I was thinking about viruses and how they are biological material, yet not being living organisms (at least not by current scientific definition),

What do you think about the origin of viruses? Were they most likely part of the curse? They are interesting little buggers…

Collin

Collin,

I really appreciate questions like yours, because they come from a mind that is asking, “does the idea of a created universe fit with what I see and know about the world?”  I think there are lots of people who “believe” in God but don’t even bother to look for connections with the world we live in every day.

Pathogens (disease-causing organisms) would certainly not be an expected part of a universe created to be good and perfect.  Yet we have lots of pathogens today.  So, did God create them?  If so, why?  If not, where did they come from?

I’ll reference a great article in a moment, but first, here are a few of my thoughts.  Remember, there are lots of things in our world today that are bad, but we know they were not created that way in the beginning.  Every animal species is full of various genetic diseases, but all of them have appeared as a result of mutations over time.  A perfect gene pool has decayed and so people today can suffer from cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, Down’s syndrome or thousands of other genetic disorders.  So the creation can change and a perfect system can break and begin functioning in a way that was not the original function.

Bacteria also cause disease, but research makes clear that nearly all bacteria are at work in the world doing essential functions in the ecosystem.  Life on the planet would be impossible without bacteria fixing nitrogen in the soil.  Our digestive system has over 1000 species of bacteria helping us digest or food or producing vitamins.  Bacteria create cheese, pickles, wine, yogurt and a host of other fermented foods.  It is reasonable to think that bacteria were created with an essential, good function in every instance, but the decay produced by the fall (Romans 8:20) has broken down some of the created biological boundaries.

Viruses are much less understood than bacteria, but they also are, increasing, known to have an essential function in the living world.  Here is a quote from the end of the mentioned article:

‘For sheer numbers, no other ocean beings can match viruses. Thousands, sometimes even millions of these molecular parasites inhabit every drop of surface seawater, outnumbering even bacteria by 10 to 1 … evidence that suggests that viruses are a powerful force in the sea, and one that determines how many plankton and ultimately how many fish, and even humans, an ocean ecosystem can support … viruses must have a profound influence on the entire oceanic ecosystem.

The creationist paradigm begins with a perfect world that breaks and decays.  Evolution begins with nothing that moves toward more complex function through (at the biological level) mutation and selection.  I have found that the idea of broken perfection fits our world much better than developing imperfection.  I think those viruses that give us colds are part of that brokenness.

Here’s the article.  You can find more like it by searching on “pathogens” or similar terms on creationist sites (see my resources list)

http://creation.com/did-god-make-pathogenic-viruses



I am spending a few days in Moab with friends.  We are driving and hiking through some of the most amazing canyon country in the world.  Much of it I have never seen before and the sights are truly breathtaking.  Shear cliffs dropping hundreds of feet appearing out of nowhere in a perfectly flat plain.  Erosional rock features towering hundreds of feet in the air.  Canyons so vast that everyone who walks up to them has the same response – “O my” and then they stand for a few minutes in silent awe.  It is scenery that draws something big and deep out of everyone that sees it.  Such sights demand that something big and deep be attached to those feelings they produce inside.

What could be so awesome as to be worthy of producing such amazing, awe inspiring sights?  All of us have been given one powerful possibility.   Eons of time.  Eons of time, time beyond the imagination, millions and millions of years, is an idea vast enough to match the vastness of what we see.  It’s not that eons of time are the obvious explanation, but that “eons of time” somehow can hold the reverence and awe that fits what is due to that before us.

For most people there is no other idea they have been given to consider.  And so, the breathtaking expanse of the canyon seems an actual confirmation of the idea of deep time.

But there is another idea.  Perhaps even more vast, more powerful, that produces a much more grounded reverence. That idea is a judgment from a Creator God, brought through a year long, worldwide, life-extinguishing flood.

Such an interpretation of geologic features is now my reigning paradigm, and has become one of the fascinations of my life. I actually never drive through a cut in the roadbed without thinking about what made the layers of rock I see beside me.  Every rock formation is the result of something. It is a product of a process, and observation can often determine facts about the process by studying the product.  Studying the rock formations I see around my home and around the world all lead me to see that the best explanation for the features of our planet’s surface is the flood of Noah.

Canyons such as the one below Mesa Arch are not hard to explain if one has the proper options.  And “time” is a very poor choice.  The amount of sediment transported out of the erosion area almost defies calculation.  It is an amount so vast that the years of erosion required if time is the explanation is also almost beyond calculation.  The National Park sign says that small amounts of rain produce the canyon slowly over time.  But it doesn’t rain here.  And the landscape is not filled with erosional material being slowly moved through the canyon.  The rock floors, the canyon sides, the bases of the spires are scoured nearly clean.  It is so obvious that what lays below Mesa Arch is left from a massive catastrophic erosional event.  This was caused by a cataclysmic flood.

Monument Valley tells the same story.  Huge canyons that start out of nowhere in the flat plain.  There isn’t even a stream going up to them today (or even a stream bed).  Clearly, a huge amount of water came, carved through the rock and then was gone, leaving canyons half carved through the plain, and rock spires towering 900 feet in the air, perhaps only minutes from being eroded away completely by the flooding waters, but suddenly the rushing runoff was gone.

This view of geologic history also has an awe-inspiring story that connects with it.  But the implications of the story are very different.  The rocks, instead of being a statement of my immeasurable insignificance, now become a deeply sobering reminder of God’s nearness.  A reminder of the fact that God is real and God does respond to the acts of men.  That God is dealing with us, that He has done so in the past, and that we should believe His promises about doing so in the future.

No one can look at the landscape here and deny that there is a deeply profound story behind what is seen.  That deeply profound story is not time, but God, who has made us, who is here with us and who has spoken to each one of us in His Word, in history, and in His Son.  He is not far away.  And we are standing on one of his messages every day.

Mr. Meyer,

I received a link from my cousin, that you will be giving
weekly seminars on the CSU campus.  I think it is great you are doing
this, as college is a time where confusion may arise due to new facts
of science that are given to students.

There is one question I would like to ask.  I see from your blog
profile that you have some experience in the field of science, which
is admirable if you are going to speak on the subject.  I also see
that you support books, DVDs, and websites that maintain a young-earth
creationist view.  My question is this: If God made the universe the
way it is, why has God made the evidence across many branches of
science appear that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the
universe is 13.7 billion years old?  In other words, why did He
deliberately cause such misleading evidence?

This question comes with good intentions, as I am not wanting to
debate.  I would really like to know your thoughts.  I think we both
know this is a big question, as it impacts the credentials of Genesis,
and thus the theology of Christ Himself.

Thank you kindly,
JK

Dear J,

Thanks for your great question.  I wrestled with it myself a number of years ago when I began to seriously ask about the age of the earth issue.

For me, the first question was what constraints I had to accept because of Scripture.  Does the Bible allow various interpretations on age, or is a short time frame required by an honest reading of the text.  Obviously, there are sincere believers that answer that question differently, just as is the case with other important doctrines of the faith.  Trying to approach the subject as objectively as possible, I read and watched material from both a young and old earth creationist perspective.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that accepting both an inerrant view of Scripture and an old universe required such a loss of historical support for key Christian doctrines that those doctrines lost all connection with the real world.  For example,

- Homo Sapiens must have existed for at least 100,000 years if conventional geology is correct.  But if Adam as the first human was a historical person he could not have lived nearly that long ago.  It is hard to accept Homo Sapiens existing before Adam who are somehow not human, i.e., not made “in God’s image”.  Yet if Adam was not a historical person then I lose any real meaning to the fact that Jesus was the Second Adam.

- If the world is old then death has been the primary means to biological progress.  But Scripture indicates that death is an enemy that entered with Adam’s sin.

- Genesis 1 tells me that all animals ate plants in the beginning, but the fossil record is full of carnivores.

- If the world is old then a world-wide flood could not have happened because the geologic record reveals time not catastrophe and a year long global inundation would leave tremendous evidence that is apparently not there.  However, if the world is young then only a world-wide flood could explain the fossil record.

- On top of all of this, Jesus referred to both Adam and Noah has historical figures and based teachings about present issues (marriage) as well as future ones (his return) on the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis.

Eventually I concluded that the Bible presents a very complete, logical, consistent view of God, man and life if Genesis is taken as simple history.  But if Genesis is allegorical then Jesus’ death for sin, his resurrection as a victory over death, and the qualities of the promised Kingdom all lose a context that explains their meaning.

Having come to that conclusion about Scripture and doctrine, I then turned to see if the case for an old earth was really as solid as our cultural paradigm claims it to be.  Though I admit the idea seems strange to everyone who has not looked into it, there is actually very good evidence that the earth is young.

Probably the most difficult question in light of a young universe is that of distant starlight.  But it turns out there are a host of difficult questions for the proposal of an old earth and universe.  The geology of the earth fits much better as an explanation of a flood that as the result of vast amounts of time (for one thing among many, layers such as those that exist in nearly all of the geologic column are formed by rapidly moving water, not stationary seas).  The presence of C14 in every tested carbon source on earth is so far unexplainable by any old earth scenario (C14 has a half-life of 5740 years and should be undetectable after 100,000 years).  The new evidence for genetic entropy would seem to make a long time frame for complex life forms such as ourselves impossible.

I have looked into a long list of age related evidences that are available on the web or in books and I have found a great deal of material that 6 years of college science education never directed me to.  And I have become satisfied that an honest look reveals that God did not “deliberately cause such misleading evidence”.

But one then can ask, why do we all “know” that the world is old?  I’m not sure why that knowledge seems so certain.  The idea of an eternal universe has been part of many cultures and goes back to the earliest Greek writings.  So apparently the human mind can gravitate that way without any need for scientific support.  In our own day the idea of an old universe is tied to evolution, and so is the legally required view in education and the culturally required view in all research.  I think we all sense that questioning the age of the earth cannot be done as a scientific pursuit in our culture – the a priori assumption is that the question is religiously motivated and is an inappropriate intrusion of faith into the established facts of the physical world.  I would say I have learned that those facts are actually not established at all.

I would also add that coming to finally believe that Genesis actually is history has profoundly strengthened my faith.  This is what Peter, Paul, and all the other writers of the New Testament believed and wrote in light of.  This is what Jesus believed and taught.  This makes the uniqueness of human life, the sanctity of marriage, the purpose of morality, the equality yet complementary nature of gender, the brokenness of our world, and both the nearness and distance of God all make perfect sense.  If Genesis is history Christianity is reality and I understand why Jesus is good news.  If Genesis is not history then Christianity floats in mid air – glorious yet irrational and perhaps in this life, only internal.  If time and evolution are God’s means, there is good reason to question even the miraculous claims related of Jesus.

This may be a longer answer than you were looking for, but it has been an important question for me and I think should be for many believers.  It changes how I think about the One I am praying to.  That has become very precious to me.

Respectfully,

John Meyer

Why look for scientific evidence for matters of religious faith?  Is it even right to try to support our faith with evidence?

Such questions are common in the postmodern idea of God and faith.  But Christianity, when rightly understood, cannot be contained or explained in that postmodern paradigm.  Christianity claims to describe a universal truth that applies to every person, in every culture, past, present and future.  Christianity claims that even if it is not believed or known the truths it describes determine an eternal outcome for every person.  Christianity claims to be somewhat like a scientific law.  It is truth about the universe that is operating whether we understand it, agree with it or believe it.

Claims to universal truth need evidence of some sort that everyone can see or examine.   For example, when Newton proposed his laws of gravity, he stated that bodies were attracted to one another in proportion to the mass of those bodies, and he gave an equation for the relationship.  Anyone with an inclination to do so could do the experiments and calculations again and validate that Newton’s claims to this universal truth were in deed true.

Christianity’s universal claims go beyond just “spiritual” matters.  The claims of Christianity often relate to historical events and some have scientific implications as well.  If Christianity is universally true then the history it describes will be true and the implications in science will be verifiable.

Many Christians have accepted what has almost become a cultural truism – that the historical and scientific claims of the Bible have been demonstrated to be false.  Yet these Christians still hold to a belief in Christianity.  Such a view will eventually (as it should) lead to a loss of faith, both for the individual and in a culture as a whole.  No belief system should survive if the verifiable aspects of its universal claims have been invalidated.

I am convinced that Christianity is true and all it’s claims can be verified.  Jesus is Lord today, and the Person through whom a Creator God has entered, loved and redeemed a lost world.  Jesus is the Person to whom every individual will be universally accountable.  The Bible is the supernatural inspired record of God’s involvement with, and communication with, this world.

One of the reasons I am convinced of Christianity is that its scientific claims can be validated, despite the common assumption otherwise.   The surprising support for the Bible’s claims in the face of overwhelming cultural denial is itself an evidence for Christianity.

A century ago, theologian J. Gresham Machen warned, “it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. … as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.”

For me, science has been one of the doorways that has, unexpectedly, shown me that it is not Christianity that is the logical absurdity.  Sharing the evidence that supports the astonishing claims of Christianity is both a joy and a responsibility for me now.  My earnest hope is that this information can have the same profound impact on the faith of others that I have experienced.

However, I realize, not all people have that background, and because the fossil is being used as part of an organized propaganda event, most people will be impacted by it.

So I would like to pass on some information that can be helpful. First of all, there is nothing significant about human evolution that can be learned or proven from a fossil that is claimed to be 47 million years old. According to evolution theory, our ancestors even 3 million years ago were still 3 feet high, stooped over, probably walking on all fours on their knuckles. So something from a supposed 47 million years ago is not a missing link between humans and apes. This find is simply a tool for a media blitz to brainwash our culture with the “truth” of darwinism.

Here is a quote and link from a New York Times article from May 18:

It is science for the Mediacene age.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/business/media/19fossil.html?emc=eta1)

So this is science thinking like a pop band. Remember that.

What is remarkable is how well the fossil is preserved. It is valuable in that sense and will add to the knowledge we have of extinct creatures. This fossil has a lot of similarities with living creatures today, especially lemurs. A more in depth analysis of this find is given on the Answers in Genesis site. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/05/19/ida-missing-link

Approximately 90% of all species that have lived on the planet are now extinct. So finding fossil creatures that no longer exist should be, and is, the norm. But because a species is now extinct does not mean that it was a transition evolving into something else. Logic, science and what we really know about the fossil record all indicate that many more things existed in the past than exist now. For a variety of reasons (one of which being a world wide flood) many creatures from the past have become extinct. They did not disappear because they were a link in an upward moving macroevolutionary chain but because they are part of a fallen creation and ecosystem that has been subjected to a global catastrophe. The clearest message of the fossil record is that many life forms have existed in the past – and they do not change over time in the fossil record, but they do go extinct.

Remember, the incredible media blitz you are seeing is not about science. It has nothing to do with the significance of this fossil, which was actually found in 1983. (Don’t you think the fossil hunters who dug this up 26 years ago would have failed to recognize it as significant if it really was so critical to human evolution?) Let me end with a quote from another media expert who understood the process of shaping cultural thought. It may encourage you in thinking independently.

All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true in itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Did you catch what Hitler said?  All big lies leave their mark, even after they have been exposed as being false.  Again and again evolutionary claims like the one above are proven to be false or irrelevant.  But that doesn’t matter.  They have had their effect.  This one will as well.
But the effect on you can be to make you more aware of the distinction between pop band marketing and the truth about science and history.  Check out the links above.  And remember, some people’s goal is to influence a culture.

One of the most common challenges from opponents of Christianity relates to God’s command to destroy the nations that occupied the Promised Land when the Israelites came out of Egypt. It is true that God commanded the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child when they entered the land. Hearing that, we can be confused and even repulsed from what is written. The whole process seems to be so counter to the example of Jesus, so counter to Christian ethics. The charge that the Old Testament is just a human book filled with primitive, unacceptable values seems hard to defend against, even to ourselves. Why does the Bible command the killing of everyone?

Like many hard questions about God and the Bible, when we look closely at this one, we find two things. First, the situation is something beyond what the stereotype paints it to be.  Second, there is a lesson about God, about us and about our world.

Regarding the first lesson, the Bible makes clear that the Israelites were coming to the Promised Land to be used as an instrument of judgment on a wicked people. This was not simply a story of territorial conquest.  God has a purpose and plan at work in this world that encompasses every person, every culture and every civilization on earth. It would even seem to be the case that part of the reason the Israelites went into captivity in Egypt was to wait for the cultures of Palestine to come to the full fruit of the course they had begun. Listen to what God says to Abraham while he was living in the land God promised, over 400 years before the conquest began: “Then the LORD said to him, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own [meaning Egypt], and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years… In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”‘ (Gen 15:13, 16)

When the sins of the people of that land had reached their “full measure” God would bring His people. And the conquest would not just be human warfare. It would be supernatural. God brought down the walls of Jericho symbolically and supernaturally. The sin and judgment of Achan (Joshua 6,7) made it clear that this was God’s affair, God’s mission. It was not for personal human gain.

The Amorites were the people that would be conquered by the Israelites. Archeology shows us a culture of unspeakable depravity and evil. Child sacrifice was rampant. Sexual perversion filled their society. The Israelites were warned again and again by God that if they turned to evil in the same way as the people they conquered, God would treat them the same way. God did not order these people to be killed just to give the Israelites their land. An infinite God would have no problem providing land for one people without taking it from another. As a matter of fact, God told the Israelites there were many countries and people they were not allowed to attack or disturb in any way, for God had given those places to others (Deut. 2:5,9,19). And in no situation did God call His people to engage in war except related to this conquest of the land from these specific peoples under God’s judgment and later to defend that land.

God also wanted the Israelites to utterly destroy their culture for another reason – because if this did not happen the Israelites would eventually be corrupted by it. Their failure to remain separate from the peoples around them ultimately led them to experience a judgment from God even more severe than what was brought upon the wicked culture in the Promised Land.

These passages give a few of the places God addresses this conquest:

“You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” Deut 12:31

“But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” Lev 18:26-28

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations- the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.” Deut. 7:1-4

The second lesson, in this brief overview, is that God’s actions can only be understood beginning from God’s perspective. God made mankind in His image to do what is good and right.  And God will judge everyone based on that created purpose.  There is nothing unusual in that.  Every designer evaluates and judges what was made based on its intended purpose. 

Obviously, if our purpose is to express the character of selfless love and holiness, all have sinned.  All have fallen short of the glory God created us to express.  All have failed to live what we were created to be.  And God does judge everyone – not just those destroyed at Sodom or Gomorrah or in Palestine at the coming of the Israelites.  Death is one result of that judgment (Gen 2:17; Romans 6:23). So the fact that everyone dies speaks of God’s judgment on every human life. 

In a unique way in the Flood of Noah, and in the destruction Sodom, and in the conquest of the Promised Land, God symbolically revealed his judgment of sin through an historical event. In one He used water, in one fire, in one His chosen people. Each one was accomplished to reveal truth to us about God, about ourselves and about what will happen in the future. God warned the Israelites over and over not to get the wrong idea and think they were somehow better than the people they were conquering (see Deut 9:4-6).

Like the Flood and God’s judgment of Sodom, the conquest of the Promised Land was a unique act of God never to be repeated. Unlike Islam, we do not have sanction to go to war for our faith. Not even the Israelites had that and Judaism has never been spread by force.

Because this explanation and understanding comes from an honest look at the Bible and the message it communicates when taken as a whole, those determined to be critical of Christianity will never see it or be satisfied by it. But it is important for us as believers to know that the Bible is consistent, and never changes in its message: God is good, God is Lord of the earth, God exercises righteous judgment in the affairs of man, and that same God rules our world today.  The Bible makes clear sense when seen as a communication from the God described in it.  When understood rightly the Bible contains a message that teaches us essential truths about ourselves, about our world and about the God we will one day meet face to face.  It is intended to make us thankful, fearful and humble, qualities that would bring a whole lot of good to our world today.

The gay marriage issue relates very much to the gender identity topic
I am attempting to pursue in this blog. Last fall, after the passage
of Proposition 8, I actually felt more concerned than victorious. Few
of the other political outcomes of our last election were determined by the
perspective that won on Prop 8.  Though I tried to celebrate with others, the picture that came to mind for me was the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor.

Christians will very shortly face the situation where the Good Book
they read will teach a morality that is, to most, baffling at best and
evil if applied to everyone. What is more troubling is that the great majority of
Christians will not have a clear understanding on why their
religion does teach a message that is good, even wonderful, for
everyone.  These posts (The Image of God) are one attempt to give an answer to that.

I wrote a paper after the election regarding the state and need of the
Christian church in the West. Because of its length it can be found
in my blog sidebar, entitled, “A Foundation on Which to Stand”. I
will continue the blog posts on gender and the image of God in the
next few days.

May God grant to the Remnant a heart and mind of grace and truth.

The purpose of this post is to begin the question, what does God see – or want to see – when He looks at “male and female” in Man?  As we already addressed, the terms “male and female” are defined as terms of relationship.  OK.  But what is this relationship supposed to look like?

The first thing we can determine, is that the relationship pictured is complementary in nature.  This can be deduced from several factors.  First, male and female are different.  God could have created two identical beings; He was certainly not constrained by biology to create what He did.  Sexuality is one part of the greater relational picture; God was not forced to work it into the picture for the sake of reproduction.  And, sexual differences related to reproduction are only a small part of the physiological differences between men and women.  Hundreds of differences exist from average body size, percentage of body fat, heart rate, red blood cell count, hormonal differences and even how the brain is wired before birth.  This vast array of physiological differences are all intended by God to create relationship that is asymmetric.  In other words, male and female are supposed to be different, to relate to one another from different places, and so to represent different aspects of what is in God.

Genesis tells us about this complementary intention in another way.  From Genesis 1 we understand the absolute equality of the sexes.   Since both are made in the image of God, both have an intrinsic value, and both are absolutely and equally necessary for God’s representation on earth.  In all my reading and discussions on the issue of equality between the sexes, I have never found someone who can give me a rational basis for gender equality outside of the Biblical basis beginning in Genesis 1.  As far as I know, only those who believe in the Bible have a logical, rational worldview basis for this intrinsic equality.

Genesis 2 and 3 go on to define the diversity within the unity.  Adam is created first.  Adam is given specific instructions related to the garden and is entrusted with the command related to the forbidden fruit.  Though both male and female are to have dominion (1:26), Adam names the animals.  This unique, separate introduction of Adam must indicate a role for “male” in the image of God that is unique.  But perhaps most important in this unique, solitary introduction we find that in accomplishing all these things, and even walking with God Himself, Adam is found to be incomplete.  By design, God Himself cannot complete what Adam needs, for Adam is in the image of God.  Adam must be an “us” and an “our” (Genesis 1:26).  So in the finishing of the Creation the man becomes plural and out of himself comes another – one who is not a separate creation, but is really still him.  Yet not him at all, but clearly a separate person.  Yet not separate, but bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.  “Female” in the image of God was the only thing in all of creation that was not made out of that which was dead.  As Adam looked at Eve for the first time his mind must have been filled with wonder, awe and completeness.  This was “woman” for she was out of man.

To understand God’s purposes, we must not miss this.  Something before had been fundamentally and profoundly “not good”.  Though in face to face fellowship with his Creator, Adam was still alone.  Not even God’s presence could complete the relational picture of God’s image that He had begun.  But God brings a “helper suitable” from Adam’s side.  Asymmetric, complementary, “one flesh” lifelong relationship exists.  Man, the image of God, is now on the earth.   And suddenly, the fullness of the creation becomes “very good”.

Who could miss the parallel with the first two members of the Trinity?  God the Son has been eternally coexistent with the Father.  And both are One; there is only one God.  Yet somehow in that Oneness, the Father is first.  The Nicene Creed attempts to describe it for us – the Son is

eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

The man and the woman, from one being, yet two, united together being one flesh.  Eternal God, One God, yet two Persons in Father and Son.  And out of the relationship of Father and Son proceeds the Third person…

… the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

And from the loving relationship of the man and the woman proceeds the most amazing of all things – the image of God in their image comes forth.  Of them, yet separate. 

What then can we know of “male and female” as God has made it?   First of all, they are, in Genesis 1, not biological terms related to reproduction, they are relational terms corresponding to realities within God.  Biology and sexuality are merely some of the means by which God expresses the relational.  Second, the relational realities are complementary, not symmetric.  In both the way God created the male and the female (Adam first, Adam instructed, Eve from him, Eve as a helpmate), and in the myriad of created physical differences (physical, emotional, intellectual) between men and women, God is telling us there is something unique in both manhood and womanhood that captures what God is.  These two measures of, 1) what God created in male and female (with created differences) and, 2) how God created male and female (would anyone propose that God created the male giraffe or rabbit first in a similar process?) make clear that God has put something very intentional and very special in not just human beings, but in male and female.  The image of God does not reside in humans generically.  The image of God is in male – and maleness – in relationship with female, and “femaleness”.  Or we could say, the image of God is in masculinity and in femininity, and especially in what exists when the two are in covenant relationship with one another.

Having established that “male and female” are relational terms, and that they are complementary in God’s intent, we will next explore how those complementary relational poles exist within God.

But it is important not to miss the application all this has to the college plaza (see previous post).   Gender is not just the way we experience sex.  Can I say it again?  Gender is not just the way we experience sex!  Gender is a part of our identity that comes from God.  It is not just an incidental part of this physical existence.  It is the way we express what God is.   God has made me in His image.  My gender, male or female, is given to me to make me like Him.  It is not what makes me like the animals.   As men and women we need to be called to live out something that goes beyond our sexuality and that puts our sexuality in a healthy and proper priority.   Gender is a call to identity in masculinity or femininity.   When Biblically understood, it is ennobling.  It is the framework for our humanity.  It is the only truth that allows us to escape the otherwise inevitable degeneration of Romans 1 and put our sexuality in the healthy and beautiful context God intended.

Sex is such a big topic because they are 18-25, most are involved in sexual relationships and they have both a body and a world that tells them the good life is found when sex with someone is working well.  The reality, though, is that it generally doesn’t work well, at least for very long, and there has been a lot of pain from abandonment, date rape, disease, abortion, and simply feeling trapped and used.  Sex and sexuality is the topic that touches the problem they think they need to solve and there is a fascination with a preacher who says this magical energy of life – sex – is in most of their cases, a sin that will hurt them.  They listen with a tenuous fascination.  The preacher is clearly outside the bounds of politically correct postmodernism, making him a little frightening.  But he is kept safe by a group-think that agrees to label him “crazy”.  And there is nowhere else most of them can go to hear someone acknowledge both God and sex as real and relevant and talk about their connection to one another.

Fortunately, Tom is one of the most gracious, engaging and respectful people I know.  His preaching really is a gift to the places he goes, because he shares God’s word and God’s truth with humility, clarity and power.  There is also humor and respect.  Unfortunately, one only has to look at campus preachers on Youtube to know these qualities are all too rare.

Even more unfortunately, these young (and old) people are lost in the labyrinth of what may be our culture’s greatest lie – that “male and female” are little more than one of the options for experiencing sex.

I must say “one of the options” because the progression described in Romans 1 is already far advanced in western culture.  When the creative role and purposes of the God of the Bible are barred from a worldview, an inevitable process begins.  Without the divine truth regarding gender identity to orient our understanding, the power of sexual drive and experience begins to be definitive over more and more of life.  This inevitably erases every competing concept, until finally sexual experience itself, in any form, becomes the measure of value.  However, since we are beings created in God’s image and sex has been designed as a very powerful aspect of our humanity meant to accomplish a purpose very different from recreation, this wayward cultural value doesn’t work.  It brings a great deal of harm, pain and inevitably the destruction of our relationships and our humanity itself.  Sex outside of God’s designed purposes becomes central and destroys our humanity.  Instead of becoming an expression of male and female it replaces what those are and then erases them.

To be continued in Image of God Part 2

But often times our response as Christians is reactionary and simply a list of reasons why gay marriage or homosexuality is wrong.  Though a good case can be made for that, especially from a Christian perspective, it is also a response without much value except as a negative response to our world.

I think Christians miss the great power and beauty of the Biblical message regarding these contemporary cultural issues because we are not grounded ourselves in what God has created in human gender or human morality.  The Christian view of marriage and gender is not just “normal” or “Biblical”, it is amazing.  And wonderful.  And the answer to so much pain and emptiness that is engulfing our world.

Rather than be defensive about my “narrow” view of marriage I want to shout the wonder and glory of what God has made in gender – male and female, masculinity and femininity – which are God revealing expressions that the world has erased to replace with the selfishness of recreational sex.  How sad!  What loss!  And yet we as Christians are often so unaware of what God has made that we spend our own lives seeing no more than a battle with sexual temptation.  We have a sad message when Christians and non Christians alike believe the lie that male and female are ultimately about sexual gratification, but Christians must acknowledge they are not supposed to act on the belief!

The world justifies men having sex with men, or multiple women, or children, or worse, because the world does not know that sex is an aspect, a subset of something much greater and more profound. That sex has a place in a greater purpose, and it is in that greater purpose we discover who we are as men and women, and find a fulfillment – rather than an emptiness – which grows over time.

Most Christians probably know that in the Bible the terms male and female are introduced in Genesis chapter 1 as part of the creation account.  What most Christians haven’t noticed is that “male and female” have a very important introduction – one which does not relate to biology.  Although our first-thought definition for those words brings the notion of  biology or sexuality, the Bible does not provide a basis for that definition in what we are supposed to take away from Genesis 1.

In Genesis 1:20-23 we find ourselves in Day 5 of the creation week.  On Day 5 God creates the birds and the bees and tells them, as you might suspect , to be fruitful and multiply (He also creates the sea creatures).  But we should note that this command to sexually reproduce is not where the Bible introduces the terms or concept of male and female.  Nor are those terms introduced early in Day 6 when God creates the land creatures.  “Male and female” is introduced later in the most remarkable context of the whole account – that of the image of God.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

As believers in both God and Scripture, we must believe that what God did and what God revealed to us about what He did all have a purpose.  Every detail, every word, is accomplished and communicated to express something or reveal something to us.  In that light, Genesis 1:26 is certainly among the most remarkable verses in all the Bible.  The God who wanted His people to know, above all things, that “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), speaks at this unique moment of being God in the plural.  And what is this unique moment?  The bringing of His image into the creation.  “Let us make man in our image…”  Wow.  The one God is an “us”.  The one God is plural.  The one God is Relationship.

What does the plural God look like, relationally?  We are about to get the best picture ever brought into this creation.  “In the image of God He made him (singular), male and female He made them (expressed in a relational plurality).”

So male and female are introduced to us in the most profound context possible.  “Male and female” is not about the birds and the bees.  “Male and female” is about God.

Does this mean the Mormons are right and God is a physical male being reproducing spirit babies into our world with a female?  Not if the Bible is a revelation from God.  We have already shown that male and female are not here intended to describe biology.  They are relational terms pointing upward into the eternal “us”-ness of God, not downward to the physical creation around us.  Remember, God is not just using those terms in Genesis 1:26-27.  He is defining them.

We are told as plainly as possible that Man as male and female is the fullest expression in the creation of that which is God, and that relationship between male and female is the closest expression of the relationship that exists within the Godhead.  Reflections of this relationship have been created other places – as in father and son, ruler and subject.  But none of them come as close to capturing what is really in God as that of “male and female” in covenant relationship called marriage.

But if the point is not biology, then what is it?  How is “male and female” related to the image of God? The next post will explore how we can understand God’s intent – and our gift – in male and female.