Man, Woman, Relationships, and God
This is the weekend post because it is so long. Next one out will be in two days. I hope you take your time and read it carefully.
I think we think more like the culture wants us to think, which really messes with our ability to think clearly.
Selah.
That word, Selah, is Hebrew. It is found primarily in the Psalms, but not exclusively.
The Psalms were written and compiled as the song book for the Israelite nation.
King David wrote a lot of these psalms intended to be sung and Selah, could therefore be a musical notation indicating to pause.
The New American Standard Hebrew Lexicon defines it as to lift up, exalt. Perhaps it is an invitation to have a musical interlude or to be quiet.
As we read these passages today, thousands of years later and in another language, we still see the word at the end of certain passages.
Selah.
To me, it is an instruction to pause, quiet yourself, and reflect; to think about what you just read.
The other day I was working along, and as I may have mentioned, I work in an office where the music is piped in overhead. I don’t control that closely what I listen to. This means, periodically, I hear old familiar tunes where some of the lines are clear and others are buried under the melodies. That’s the thing about most pop music we have listened to our whole lives, the words can sometimes be lost in the music for years. We don’t really know what the lyrics are really saying and we don’t have time, or aren’t given the time to Selah.
So now years later, I find myself listening to “She’s Always a Woman” written and performed by Billy Joel. Its release date was 9/29/1977, which is personally interesting to me because it was the year I got married.
Here are the words without music.
She can kill with a smile She can wound with her eyes And she can ruin your faith with her casual lies And she only reveals What she wants you to see She hides like a child But she's always a woman to me She can lead you to love She can take you or leave you She can ask for the truth But she'll never believe you And she'll take what you give her As long as it's free Yeah, she steals like a thief But she's always a woman to me Oh, she takes care of herself She can wait if she wants She's ahead of her time Oh, and she never gives out And she never gives in She just changes her mind And she'll promise you more Than the Garden of Eden Then she'll carelessly cut you And laugh while you're bleedin' But she'll bring out the best And the worst you can be Blame it all on yourself Cause she's always a woman to me Oh, she takes care of herself She can wait if she wants She's ahead of her time Oh, and she never gives out And she never gives in She just changes her mind She is frequently kind And she's suddenly cruel She can do as she pleases She's nobody's fool But she can't be convicted She's earned her degree And the most she will do Is throw shadows at you But she's always a woman to me
For many of you, I bet the music still just popped into your head as you read the lines, which shows how powerful music can be in our lives. It also reveals how easy it can be to sometimes go along with ideas that either don’t make any sense, or actually work against our forming good clear thinking about life and relationships.
Now I can attempt to deconstruct the lyrics, but this to me is not as valuable as trying to establish what the truth actually is about men and women, and then let people judge things for themselves.
To do this, let’s go back to the beginning.
In the first chapter of Genesis, the very title of which means The Beginning, or where it all started for us human beings, we see that God created everything and that it was orderly. Read the chapter for yourself when you have the time. It isn’t that long. But I want to take you to the end of the chapter where we learn some pretty interesting things about what God intended all of this creation activity for.
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.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”
And it was so.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:26-31 (ESV)
What jumps out to me are a number of things very different from what our culture attempts to tell us about who we are.
First, Creation had a point, a purpose. And it wasn’t for God to enjoy the beauty of the creation, although he declared it all good. It was all created as a gift for the one he created last – Man.
But note, in this passage, man isn’t a he but a them.
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.
What does this mean God created man in his own image, when the preceding verse has just explained a conversation God had with God (we call this the Godhead) where the words us and our are used?
There is something about the nature of God that man is to be the image of, and it involves relationships.
In other words, if we are to bear God’s image, it is not as individuals, but as something bigger and deeper. Man in the sense described here is not male, but male and female.
Which means, when we go to the next chapter, there is another deeper story about the creation of man.
So let’s go there now. Genesis 2
First, it is important to remember that this book was not written with chapters and verses. Those came later. So the first few verses in chapter 2 are a part of chapter 1 because it talks about the seventh day (verses 1-3). Next is a description of what the world looked like back then before the time when tilling the soil was a thing (verses 5-6).
Now let’s pick up in verse 7.
then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Verses 8-14 then describe where God put this first man — in the Garden of Eden, essentially giving its location relative to rivers known today.
Verses 15-17 then say
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Selah.
First of all,
so far,
God had not made man in his image. He had just started the process. Man was not complete.
Secondly, God told the man what he was and was not to do in this garden he had placed him in. This is important for anyone wanting to blame the woman later on for the fall of mankind.
Now the payoff. Verses 18 to the end.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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.”
Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
So what just happened here?
God had finally made man in his image by placing man into a relationship.
It is the relationship between man and woman that reflects what God is really like – because without relationships, there can be no love.
Selah.
But relationships are tricky things.
Go back and read Billy Joel’s lyrics again.
If God had made the man and the woman at the same time, the concept of relationships and loving one another, I think, would have been lost completely (it is still often lost to us today). So instead, he begins with half-a-man and teaches this incomplete creature through the naming of all the other animals that there is something missing in himself. All the other animals had mates and he did not. I’m sure this developed a feeling of “incompleteness.” It wasn’t the loneliness we probably feel today because there was no sin and God was right there with the man, Adam (which means man), but it isn’t, as God will ultimately declare at the end of the creation process, Very Good.
And then, to make sure you and I, don’t miss the big point of the story, which isn’t just about how things were made, Moses, the author of the book, explains that this activity of being fruitful and multiplying involves men leaving their parents and holding fast to individual wives resulting in becoming One Flesh, just like the first complete Man.
And to take this story even further, in order to later describe how far we have fallen, he states that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” This isn’t talking about physical nudity (although this is certainly included) as much as it is talking about how close the bond between a man and wife (that specific one, not just females in general) should be.
So to conclude:
Our problems are not with the opposite sex.
Our problems in relationships, especially marriages, is that we do not understand that we together are MAN or ONE.
Certainly, there is division of labor, but not stereotypical rules for the “stronger” and “weaker” one. We were created for mutual support and affection. This means anytime someone demands someone else meet his or her own needs or else, this individual is not operating from love and is not reflecting the way God is. Can people get away with this? For a season, I suppose, but eventually everything will fall apart. Selfishness is sin.
But let me be clear about what I mean by selfishness before signing off. Selfishness is putting myself above others, that my needs are more important than everyone else.
Self-interest is different. It is important that I take care of myself so I can love others well, and the way I must take care of myself is to connect first and foremost with my God. I cannot try and suck the life out of others in order to obtain what only God is capable of giving me. In fact, it would be fair to say that selfishness is a sin because it is first and foremost putting myself above God. When I sin, I am sinning against him, and this sin then harms everything I touch, including myself and others. (Read Psalm 51).
Our culture is trying to tear us apart; to isolate us; to make us impotent; because then evil can grow to infiltrate and destroy God’s image bearers — Mankind.
So back to Billy Joel’s lyrics one more time.
The relationship he is describing is not about the woman, but about the brokenness of the relationship.
If it is to mend, it will require turning back to the God first as individuals, then as marriages, and then as a society.
Part way down I wrote “God had a conversion”
I meant to write “conversation”
This has been corrected but I can’t retract emails.