tough minds and tender hearts...
My pastor, for years now, reads, on the Sunday prior to ML King Day, word for word a sermon that Dr. King preached. Today was that day.
It struck me how pertinent this sermon was as we work to reason together around the topic of gender.
Dr King says, “There is an almost universal quest for easy answers, and half baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than the idea of having to think”.
Although he preached this sermon in 1959, the pertinence to today was striking. He talks about using headlines as your “source of truth” and looking to anyone for the answer that we want. Sounds like yesterday to me. And something that I do not want to mark me as a person- I want to think, think critically about issues. And I want to love extravagantly. Two extremes blended together.
Jesus models it, and we can aspire to it.
Well, we are going to spend some time thinking.
Let’s start in Genesis with a mostly familiar story. Opening our eyes to see new details and to think deeply about what is shared in the scriptures. This may seem slow- but I really believe that a foundation in what happens in Genesis is critical for us framing the rest of what happens not only in the scriptures, but in the world around us.
It’s like a set of glasses that we put on to view our life, world events, painful trauma, and routine circumstances through. And we have to be mindful of the lens we look at these through.
I can look through the lense of my own reasoning, thinking, and feeling.
I can look through the lens of CNN’s top 5 things each day, or a similar list on FOX news.
I can look through the lens of public opinion as expressed on a variety of social platforms.
Very often we look through the lens of our friends or our experience.
Or I can start with what God says in the scriptures and put everything through that lense.
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying (a favorite phrase my pastor uses that I’ve adopted). There are specific things like nuclear biology, or repairing a carburetor, or steaming broccoli- that scripture does not have the answers for.
But it lays out principles for living that I want to be careful to filter all that I am doing, thinking, reasoning, and even feeling through.
I will filter through something. Either I choose scripture to be my filter, or I will choose one of the above world systems, although inferior to be my filter.
I just want to be intentional in the choice.
So let’s dig into Genesis.
We can notice in 1:25 that the animals get made ‘according to their kinds’. But in verse 26, man is created ‘in our image’, ‘in our likeness’.
Suppose you were to create something in your own likeness- what would you put into it? Some of us have had the blessing of having children (it’s good to remember that it is a blessing, not a given)- and we see features that are ‘like us’, and often, characters and tendencies that are ‘like us’.
God, the Trinity, decides to make man in “our image”- pieces of character and substance woven into us. It’s so personal, so intentional. Male and female get introduced in verse 27:
Both created as image-bearers.
Both created to rule the rest of creation.
Both blessed of God.
Both tasked with multiplying and filling.
Both deemed “very good”.
In chapter 2, it’s like God takes a step back to explain more of the details. We see a short explanation of creation, but a focus on the creation of man starting in verse 7 and woman in verses 18-24.
Right from the start it strikes me as interesting that the man gets one verse to describe his unique creation but the woman has 7- hmmmm.
God forms the man from the dust. So intimate, so messy. I picture God covered in dust as he shapes, molds, and fashions just what He is picturing in His mind.
And then, when the man is fully fashioned, God leans in and breathes into the mans’ nostrils.
In the Covid season we cannot fathom being that close to someone, let alone breathing into their nose! But here is God, right up literally in the man’s face, animating Him with His own breath.
To me that is staggeringly cool.
Then God puts the man into the beautiful garden that He had created and gives him jobs to do and a moral code to live by. Purpose and meaning found in this place (Eden) and in this relationship (with the Trinity/God).
Yet God, even as He relates and cares for Adam, states a fact,
“it is not good for man to be alone”.
Adam surveys and names all the animals, and no one suitable was found for him.
So God… reaches in again. Not into the dust this time, but into Adam’s flesh. He takes one of Adam’s ribs and makes/ fashions a woman from this rib. It always strikes me how uniquely both the man and the woman are fashioned by God.
And Adam certainly seems excited by the uniqueness of Eve. His exclamation:
“bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”
highlights their sameness. Yet he names her ‘woman’ highlighting their difference. And since they were both naked, some of the differences were pretty obvious to both of them.
Verse 24 begins with the phrase,
“for this reason”.
What reason? I would say that the text is pointing us back to the previous verse highlighting the sameness and the difference of Adam and Eve.
Because they are both similar and different, they can come together as one flesh which should not be separated.
Congratulations! You made it past the headline into some thinking and reasoning. Now for a question and a suggested assignment!
A question so that you can begin to work through your own thoughts.
And an assignment so that you can begin listening and thinking about what you hear.
❔From your reading in Genesis, why do you think that God made two distinct sexes? Or two sexually different beings?
This video is of Mark Yarhouse speaking on the topic of gender and gender dysphoria. He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in conflicts tied to religious identity and sexual and gender identity. He assists people who are navigating the complex relationship between their sexual or gender identity and Christian faith. He’s done massive amounts of credible research and has a huge heart to see the church grapple with these issues in ways that result in better loving of people.
I’d love to hear your thoughts as you begin wrestling with these ideas and issues. If you live close enough, I’d love to grab a soda with you.
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