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.

Fellowship in Suffering

Have you ever met someone that you just "clicked" with? Someone whom you felt you could talk with, or just listen to, for hours on end? These people strike some chord in our hearts such that we feel an immediate connection and relation. I've found that in my life, these people share some common interest, passion or way of thinking that is very similar to my own yet made distinct by their own unique life experiences and challenges. The cake of deep intimate fellowship is formed from similitude and it is made sweet by the icing of differences, not the other way around.

God calls us into fellowship with His Son. There are many ways by which to pursue fellowship with God: prayer, fasting, study, obedience, etc. These are disciplines by which to nourish the connection to the divine so that we might, at a heart level, be transformed by the renewing of our mind to conform to the image of Christ. This likeness is the heart of fellowship, but there is something to be said for likeness of experience as a well. After all, a true likeness in heart should ultimately produce similar experiences.

The apostles talk of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. When you've been abandoned by your friends, lost worldly possessions and status, been wrongly accused and hated, beaten down and mocked, betrayed with kisses and abused, when justice turns away from you, it can be very hard to see God through the disaster. The darkness into which you have been thrust can be very dark indeed and even the very sense of the presence of God can be like the sun which moves behind the clouds. There is nothing left then but to sit among the ashes and mourn.

Then something very surprising happens. You look over and you see Jesus sitting beside you among the ashes. It should not be surprising, after all where else would Jesus be? The profound sense of kinship that floods into the heart cannot be expressed by words. It is the overflow of joy that transformed Job's pain into worship.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, the avatar of the Supreme Being in the Hindu mythos, claims that that the greatest of his worshipers are not the suffering but the wise. Christ, by contrast, seems to extend a special brotherhood to those who suffer for his sake, or perhaps he makes no distinction at all between the faithfully suffering and the wise. As G.K. Chesterton notes, it is revealing to mediate on the differences between the way Christ is portrayed by Christians versus the way other gods are portrayed, especially the Eastern ones. Those gods are well-fed, smiling, content, and serene with closed eyes. Christ is fully revealed on the cross in his greatest moment and finest hour. He is thin and bloody with a sad and tortured expression in his face and his eyes are wide open fixed on the prize. What a sublime paradox that the greatest joy is found not in following the serene gods but in joining the tortured one on His cross.

Living Among Wolves (Part II)

In my first post on this subject I discussed the outward characteristics of wolves. Wolves are predatory by nature and sheep are their prey. Those sheep who do not graze in the world as craftily as snakes meet the fate of perishing through their lack of knowledge. It is therefore important, as a sheep, to be on one's guard. This bears reminding since sheep can forget that not all are sheep - a fact that a wolf never loses sight of.

However, to leave the discussion merely at a description of the wolf nature and an admonishment to be wary misses another import aspect of this parable and therefore leaves the thought incomplete. That fact is this: all sheep were once wolves. Some wolves become sheep before they begin to hunt and others after they have slain a mighty throng. But all sheep were once wolves who through a mystery that angels long to peer into have become sheep: an experience which, like all births, is both painful and joyful.

Sheep therefore, in a sense, walk between two worlds. The first world is a prey-predator relationship where self-preservation, diligence, and caution are the driving motivations for action. The second world is another plane of relationship where compassion, pity, and sacrifice are the driving motivations for action. In the first one, a sheep flees from a wolf once recognized as such. In the second world, a sheep approaches the wolf with fear and trembling and bares its neck for the slaughter.

We are reminded to live in the first world by the proverbs, the psalms, the epistles of the apostles, and so on. We are reminded to live in the second when we see the Messiah break bread, declare it to be his body broken for his friends and then had it over to his betrayer whose feet he has just washed. So how do the sheep know which path to take when? Because the sheep hear and know the voice of the Shepard and where he leads they will follow, even where they do not wish to go.

Two Prayers

Two men walk into a church to pray. The first walks up to the front and kneels praying:

"Lord, forgive my sins. I have stolen, but I only stole because I have been unfairly deprived of what I deserve. I have lied and deceived but only because others are too judgmental and self-righteous. I have betrayed innocent people, but only because I myself have also been betrayed by others. Father, forgive me for all these sins I've been made to commit against you."

The second kneels in the back in and prays:

"Lord forgive my sins. I have stolen what I did not earn. I have lied and deceived because it was easier for me than telling the truth. I have betrayed innocent people so that I could benefit at the expense of their suffering. I choose to do evil, knowing that it was evil for my own selfish motives. Father, forgive me for all these sins I've chosen to commit against you."

Which one of these two men walks away justified?

Living Among Wolves

Beware

• Those who decry that all money is evil. They have never honestly earned money; they cannot value money or the means which honestly produced it. They will not, therefore, value your money, time, charity, or life.
  
• Those who demand as the first condition of relating to you unconditional love or trust. These are the people who are planning to slit your throat the moment it becomes convenient. They cannot understand love much less what it means for it to be unconditional.
  
• Those who demand from you financial support, forgiveness, time or anything else on the condition that you are bound to provide it because you are a Christian. To blackmail a person, not for the vices but for their virtues, is an inexcusable tactic of a cheat and a defrauder.
  
• Those who publicize every good act they do. When no one is watching they will strike.
  

The Deeper Truth

A few days ago I was having a discussion with someone who was trying to convince me that truth does not consist of factual reality but that it is something deeper and more true. The intent of this argument was to diminish the importance of speaking factual truth so I dismissed it for the new-age doublespeak it was.

Today however I've reconsidered it and I think that the point is valid; that is that truth does not consist of mere factual statements about reality but is in fact something deeper and more substantial. Scripture declares that God is love. Love exists only the context of relationship and relationships are only possible when they exist in truth. Just as God, existing in three persons, was love before creation because love flowed perfectly between each member of the Trinity, God must also have in some sense been Truth. Love could only flow perfectly between God if God existed and manifested Truth. Perhaps this is why Jesus calls Satan the "father of lies" as a statement of the antithesis of his nature compared to God's.

Love is not giving gifts, compliments, or affection, but is the source, meaning and root of all existence. Truth, its sister, is not factual representation but the fabric of all relationships. But rather than this diminishing the importance of honesty, it increases it. Love and Truth are not directly perceived but are known by their fruits. Honesty is the fruit of Truth, just as affection and concern is the natural fruit of Love.

Cleansing This Temple

In the Old Testament era, there was prescribed exactly one geographical location on Earth where the glory and the Spirit of God would descend to meet His people. This location was the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The Hebrew name for the temple means "The Sanctified House" and it was the only place ordained by God for the offering of sacrifices.

During the ministry of Jesus, he "cleansed" the Temple by driving out the merchants and the money-changers, both of whom had a legitimate right to be there. It was impractical for believers to bring their livestock all the way to the Temple, so there needed to be those who could sell the animals for sacrifice in or near the Temple. Additionally, only the Hebrew coin could be use for offerings, so people who traded in other currency needed to be able to exchange their money. However, these merchants and money-changers extorted believers to increase their profit because the believers were dependent on them. Christ, in his only recorded violent act, drove these men out of the Temple shouting "My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!"

In the New Testament era, the geographical location where the glory and the Spirit of God reside is in the heart of the believer. And we have money-changers and merchants in our hearts that have a right to be there. We need to work, provide for our family, have food and shelter, etc. Like the ancient believers, we are dependent on these money-changers and it is very easy to become extorted by them such that our heart loses the atmosphere of prayer and instead becomes a den of thieves. It is good to remember the zeal God has for His "Sanctified House."

The Allure of Virtue

When I was in college I held an ideal of a perfect mate. She had to be very intelligent. This is so we could stay up late into the night talking about interesting ideas and events. She would also, of course, enjoy the fun things that I enjoyed, so we could escape together from the world of obligations and truly immerse ourselves in each others' company. And obviously she would be very very pretty. Those were the important attributes of what I considered a perfect woman.

Taken for granted in this ideal is the assumption that she is also virtuous - that when faced with a tough choice she could choose the harder one simply because it is right to do so. As part of growing older, and hopefully wiser, I no longer take this for granted. Thinking back over the years, I can count on one hand the women I've met that I consider to have had a truly noble character.

Now when I look forward with hope to the future, I do not think so much about a person of surpassing intellect, common interests, or great physical beauty but rather I more greatly desire the beauty of the inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth God's sight. I think this subtle change of the heart, in what it desires and values, is a small part of becoming like God. Christ was never amazed by by the external qualities of a person but rather by their faith and their godliness. It is good and fitting that God, who gives us the desires of our hearts, may bless us with a heart that can more rightly desire.

The Road Home

The parable of the Prodigal Son, also known as the parable of the Two Sons or the parable of the Father, tells the story of two sons who make different choices. One son asks for his inheritance now and leaves the house of his Father to squander his inheritance in a "distant country." After he has exhausted his wealth, he is reduced to poverty and so returns home whereupon his Father runs out to embrace him.

This parable is often given as an example of how anyone, who has lived apart from God or fallen away, can turn back, repent and be welcomed back by God in a loving embrace. It is a good message, but there is so much more here. The Church Fathers interpreted "distant country" to be symbolic of man's condition after the Fall, which distanced us from the presence of God. And the prodigal son represents all of us who in this distant country decide to journey back home, back towards the Father.

I notice that the repentance, the turning back to God, is not immediately rewarded. In a world without airplanes or automobiles, it takes a long time to travel to a distant country. The son's journey away from God may have been faster because when he departed he could afford camels to carry him. But on his journey back, he is destitute and therefore must journey on foot. The journey home, to Israel, likely requires the crossing of deserts, sleepless nights with a hungry stomach, and the physical pains that accompany such a journey like blisters, sunburns and soreness.

This journey of the son is analogous to the journey of Israel itself through the desert after they had thrown off the slavery of Egypt and set off towards the promised land. The Israelites faced many hardships, but God traveled with them. Not only did the Israelites travel toward God but they also traveled with God and God provided for them, most notably in the form of manna. Manna is the bread that God gave his children to sustain them in their travel to the Promised Land. Likewise, God sustains us on our journey home through the desert with the new manna - the body of Christ (the Eucharist), so that we travel towards God with God.