it in well. Make the cookies all the same shape and bake them.
Which cookies are prettiest? Why? Why not?
Are some better than the other? Why? Why not?
Blindfold some children and have the others give them different colors of cookies. Can they tell the difference in color by the taste?
What does the result of this experiment mean? How important is the color? Which is more important, the color or the taste? Why? Why not?