DDuBlog

Every Christian has a binding call to discipleship; that is to study, attempt to understand and follow the teachings of Christ Jesus. That call can be lived out in many ways. Some undertake missionary service, pastoral occupation or simply devote themselves daily in prayer and reading of scripture. For the laity, discipleship can be somewhat of an enigma. Some are afraid to live out their faith in daily life, although they live in a society where they are free to do so. Others boldly live out their faith in cultures where merely professing to be a Christian is forbidden. I have known men who professed faith loudly and often, yet did not back up their conviction in deed. Likewise I have known men whose faith is strong yet they do not display any outward signs of their heavenly call. How are we to live as true Disciples in this modern age?

JESUS CALLS TWO BROTHERS

Shortly after Jesus came to the village of Capernaum, he caught sight of two fisherman washing their nets. This may seem at first glance to be a simple circumstance. But make no mistake, it was not an accident that these two brothers where tending to their father’s business. Jesus called to them, a simple invitation, “Come, follow me.” Astoundingly they dropped everything they were doing, got out of their father’s boat and fell in step along with the Christ. They didn’t know much about this man who asked them to change their lives so radically; only that he was a man called Jesus, a teacher, a rabbi. Yet they did as he beckoned them to. Why?

To understand this episode more fully we have to look more closely at Judaism. All boys were educated in Torah. Simon and Andrew were undoubtedly no exception. They likely knew the first five books of the Bible by memory as did every good Jewish man. When they were young they would have been taught by a rabbi. He would drill them and question them, trying to discern whether they could become rabbis also. If they were found to be less than acceptable prospective rabbis, their teacher would congratulate them for their dedication and completion of their primary studies and then promptly send them back to their father to learn his trade.

Being a rabbi would have been an occupation of the highest honor. A rabbi was respected, revered, looked to for guidance and ultimately provided for by the community. No better lot could be had. Simon and Andrew, we must assume failed to pass the standards of their first teacher. They were sent back to Zebedee to become fishermen and carry on the family business.

It is no great wonder, then, that when this rabbi Jesus called them they followed willingly. They left thier nets and their boat; even their father calling after them to come back and finish the day’s work. They knew they were being summoned to learn under a rabbi. They were getting a second chance to be an apprentice (the ultimate apprentice, not the Donald apprentice) They knew that they would possibly be great teachers themselves someday if they just answered that call. This just did not happen in first century Judea.

“So what does this have to do with us,” you may be asking. The answer is “EVERYTHING.” Jesus makes this same invitation to you and I. “Go forth and make disciples of all nations,” he said. “How can I do that,” I’m glad you asked. Pick up your Bible, dust it off if you need to, crack it open and read. Nay, don’t just read, absorb. Put its teachings into practice in your everyday life Monday through Sunday. Don’t just pick the passages that you enjoy. Study the difficult to understand ones too. (Yes that includes the Old Testament)

One last note — You can’t do this alone. “Where ever two or three of you gather in My name,” Jesus said, “I AM THERE” [emphasis mine]. There are a lot of options for studying The Word together in community. Get into a small group. Take The Alpha course. Join a Disciple Group (shameless plug – I’ll be leading a Disciple I Group this fall and I’d love to have you join). Together we can become ‘Fishers of Men,’ without even leaving our nets or spreadsheets or emails or power tools or other occupations behind. In fact it’s better if we take our Bibles into those places of work. We might just make the biggest ‘catch’ of our lives.

CREATION I – Genesis 1:1-2:3

There is no way of knowing definitively when creation occurred. When we read Genesis 1 and find that the earth was created in 6 days, we should take into account several temporal and physical realities.

1. The earth rotates once every 24 hours – creating the common earth day upon which human time is based.
2. In contrast, Venus (sometimes referred to as Earth’s Twin) rotates once every 5,832.2 hours (a little more than 243 Earth days).
3. Other planets in the solar system vary widely in rotation times.
4. God is not bound by our concept of time. In fact in creating a 24 hour rotation for the Earth, he also created our concept of time.
5. We do not know what God’s concept of time is (or if, for that matter, time even applies to him).
6. Authorship of Genesis is attributed to Moses. Most Biblical scholars agree that Moses likely wrote Genesis, drawing from oral tradition.
7. Everything in Genesis, from Creation to the Tower of Babel is neither physically or scientifically able to be substantiated and must be taken on faith and in the method of understanding the Bible based on our own reason and experience and our knowledge of the tradition at the time of the writer and of present day Biblical scholars (The Wesleyan Quadrilateral).
8. All of the aforementioned events had to have occurred some time prior to the lifetime of Abraham, which is commonly accepted to have been approximately 2200-2000 B.C.
9. The Book of Genesis is believed to have been written around 1400 B.C.; i.e., Creation as it is written in Genesis occurred or was completed [at the very least] seven to eight hundred years before it was recorded in writing.

It is my belief that the first creation narrative was an explanation for the Israelites of how all things came to be. They needed to know of God’s omnipotence and omnipresence, and this account does a very good job of accomplishing that. Don’t misunderstand my explanation — I DO believe that God created all things. I believe, based on modern knowledge,  understanding and reason that the creation account was written in language that the immediately intended reader would be able to understand.

CREATION II – Genesis 2:4-25

The second most common question regarding creation in Genesis is “Why are there two creation accounts?” In fact I believe, along with many Biblical scholars, that  the second creation account was emergent; that is to say further explanation was required. The account in Genesis 2 is dovetailed into the Genesis 1 account. It briefly restates the first account and then details the creation of Eve. Here is where confusion becomes controversy for some readers and scholars.

In Genesis 1:27 God creates male and female humans. In Genesis 2:18 God is unable to find a suitable helper for Man and says, “It is not good for the man to be [alone]” (emphasis mine). So what happened to the woman that God created alongside man in 1:27?

LILITH

In Jewish oral tradition from around the 8th century A.D., the woman created at the same time and from the same dirt as Adam is given a name: Lilith. This legend grew in the subsequent centuries, even being expanded upon in the late Middle Ages by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen. He contended that Lilith who was created as an equal to Adam refused to submit to her husband. She left Eden, ha-Cohen explains, and had intimate relations with the archangel Samael. She would not return to Eden thereafter, whether prevented by God (in some tellings of the story) or because she did not care to follow the expected order of God as it relates to man and wife. You may recognize the name Lilith as a symbol of female power in modern culture. Please remember as you consider this, that it is mythological in origin and is not from the Bible.

So we have our possible but unsubstantiated first woman, Lilith. This brings us to Eve. Eve was created, interestingly enough, not from the earth. It is clear that God was capable of creating man from the dirt of the ground, breathing life into his nostrils, but He chose not to create Eve in this way. In 2:21-22, God puts Adam into a deep sleep and removes a rib from his side. He uses this rib to create Eve. When Adam awakes, God brings Eve to him and he responds very poetically: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” Further there is now reason to put forth the first marital command, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

In order to understand this social order, we have to take into account the tradition of the Israelite people. Women at the time Genesis was written (and throughout ancient times even up to modern third world social environments) were expected to be subservient to men. They relied on men to provide for and protect their households and communities. This was a very different social clime than modern Western culture. The ideas and statements put forth in this article are archaic by today’s standards. There is truth in it though. In marriage, man and woman still become one flesh. The balance of subservience has certainly shifted, but God intends man and woman to be united in marriage submitting one to the other. In Ephesians 5:22-33 Paul shifts this balance somewhat. He admonishes both Husbands and Wives to submit to and love one another. Current times find women more equal to men than any previous social order. I would posit that if Paul were to write a letter to modern generations he would shift his view even further, allowing for total equality of the sexes.

Taking all of this under consideration, I ask several questions. Answer them for yourselves and then go back and read Genesis 1 and 2.

• Did God create a woman, Lilith, at the same time He created Adam?
• Was Eve Adam’s second wife?
• Was all of this creatively edited out of the oral tradition that led to the Genesis creation narrative?
• If Genesis were written today, how would it differ from it’s current form?
• Does it really matter?

A wise pastor once told me that there were about eight verses in the Bible that he didn’t really care for. He would prefer that they weren’t included in the Bible at all. Would he rewrite the Bible or throw out all of it because of these few perplexing verses? Of course not. To do so would be like missing the forest for the trees or throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

God does not ask us to put our brains on pause when we read his word. Rather, we have to think, reason and explore what He wants us to hear in the words that we read. The three legged stool upon which the Holy Word of God rests can stand only when all three legs – knowledge, reason and experience are present in our study.

In answer to the questions above: to all 5 — I don’t know (and that is quite okay).

So what is the answer? The answer is that you must decide what it’s meaning is for you. There are centuries between us and the writing of this passage and much debate among scholars over the use of the words Holy Spirit in the OT. At the least I hope this insight has brought you into a state of discernment. After all as disciples of Christ and the Holy Word that is what we are tasked to do.