Long before He opened the Gates of the Kingdom to Gentiles, Hebrews knew that God gave us the Scriptures in order to know Him and to know how to live. It was clear from the beginning that God speaks and expects that we will know what He’s saying and be able to respond to it. God breathed life, into Adam nostrils. Not apes or any other being. Made in the likeness of God determined our destiny. God Himself thinks rationally, ordering His thoughts. He plans and follows through by a choice of His will. He conceives of ideas and uses language to communicate meaning and purpose.
God conceives of and uses language to communicate meaning and purpose. He has a wide spectrum of emotions – joy to sorrow; anger to peace; love to hate; pleasure to disappointment. Though He is never confused or out of control. He is creative and He is a spiritual being.
He made us, unlike other creatures, to resemble Himself in all these ways for one reason – relationship, with Him and with one another. The most significant things we can know about Yeshua is His relationship with His Father. The highest goal for us humans is to be conformed to His likeness – and most of all, in a relationship with His Father.
It is with our shared personal characteristics that we can interact with God. We can see why they would say that. The Bible presents God not only as Creator of the Galaxies but everywhere at once, knowing all there is to know. But had Hume or Kant been Hebrews or Spirit-filled believers they would have understood that God gave man the ability to think abstractly, plan, rationalize and have creative ideas and are able to follow them through. And to put His thoughts into spoken and written form, including as an expression of God speaking through man. We learned in the first lesson how God in all that He is chose to speak to man. He did so through one group of people through whom He chose to express Himself to all mankind. The Bible records the words “God said” 618 times and “the Lord said” 1132 times. I guess we can say He wants to speak to us!
So, in short, we understand that man is personal because God is personal. We are creative because God is creative. Man is a spiritual being because God is a spiritual being. Of course, God is God and man is man. We have our limitations. We cannot create something out of nothing. But who among the creatures is like God? Only mankind is in His likeness, in His design and plan – all the various kinds of us.
How Good is God?
When God created every aspect of the earth, He declared them to be good – ki tov! Entirely good. Good in the basic Hebrew meaning has the sense of being complete. Every part in its place fulfilling that for which God intended it. The opposite, ra, (rah) which we take to mean evil, means not good, or not complete. That is, things are not in their place, for the purpose God intended. If you consider how far we’ve come from tov in what that would actually mean and how it would play out in our lives and our planet, you can see how ra is the antithesis of good in every measure and expression of it. Don’t let the fact that these are two small words with few letters keep you from realizing the profound significance of each. Ra carries with it everything that is not good. God’s warning to Adam was to avoid what would corrupt tov – absolute goodness - and give place to ra – all that is not good in any measure. And so we are still dealing with Adam and Eve’s poor choice today. Ra is all that is not of God. It includes the likes of sad, sorrow, grief, sickness, fear, death, poverty, lack, hatred and unforgiveness ….. all, and so much more, can come under the category of ra.
Apart from everything else, each person is an image bearer of God at any stage of life. Including conception each person is of immeasurable worth. David and Jeremiah knew they were known by God while still in their mother’s wombs. No matter of race or nationality, gender, physical ability, financial worth or lack of it, of intelligence, of creativity, or education, helpless or able, well or feeble…. All are equally in God’s likeness and of equal value to God.
The one exception is that those physically defective in any way were not permitted into the inner court of the temple. But that was a prophetic picture of the holiness that would be required of Messiah and the holiness He would accomplish so that each of us would be able to come into God’s presence having been made holy by His blood and taken down the middle wall of partition – in any measure of alienation. Paul made sure his gentile disciples understood this in an even greater measure: No male or female, no Jew or Greek, no slave or free. Indicating no color, creed, race, abilities, intelligence, health…. This was Paul’s understanding of what God’s egalitarianism defined to Israel in Torah. Not even the priests were to have greater sway over the people financially in that they couldn’t own property. The king, required to write 2 copies of Deuteronomy (the recounting of the commandments) each year, was meant to keep him as accountable to God as any other Hebrew. Example: Samuel holding David accountable for Uriah’s death and his infidelity with Bathsheba. He was not above it.
What happens to a culture that fails to recognize the unique basis of human worth?
In Israel, each child is treasured as a gift from God parents as having great value and parents are charged by God with the responsibility for raising their children in His ways. But in Sparta, when a baby was born he is evaluated by virtue of the inspection and approval of the city council. If he is small, even if he is healthy, he is deemed unfit for life. The highest standard of strength must be maintained for a Spartan male. If he is regarded as unfit for the standard, he is taken to a high cliff and tossed over the edge. His helpless wail ended quickly. Then silence and his little life was over.
At 7 years old the Spartan boy was taken from his parents to be brought up by the State under the most critical forms of discipline. All for the State. Any forms of cowardice was a disgrace. At 12 he then slept in the open air on a bed of broken rushes from the river bank. Underclothing was not allowed and he lived in the same garment for one year. Nothing was to be comfortable to create in him a ‘Spartan’ individual. These young men often became the homosexual objects of older man. At age 30 he would be admitted to the rights of a citizen, and allowed to dine with the elders in the dining hall.
Girls trained through running and wrestling. Plutarch told of women being bold and masculine, and overbearing to their husbands. Even so, it was a crime not to marry and husbands were encouraged to lend their wives out to other men who were especially strong so that they would have strong children. Yet, every child was subject to its father’s right to infanticide. The right of the State meant the interest of the State provided the sole basis of human worth and more values. The State sets the standards of value – to be good was to be brave and strong, for the good of the group as a whole. The individual value was minimized and insignificant.
Sparta sough to eliminate the weak. Athens, on the other hand, based their value, including of their infants, on the basis of what might appear to threaten “the good life.” A baby or child appearing to be weak in that they might need special care would interfere with the parents “good life” and were so done away with. As a safeguard against overpopulation or depleting of nature resources, a child who was deemed unfit were exposed to the natural elements by being put in a large earthenware vessel and placed in the temples of their gods.
Extreme limitations of the family size was one of the outstanding social marks of ancient Greece. Statistics of one family in twelve have only two sons and no daughters made the death rate higher than the birth rate. No society can survive on such statistics – with no second generation. The same fate was considered one of the causes of the Fall of Rome as well including that Rome placed such a high value on the military that the majority of men were in the army where homosexuality was the norm, older men paired with younger men. With this and the infanticide, there was not enough in the next generation to fight their battles, making them vulnerable to loosing in battle. Such information is critical. It is meaningful that we keep these things in mind as our own culture leans toward some of these same values of infanticide and increased and national or state-sanctioned homosexuality. Neither of these concepts have ever died. They keep reappearing on the stage of human history, in different cultures, in different locations and different times. Are we now one of those times and locations?
A Few Things To Ponder:
Greece, and subsequently Rome, saw man as the measure of all things. But you can see why Athens and Jerusalem could in no away co-exist. Here are a few things to give some thought to:
- How does that reflect the relationship between the church and the world? How are we to navigate through these challenges
- How does man being made in God’s own image affect our position of accountability for our choices and actions?
- If we are image bearers of God, how might that reality affect the way we relate to others?
- Was God’s Hand in Creation a one-time event? Or is it a continuing action even into the present?
- Is an Atheist (say, a Greek) as much a person of faith as a Believer?
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