Faith, Feeling, And Reason

Gender & the Bible - Part One

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:01:43 -0500

Humans were made in God’s image, but what exactly does that mean? As demonstrated in the following verses, it means multiple things:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.’

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” -Genesis 1:26-27

Humans were made to serve as rulers of the earth; to be stewards. A steward was used to look after a kingdom after its king had left on business. The king would give up his power to allow the steward to run the kingdom’s day-to-day business, but the king would never give over full command to the steward. The steward would have to give back the power to the king once he returned. We are God’s stewards, reigning over his creation on earth, and we are made in His image to show that God is the King.

The second thing we are made in God’s image for is to engage in relationships. As God says in verse 26, “Let us make human beings in our image”. This is referring to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who have a relationship with each other. Human-kind also engages in relationships with each other, and we were made to have the same type of relationship as the Trinity: a weaving and interdependent one.

At this point, Adam is alone in the Garden and is told to name the animals. He sees all the animals and none of them were good enough for him to take as his bride. He needed something like him, something made in the image of God, something built for relationship and stewardship. By having the power to name all the animals, he realizes that he is alone and that he has no equal. God knows that it is not good for the man to be alone, and creates a woman (Eve) for Adam so that he may have an equal; another creature built for relationship and stewardship.

Many people think that since Eve was made from Adam, it makes women a second class creation, and inferior to men. This is clearly not the case, as shown when Adam sees his wife for the first time:

“Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.’” -Genesis 2:23

Adam views Eve as an equal to him. This relationship - the relationship between man and woman before the Fall of Humanity, the standard of relationship that we are supposed to have - has the same principle as the Trinity; all parties are involved equally.

You may be asking why the word “helper” is used in verse 2:18. In the original language, the word that was translated as “helper” is only used in one other place in the Bible. In that one other place, it is referencing God, and its definition is: “rescuing assistant, helping by giving the deepest need, help that is essential to survival.”

Men and women live in a complimentary relationship with each other, and do not need to be the same to be equal. This standard set-up in Eden was before the Fall of Humanity, and shows how a harmonious relationship should be; a relationship completely absent of sin.

The Fall

The root of the problem between men and women comes down to the curses set out after the initial sin, which triggered the Fall of Humanity in the Garden of Eden. Numerous curses are laid out in the passage, but we will only be focusing on the relational ones:

Eve is cursed by having a desire placed within her to be her husband, but she will never be able to be him. (Genesis 3:16)

The curse that Adam received is that he will be required to toil in the ground to get anything from it. (Genesis 3:17-19)

These curses have a far greater impact than you may think after first reading them. Because of the Fall, the relationship between men and women is shattered. Eve and her descendants were cursed because she directly disobeyed the LORD, and ate the fruit anyways. The curse to Adam and his descendants ruined his stewardship over the kingdom of the earth, and he now had to work to get anything from the earth (as opposed to it being readily available). Man is cursed because he should have stopped his wife from doing harm to herself. Because of all these events, Adam controls Eve, and the nature of the world controls Adam. You can see evidence of this in the world today.

But this is not how it is supposed to be. We are to strive for “pre-Fall” relationships with each other; relationships where men and women are equal, but not the same. Both men and women have a specific place within a relationship.

Men, Women, and the Christian Faith

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:45:13 -0500

The old adage goes “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”. Men and women are definitely different in just about every way, but what is the biblical view on gender?

In this series of posts, We (Ben and I) will be exploring what the ideal relationship between genders set out in Genesis, how they changed after The Fall, and how we, as humans can try to get back to the ideal standard set out in Eden. What we will find is that men and women are equal, but different.

The first week will cover Eden and how Men and Women were created each with a different purpose but after the fall the ideals that were set out by God were far harder to accomplish.

We will also be doing a video to go along with each post that will answer any questions that will be raised about the material we cover. They will be posted on the 1J134 Youtube page. If you have any questions, comment on the post or write on the 1J134 Facebook page and we will try to answer them in the next video. If no questions are asked there probably won’t be a video that week.

Although the study itself happens every week the posts will be posted at different times during the study, mostly when my schedules line up and I have time to sit down and post the findings from the study.

Faith, Feeling, and Reason

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:58:35 -0500

That’s a rather odd title for a blog, don’t you think?

I was listening to a radio show out of the UK called Unbelievable and they had an apologist on the show who was talking to Atheists who had called in to the show to ask questions. He mentioned in passing the three words that this blog is names after and that got me thinking.

Christianity comes down to these three principles in it’s simplest form.

Faith

Without faith, you have no trust that God is going to provide for you. Faith is what allows Christians to step out of the boat and do things that they wouldn’t normally do. Faith is the core of a Christian’s being, without it they have nothing.

Feeling

Without feeling, you won’t be able to experience the freeing nature of the gospel and be able to feel it’s power in your life. Feeling brings a tangible thing to your faith, something you can describe to others and is a powerful tool in evangelism since it provides you with a first hand account with God.

Reason

Without reason, you have blind faith and won’t be able to defend it if anyone ever asks about it. If you have no reasons to believe something, why are you believing it? Faith without reason is like having school without textbooks. The teacher can tell you anything but without the text book, the proof, the reasoning, she is just blathering on about nothing. You need reason in your faith.

This blog is going to be used for short sermon type posts and will track my journey as I enter into Tyndale and find out what God has in store for me in the future.