The Image of God in Marriage

What does it mean to be made in God's image, as Genesis 1 and 2 maintain, and how do we live out that image on this earth? There have been many attempts to try to locate God's image in some single attribute like rationality or language or decision making. The Bible never tries to do that sort of thing and I think it is a mistake to attempt it. However, I do think we can identify some of the elements of being in His image directly from the Bible.


Genesis 1:26-28 is a key text on this topic, saying " Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness....And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And He blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply...'


In our culture much of the emphasis in teaching about marriage has been about companionship, but this is talking about much more than companionship. It is talking about the male/female union in marriage as an important part of bearing God's image on earth.


In his book The Mission of God (chapter 13, p. 427), Christopher J. H. Wright makes these observations about this passage: "Genesis 1 sets human male/female complementarity closely alongside the image of God.

• So God created man in His own image
• In the image of God he created him
• Male and female he created them

The implication from the tight parallelism seems clearly to be that there is something about the wholeness of human gender complementarity and the mutual relationship it enables that reflects something true about the very nature of God."  Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body indicates that the love relationship of the Trinity is pictured in marriage and in the bodily union of male/female; he goes on to say, 'the definitive creation of man consists in the creation of the unity of 2 beings'. He goes on to talk about the meaning of the body itself, what he calls 'the spousal meaning of the body' as an important component of this complementarity. This is to say that the very maleness and femaleness of the body has meaning, and is part of what it means to bear God's image on earth. The body itself enables us to bear God's image in the union of male and female in unity.



In talking about this in chapter 2 of  his book Genesis in Space and Time, Francis Schaeffer points out, "male and female constitute one whole,  become one flesh. Man, with a capital M, equals male and female..." This is to say that to fully bear God's image requires both male and female in union.


All of these agree that marriage bears God's image in a special way. This image requires complementarity and fruitfulness, as shown in the verses immediately following where the man and woman are blessed and the blessing specifically involves fruitfulness to multiply. This is clearly about much more than companionship; it is about being God's image on this earth, living out His image here and now. The fundamental purpose of marriage is to bear God's image on this earth in a way that male or female alone cannot do.


Same-sex marriage cannot do this. It cannot because it denies the basic meaning of the body by joining 2 bodies not designed to be joined; it cannot because of its inherent sterility rather than an inherent design to be fruitful; it cannot because it lacks the differences between male and female natures that must join to more completely bear God's image.


Most evangelical churches totally fail to teach the importance of marriage in bearing God's image on earth. That is a huge failure. Is it any wonder that there are so many divorces in the church now, since we don't seem to know the fundamental purpose of marriage?

The Triumph of Romanticism in the Supreme Court

The ruling in the Supreme Court last week to legalize homosexual marriage in the U.S. culminates the long history of romance becoming the sole cultural basis for marriage. Unfortunately it extends that mindset to unions that are also contrary to nature and contrary to the Biblical concept of marriage.


C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves spends a lot of time talking about how the falling-in-love experience is never adequate as a foundation for true love, love as described in the Bible such as in I Corinthians 13. He points out that following romantic love as the great authority in life is nothing new but has been especially ascendant in Western culture since the rise of the  romantic poets and romantic composers about 200 years ago. He makes clear that following the lead of romance often results in nothing more exalted than adultery, injustice, destruction of families and breaking of vows regardless of how soaring and exalted that in-love experience may be. Lasting love  ('caritas' in Latin, 'agape' in Greek), he goes on to explain, is more often controlled by such things as justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice, and self-denial.


Both the Bible and Lewis point out that there are a great many times when falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage. The Bible is especially emphatic about not marrying those outside the faith, regardless of whether you are in love. It is also clear that falling in love when you are already married or falling in love with a near relative (incest) are not acceptable reasons for marriage. The Biblical injunctions against homosexuality make it clear that falling in love with someone of the same sex is not an acceptable reason for marriage. There are many other cases, such as falling in love with someone vastly different in age, in which it is not a good idea even if it may not be immoral. There are a great many cases where falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage.




And while falling in love often provides the motivation to get married, it is never enough to sustain a marriage. Again the The Four Loves makes a very strong case that the love of I Corinthians 13 requires that things like justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice and the keeping of vows be the basis of a marriage, not falling in love.




In our culture the rise of romance as the only basis for marriage began to take its heavy toll with the rise of no fault divorce. This kind of divorce is based on the idea that no longer having the 'in love' experience is justification for divorce, and requires acceptance of the idea that falling in love is the basis of marriage. If marriage were based on more solid ground, then falling out of love would not be a basis for divorce. Having accepted the idea that falling in love is the foundation of marriage, it only made sense to see falling out of love as the basis for divorce.


If falling in love is the foundation of marriage, then falling in love is also the basis for sexual intimacy. From there, it is a very short step to accepting falling in love as justification for sex as soon as you fall in love, without waiting for marriage. So the rise in the cult of romance has resulted in easy divorce and also the rise in living together without marriage.


The church has been all too complicit in this. The church exalts the idea of falling in love as the basis of marriage just as the secular world does. The teaching of the Song of Solomon as a guidebook for marriage does exactly that, proclaiming romantic love as the foundation of marital bliss; yet, the Bible itself looks at the phase of Solomon's life in which the Song was written and proclaims it vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:8) and sin (I Kings 11:1-8). Some say the Song is a picture of Christ and the church but the extreme sensuality of the Song contrasted against the totally non-sensual nature of Christ's love make that view untenable in my mind. The teaching of the church about the Song is typical of the victory of romanticism in the church as well as in the broader culture, and this romanticism has paved the way for viewing homosexuality with this same romantic mindset. If falling in love is the main issue, then gender should not matter.


The fruit of the triumph of romanticism is clear: rampant divorce, rampant out of wedlock births and cohabitation, rampant adultery and fornication, and rampant homosexuality. In every case children are damaged even more than their romance-obsessed parents.
It will not be enough for the church to continue to speak out about the sin of homosexuality; the church will have to abandon its obsession with romance as well.


There are other issues with the decision of the court, issues about constitutional law and the court's disregard of the legislative process, but it seems to me that the acceptance of the ruling by much of the public has nothing to do with their concept of constitutional law: it is all about their complete acceptance of the cult of romance.

Let the Earth Rejoice!

I recently finished reading John Muir's book My First Summer in the Sierra which is his journal from a summer spent helping herd a flock of sheep in and around the area that is now Yosemite National Park in 1869. My first visit to Yosemite was about 6 years ago, and I had been interested in reading some of Muir's writing since then because of his important role in getting Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt to expand the park.


When I first visited the park I was very nearly overwhelmed with the extravagant beauty of the place. The enormous water falls like Yosemite Fall and Bridal Veil Fall, the imposing granite formations like Half Dome and El Capitan, and the grandeur of the sequoia groves all in close proximity give meaning to the word 'breathtaking'. For me, though, they also move me to thanksgiving to the Creator who made such places possible, and the place itself moves me to worship. That seems to have been the case with John Muir as well.


In our time when most environmentalists seem to worship nature as god, Muir praised God for creating nature. I was impressed by how very often he brings up God in this book. The book is not a long book at 159 pages in my edition, but I counted over 40 times when he brings up God in his journal. He speaks of how the beauty of the wilderness seeks to 'draw us up into God's light'; one beautiful morning he comments about 'the morning stars "still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy"'. He comments how the pitch on certain conifer cones are 'bringing to mind the old ceremonies of anointing with oil' and how the seeds from these cones 'fly to their predestined places'.  He speaks of how the great granite formation remind him of the Scripture "He hath builded the mountains." He makes reference to Samson's riddle, to incense offerings, and to psalms. Muir clearly was well acquainted with the Scriptures and they were also top of mind and readily recalled, not something he had written off and forgotten.


I appreciated his book because it captured much of what I also felt when at Yosemite, a feeling that this is the beauty that God both created and intended. It made me wonder what the garden of Eden may have been like in beauty and wonder as it is hard for me to even imagine a more beautiful place. The place itself seems to offer praise to God, and draws it forth from me.


Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Finishing this book just before Easter reminded me of words from a Sandy Patty song about Easter: 'did the grass sing? did the earth rejoice to feel You again?' she sings in the song "Was it a Morning Like This?" about Christ's resurrection. Psalm 98 says 'let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy before the Lord'. I have to think that the universe itself praises God for the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. It was good to be reminded of that by Muir's little book.

Christmas Past

For Christmas 2014 as we gathered in our home to exchange gifts we first read a passage from the Nativity story in the gospels, as is our custom. This year I read from Matthew 1 in the King James Version: the phrases used there like 'now the birth of Jesus was on this wise', 'his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph', and  'not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily' all take me back to prior times, to Christmas past. The KJV brought many expressions into our common usage from 'the skin of your teeth' to 'a drop in a bucket' and many others (here is link to a fun website that lists many http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bible-phrases-sayings.html) in part because of the almost poetic ring of the language. For me the language of the KJV also reminds me of a time when the language of the bible was more a part of our common culture, not just in America but in the western world.


The news this week picked up on some of that as there were many articles about the Christmas truce during the first Christmas of World War 1 in 1914. That truce was remarkable as the fighting stopped in the midst of war. Some have said it was spontaneous while there are some reports that 2 local officers, one British and one German, arranged it in a small spot and then it spread for some 500 miles. In any case, I do not think that could have happened without a common culture that understood the meaning of Christmas as a day to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace.

Our Sunday morning bible study has been looking at the idea of 'just war' lately as a result of being in Romans 13 in our study, and WW1 did not start on just grounds. Yet in the midst of a war that in my opinion was not just, this little bit of peace broke out because of the broader culture that had at least some basis in the bible. I do not think such a thing could happen in a war such as is now going on with ISIS.


So, the King James Version of the Christmas story reminds me of a time like that, when the language of the bible and the idea of God coming to earth was much more obvious in the common culture. Those days had evil of their own, as the war of 1914 also reminds us, but there is something good about that kind of time when the language of the bible was common to many more of us than it is now. I hope that we can reclaim some of that in our culture in the years ahead.

Thoughts on The Righteous Mind and the God of history

I recently read the book The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt and it was an interesting read. He offers some interesting insight into how the political left mindset is built on a different set of what he calls moral 'pillars' than the political right, and I find much of what he has to say to be helpful for our understanding of each other across the political spectrum. Still, I also find his viewpoint to be limited in a very critical way in regard to the matter of religion.


First, some things that resonated with me. His acronym of WEIRD for Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic is a nice one! Those of us in that world are indeed statistical outliers in regard to seeing the world as a world of individuals rather than as a world of relationships. He points out that the WEIRD-er we are, the moral narrow the moral viewpoint becomes. He goes on to explain how the political left consistently expresses a morality that is built on fewer 'pillars' (notably 2; fairness and care/harm) than the political right that is more evenly concerned about all 6 'pillars' that he identifies, including those of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity that are notably absent on the left. One result of this is that the political left has a much harder time even understanding the political right than the other way around. Several matters of concern to those on the right are either almost entirely absent from the mindset of the left or considered downright immoral rather than a part of moral 'pillars'. Haidt does a good job of showing how this limited set of moral pillars on the left is often harmful even on purely non-religious and evolutionary grounds. I would go even further and say that he demonstrates well how the political left endorses a form of morality that is basically impoverished.


While I think he does demonstrate why the conservative view of morality has more merit than liberals would like to admit,  even in a world where only non-religious and evolutionary arguments are permissible, he does not even mention the issue of history as a basis for religion. As he discusses the rise of religion in the world, the various views of this which he discusses perhaps have some validity in regard to what the apostle Paul would call 'man made religion' (Col. 2:23). However, he does not allow the possibility of a God that injects Himself into history as a person and validates that action by doing unthinkable deeds like resurrection from the dead. He simply rejects historical Christianity out of hand and lumps it together with man-made religion. He seems to assume that all conceptions of God are based solely on an overactive sense of 'agency',  attributing an agent of cause (God) to things that are just natural. He accepts the mistaken notion that a God who is active in history is just myth.


So overall I think he offers some interesting and useful insight into the conflict between the political left and right, and offers some useful proposals by recognizing some good points on both sides of some key issues like health care and marriage. I think this is most helpful for understanding the mindset of the non-religious left and the non-Christian right; but he cannot understand the Christian viewpoint, both left and right, without understanding the God of history. As a result, his argument will only go so far. As he points out himself, many on the left hate all religions so completely that they cannot bring themselves to accept even the possibility that it has any merit.


I write this during the Christmas season when we celebrate God's invasion of human history to make Himself known. That coming into history culminated in His resurrection, an event that radically transformed those who witnessed it to the point of changing the world by their selfless love. It seems to me that there is a 7th pillar of morality that is greater than the rest: Christ Himself.

Pentecost 2014

Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, begins today at sundown (June 3). In Hebrew it is called Shavuot, which means 'weeks' or 'sevens'. It is interesting that Pentecost gets so little attention among Christians, especially evangelicals. Among Jews, it is one of the 3 primary holidays, one of the 3 when the Old Testament called for traveling to Jerusalem to be at the temple for the celebration of this holiday. Why was this such an important time to the Jewish people who took their faith seriously? And why was it chosen as the day for the Holy Spirit to initiate the church age in the book of Acts?


I ran across this short post by a Jewish rabbi about the significance of both Shavuot and the number seven in the Bible. It is interesting and fun, and of course lists 49 (seven times seven) examples of the significance of the number seven:

http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_seven.htm

At the start of this post he speaks of what happened when the time of Shavuot came around for the first time after Israel left Egypt in the exodus: Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Torah from God. He calls this 'the most seminal event in the history of mankind'.  This event is recounted in Exodus 19, and in Exodus 19:18 the scripture points out that 'Mt. Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire'. At this same holiday in Acts, the believers in Jesus were also descended upon with 'tongues of fire' to inaugurate the church age. The similarity of the way God made His presence known and the choosing of the same date is striking! The coming of Pentecost should be just as important to the church as it is to Israel.

It is also of interest that God included in His revelation to Moses the instructions for His dwelling among them, the tabernacle. After the conquest of the Promised Land it was later replaced by the temple in Jerusalem. At Pentecost in Acts 2, He took up residence in His people through the Holy Spirit instead of in a building. This is amazing since it took Christ's atonement to create a people no longer in need of ongoing atonement over and over each year, so that God's presence could be among His people!


The prophet Jeremiah had foretold a time when the Torah would be written on the hearts of believers.(Jer. 31:31-33).  At the first Pentecost in Exodus 19, the Torah was given; at the 'fulfillment' of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Torah was written on the hearts of believers to inaugurate the new covenant time that Jeremiah spoke about.

I have not heard much about Pentecost through the years. We mostly take it for granted. I read a best-selling Christian book recently that described it as a 'minor Jewish holiday'. We in the western church clearly do not understand how important it was for Israel, or how important it should be to us as the church. Let's take some time tonight or tomorrow to reflect on how blessed we are to have our God dwelling with us in His Spirit and not separated from us in a temple, writing His Torah on our hearts!

Biblical 'Remembering' at Easter

The Last Supper of Jesus with His disciples appears to have been a Seder meal, though it seems to have been the night before the temple hierarchy was celebrating Passover (there continues to be debate about the nature of this meal, whether an actual Passover meal or the kind of ritual meal a rabbi would have with his disciples in advance so they could do the Passover with their families). At this ritual meal, Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper and said to do it 'in remembrance of me'. (Luke 22:19). This is also how the Passover itself was being kept, as a 'memorial' done in remembrance (Exodus 12:14). Paul also recalls this in I Cor. 11; as he refers to the Lord's Supper he mentions that it is kept in remembrance and then mentions consequences for failing to observe the Supper properly that include weakness, sickness, and even death. These consequences sound very much like the warnings to Israel in Exodus that those who fail to keep Passover properly are to be 'cut off' from Israel. Overall, the observance of the Lord's Supper as a memorial sounds very much like the observance of Passover as a memorial, and this observance as a memorial is not the same concept as a sacrament.


Dr.Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., in his book Toward an Old Testament Theology, points out that the entire Exodus experience, where Passover began, is a type of 'remembering'. God had heard the Israelites groaning in Egypt and 'remembered' His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Kaiser goes on to say that all of the divine activity of bringing Israel out of slavery "could be subsumed under one concept: it was a 'remembering' of His covenant' (Exodus. 6:5)." That 'remembering' was not a mere mental activity since it was the motivating force for the entIre exodus event, a 'remembering' that results in His action.  Likewise, Israel's ritual remembering of Passover is in imitation of God's remembering,  'in His image' if you will. Israel was to remember God's redemption just as God had remembered His promise to Abraham. So also is our ritual of the Lord's Supper. In both cases we remember in a manner that includes bodily actions, eating the bread and wine, as an impetus to renewed focus on living out in actions our calling as believers to walk as His followers each day.


As we observe Easter let us 'remember' biblically, recognizing both His covenant with us that was sealed with His blood on the cross and our commitment to follow Him.