Why Was Adam Mutilated?

I never thought to ask this question but someone else asked and it has been rolling around in my head since:

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Genesis 2:20-21

So why? Why go through the trouble of creating woman in a completely different way than man and everything else in the universe up to this point? Why create a being in the image and likeness of God, then cause him to fall into a deep sleep as though dead, pierce his side and from the otherwise mortal wound in his flesh create new life? Why does God then lead the new creation to her lover, now risen from his deep death-like slumber, so that they can become one flesh again; that is so that the woman can physically receive the body and flesh of the one she was created from and for into herself in an act of communion and love which then brings about even more life until it fills the world?

God has revealed Himself in so many diverse ways, it is absolutely astonishing. What I find fascinating is that when Eve came into existence she was apart from Adam and had to be led to him by God. In some ways I feel like I have found Christ and know Him and in other ways I feel like I am still being led to Him by God.

Thank you Lord for your patience in my meandering pursuit. Keep me from evil and led me to everlasting life, which is life joined to you.

Heart Strings

Sometimes one hears or reads a verse and that verse carries with it a certain significance or meaning. For years that verse can retain that meaning until one day you suddenly see it in a different light.

Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.
Proverbs 4:23

This verse carried with it a dating significance for me and the meaning was to guard my heart against heartbreak. But heartbreak does not stop up the "wellspring of life."

The heart is very significant to God. The Bible contains 743 references to it. The Lord we serve is one who searches both the mind and the heart. Before we ever confess with our lips, we first confess in our heart. The words that we speak overflow from our hearts. Our hearts ultimately find their rest in God and are restless until they do.

And yet our hearts can be hardened against God. Unforgiveness, bitterness, hatred, etc. can take root like weeds in fertile soil to choke out the blossoming seed. Christ came to establish a new convent in which our darkened hearts, hardened like stones, could be replaced with hearts of flesh. I know that somehow my fellowship with God is intimately intertwined with the condition of my heart. God, who is greater than our hearts, has rescued us by pouring love into our hearts and leaving us a lasting peace as inheritance to guard our hearts before the day judgment. Rejoicing in the goodness of God and resting in the peace from Him which surpasses all understanding safeguards the wellspring of life so that life can be lived abundantly by pursuing Him who first pursued us and walking in the good works for which we were created and which have been laid out before us. Failing to guard our hearts against the snares of the world, like Adam failed to guard the garden, blocks the blessings of God and darkens our knowledge of Him. It stops up the wellspring of life.

The difference between my first understanding and my second is that the first retrains love for fear of pain while the second deepens loves in the hope of the glory secure in the knowledge that nothing in heaven or earth can separate me from the love that is in Christ poured out for me. Perhaps both understandings are true, but I now realize that "guarding my heart" can mean loving recklessly just as much as it can mean dealing cautiously with the world.

Things that Come in a Box

Cereal
Appliances
Books
Rings

People
Genders
God

The human brain is very good at classification and pattern recognition. Based on even a very small amount of evidence the brain can leap to a conclusion. This is good for avoiding being eaten by a tiger, but not so good when it comes to our relationships with others.

One doesn't need to look far to see how even the church tends to box, classify and divide people. There are groups for youth, groups for elderly, for women, for men, for singles, for college singles, for career singles, for the "re-singled", and so on down any set of classification you wish to explore. Take a look at Christian bookshelves. One example in point: "Every man's battle: winning the war on sexual purity." Really? Every man's battle? Classifying sexual purity as a male issue seems, generously, to be a viewpoint at least 50 years behind the times if not more, which I suppose is par for the church as a whole.

Sometimes it makes sense to group and classify. For example, those struggling with particular addictions or traumas can receive great benefit from a community focused on that particular issue. But due to the nature of our minds, it is also exceeding easy to go much further down the road of division and classification than is really beneficial to anyone. Its easy to ignore someone's opinion once you've labeled them as insignificant or even to treat someone as less than human once you've labeled them as such. We must always be on guard against these divisions, which Christ has reconciled in his body.

Forgiveness

I've been reminded recently of the profound interconnectedness of truth and love. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have written about this inter-relatedness in varying degrees. The latter remarks even that in Christ, the expression of this interconnectedness becomes the "Face of his Person."

As I reflected on this, my thoughts turned to forgiveness. Perhaps in no other practice do truth and love so completely unite than when they result in mercy and absolution. Forgiveness does not deny one iota of the seriousness of an evil or the harm it inflicts on the innocent. This is truth. Nor does forgiveness forget the humanity of the offender or the price that Christ paid on their behalf. This is love.

Christ who was the incarnation of the eternal Word of God is also the incarnation of Truth. And through His divine nature, He is also the incarnation of Love for God is Love. These two aspects of the nature of God became flesh in Christ as the Face of his Person. In a way then, he is also the incarnation of forgiveness itself - the visible expression of God's love and truth. Forgiveness was ultimately the reason for His coming and it is no wonder that Christ has so much to say about forgiveness in the gospels.

Forgiveness, like all expressions of holiness, is mutually beneficial both to the giver and the receiver. The giver is freed from the chains of anger and bitterness while the receiver is freed from guilt. Likewise, the only alternative to forgiveness is mutually harmful to both parties. One path results in a life in chains while the other a life in freedom. Christ, in this way, expresses, models, and makes possible the freedom for which He came to set us free. What is most mysterious is why a life in chains ever seems so appealing?

Towards Knowing God

He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?
declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 22:16

Crazy

Rash.
Impulsive.
Not well thought out.
What if you're wrong?
Look at everything you'll be giving up.
Life is good, don't mess with it.

Well, what is the appropriate response to finding a pearl of great value?

Adventure

I just finished reading Wild At Heart and am mostly through Captivating. I like the messages of each of these books - that God has designed men and women differently but complimentary so that the happiness of one is also the happiness of the other.

These books both also talk about adventure as a built-in desire of our humanity. Wild At Heart talks about a lot about adventures outdoors, climbing sheer cliff faces, facing bears, doing dangerous things. This desire for adventure is true at least for me and would appear to be true for many more like me based on the popularity of adventure movies, epic sagas, etc.

I believe the author at one point said that some men even turn to stock trading, marketed as "adventures in capitalism" as a substitute for real adventure. I don't know remember if he made this point or not, but all adventures are substitutes for the real adventure. Traveling to exotic lands, leaping headfirst from skyscraper sized cliffs, fighting bears, international intrigue, battlefield combat - these things are all exciting to varying levels but none of them are truly adventurous. The excitement and adrenaline wear off after a while like the high of a drug. All of these are just substitutes for the only true adventure that could ever fully captivate the heart: the pursuit of God. For one man, this pursuit will lead him to distant lands and for another to corporate offices. I trust though that this is true: that the man who follows God on his couch is more adventurous than the man who has his own adventures apart from God.

The trouble is that it is easy to use God as an excuse to remain comfortable. It is easy to remain somewhere safe and say it is because God called you to the sacrifice of safety when in reality you fear the dangerous. And it is easy to live a life of so-called adventure and say it is because you are following God when in reality you fear the greater danger of becoming a tame man. I've often asked "what do you what me to do God?" and I wonder if He often has not answered because I am too afraid of what the answer may be.