"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 (WEB)
One of the few verses in the Bible that I can quote without looking, without mistakes. Though I'd be hardpressed to quote the chapter and verse, I'd get the book at least right, because John was known, among all the disciples and apostles, as the "Beloved".
"Love" is mentioned over seven hundred times in the NIV Bible translation, and is the corner post of probably 99% of the sermons in every church in the world that claims at least a passing fancy to the Christian faith. It is the cornerstone of our creation, our lives, and our salvation. It is, for all intents and purposes, the glue that holds it all together.
Romeo and Juilet, the passionate forbidden love that ended in an eternal embrace. Napoleon and Josephine. Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Examples flood our society, often rising above the 'common' experience, of love......it's not just a warm and gushy feeling anymore. It is the mortar that holds the brickheads called Humans together.
Love makes the world go round.........
Merriam-Webster defines love as strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties or an attraction based on sexual desire, admiration, benevolence, or common interests. It is a noun, coming from the Old English lulu and Latin lubere, meaning to please. Of course, it is also a tennis term, a way of saying one side has no points scored............
"What is the real definition of love?" asks Blade31 in her article, The Real Definition of Love, on the blog Purple Slinky. "Love has many different meanings to all different types of people. There are many stages of love at different ages and different types of love. My definition of love is what I personally think of it."
"Love to me is always caring about the person not wanting to be without them," this 18-year old author continues, "and not being mad or staying mad at the person." Of course, even she recognizes that such purity of love doesn't exist in the world today. People, even in the highest and best of love's expressions fight, argue and hurt each other. But love, in Blade31's opinion, is worth it....the trouble, the baggage, and even the pain because love gives meaning to live and without it "Life would be so boring."
Therein lies the human expression of love; it is what we want it to be which is often not what we dream it should be. Love is never painful, never hurtful, and never judgmental. Love is the koombiya...koombiya type of feeling; always welcomed and never burdensome.
Love doesn't cause someone to seek out its physical expression in the arms of someone else. Love doesn't divide a family because it is the best for the survivors. Love doesn't say things in an email like "It is because of me you have your children", "You're unfit to be a father" or "Don't contact my family because we don't want any contact with bad seed."
Love doesn't say or do such things.
Love isn't a double edged sword in the hands of someone else, slicing you in two and leaving you broken and wounded to bleed out upon the wooden uncaring floor of what once was your life. No, love isn't anything like that.
Love doesn't leave you empty, fearful of the judging eyes of former friends, family, and colleagues. Love isn't supposed to be like that, by any sane person's idea.
But Love often does.
I have been told that I am a 'bad seed' because I won't have contact with my soon-to-be ex's family, and haven't gone out of my way to make a way for my children to have contact with them. Though there has been no phone calls, no letters of interest, or any other attempts on the 'other' side to give assurance that the fears and pain that was caused with the separation and pending divorce would not be carried over into such contact.
Love doesn't cause pain.
The truth is that love has become passive, abusive, and a shadow of its former self.
If love doesn't make you feel good, delight and tantalize you with the newest and strength of its beckoning allure, it isn't love.
If we look, though, to the highest expression of love by a human being....a human that was fully human and fully God.....we see what love truly is and find ourselves with our own limited, blinded, and foolish definitions of love to be sorely missing of the mark.
Christ hung for three hours upon a cross of wood, iron spikes brutally hammered into his hands and feet with a crown of thorns mashed into his head. He did this only after hours of beatings, verbal and physical abuse, and an assortment of horrors that only humanity can be capable of upon itself.
In the most painful form of applied death known at the time, he hung by those iron spikes.....and gave a thief hope while allowing the other the fruit of his hatred.
When he knew that his human life was ending after thirty-six years of living, he saw his mother's pain and gave her solace in the arms of another he loved.
He looked out upon the landscape of the arrayed humanity watching their 'justice' being fulfilled and begged his Father's forgiveness for them......."for they know not what they do..."
That is love. Pure, uncorrupted Love.
It was this highest expression of love that caused Christ to shout out as his final breath was drawn and cry out in anguish, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Rejected by a Holy and Pure Father as he had to have been, taking the stain and death of mankind's sin upon his body.
That is love.
It was that love that kept him upon the path to that cross, even after he asked for 'this cup' to pass away from his lips, but only if it was in the will of the Father who sent him. It was this love that caused him to heal the solider's ear which Peter had sliced off, as they gathered around with irons and chains clinking in the night air. It is this love that caused him the greatest pain.
That is love.
Yet his love for us caused him not to stray from his course and complete the mission that he had undertook three years prior. Death upon the Cross, to be offered up as the blameless Lamb for the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of all mankind.
We are saved by that Love and called to live that Love.
It isn't easy.
I often feel like I am hanging on a cliff, by one single digit of my weakest hand, just the tip of that finger gripping the edge and holding me from the impending drop to certain and painful death. I am tired, sore, and weary of hanging on. Yet, I won't let go. I will not give up that fragile hold upon the life that I have been given.
Unless another was ready to fall..........................
Then I will, to save another.....physically, or spiritually...I will let go of my selfishness and save another.........
All I have left to give in this world; far beyond money, shelter, food, and clothing............
Is my life, in service and in sacrifice for another.
We are all called to serve as Christ served the church; to love our wives with that purest expression of love, to give our lives so that another might live. It may not be a physical death.......it may be a living 'death', of denial of self for another's sake......but it is death all the same.
So our hearts will not be hardened. So our love will represent God's love.
A complete, encompassing, and purest love..........................
Agape love
Divine love.....................................
And within that death that love causes us to experience, we find ourselves alive in His wonder and His grace.................
to save the hearts of those lost in the darkness.
"Plusquam ferrea aut lapidea corda esse oportet, quae non emolliet tam incomparabilis divini amoris suavitas"
(Those hearts must be harder than iron or stone which are not softened by such incomparable sweetness of divine love.) --John Calvin, French theologian
Tuesday, October 28
Monday, October 27
A fellow warrior......designed and equipped by God.
"One cannot disregard the role of Holy Scriptures, Tradition, Culture, and a male God. From birth onwards, they define the role of the female as secondary and inferior, they define the role of the woman as secondary and as supportive of that of her husband or men in general." Renate Volpe, leadership coach, facilitator, author and CEO of the HIRS Women's development consultancy; "What do women want and need?" Business Report article 8/5/2008
Apparently Ms Volpe reads a different Bible than I do, because I don't see where it says in the "Holy Scriptures" influenced by a male God that the female gender is inferior or secondary to the male. Of course, according to Ms. Volpe, boys are allowed to run roughshod and empowered to 'be all they are', while women are taught their role is to take care of the rest of the world......and ".....it is therefore not surprising that, when you ask a woman what she wants, she often has no clue," Volpe concludes.
It is a question that men, being the 'brutes' they are, grunt and mutter under their breath about for the generations that have followed Adam. Even the 'greatest' mind in psychology, Sigmund Freud, threw in the towel. "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What exactly does a woman want?'"
The Feminist movement failed to define the 'needs' of its believer's and caused more damage than it was originally intended to. While triumphing 'equality of the sexes', such a movement further muddied the waters of physical and mental inferiorities and concentrated on a concerted attack upon professional and ethical demands. By maligning boys and their older selves, men, such feminists devalued themselves and the God-ordained strengths. "I am woman, hear me ROAR!" became the battle cry and the superwoman; mother, wife, career woman, and activist; was born. And women began to die.
What does a woman want? is one of those questions that bring perplexed looks to anyone, of either sex, that it is asked to. No one knows what a woman wants, even though the answer is given in the very 'holy scriptures' that Volpe mistakes as a source of inferiority. Such biblical quotes as scripture stating women should not speak up in church, should not hold leadership roles in the biblical community, and should 'submit' to their husbands lead such angry women as Volpe to such claims. They are far from the truth and further away from what God spoke through the writers of the Scriptures. True; culture has created the 'war of the sexes' and with that distortion of biblical creative design of each is giving way to homosexuals, lesbian, gender-confused, and trans-gendered distortions of Godly creation. It has created the 'feminized man' and the 'manly woman'. Gone are the traditional thoughts behind the raising of male and female children to a morph of gender ambiguity. Both sexes are far from the traditional and biblically designed roles they had. And the world is hurting because of it. "Behind every man is a p*****-off woman," as the saying goes. Unfortunately, that is the only thing that society and the feminists got right.
Most pastors won't even go deeper with this topic; simply shrugging their hands in surrender as they try and equate 'helper' as an 'equal and important' partnership. Several have excellent oration of this; women, in no way inferior in the eyes of God, are to willingly submit themselves under another's authority....an equal serving another by allowing them to lead. Some point out that men are to be servant-leaders in the role of Spiritual head of the family; serving the needs of their wives, their children, and their communities first before themselves. Each is a step in the process of reclaiming biblical gender design for both sexes, but neither fully gives to me an adequate answer to the age-old cry of both men and women.................
What do women WANT??!??!!!!!
If we can discover that, we can rebalance the structure of the family from falling over the cliff into universal disaster. If we can find that reasoning, that answers that ancient cry within the bones of all mankind, we can find restoration of marriage...far beyond an 'equal, universal' societal definition. It goes far beyond men reclaiming masculinity and women defining feminity. It lies in rediscovering the God-designed definition of what is a man...and what is a woman.
There the answer lies dormant and in clear view.
I have often said that men were designed to move in chaos and darkness, protecting the beauty and order which is woman. It is the baseline reaction of any man, except those distorted by evil, to react to the 'damsel in distress.' We want to fix, fight for, and gain the victory 'kiss' of the princess in the ivory tower to which we are owed for fighting the evil dragons and overcoming the traps and snares waded through along the way. We make the woman the prize of the fight. We lose the battle as we turn to this woman and receive a right roundhouse to the jaw.
Women, I have said, are the beauty and order of the balanced equation that God designed into His more troublesome creation. They bring nourishment and nurturing to all things and are the source of support, edification, and adulation that all successful and balanced men yearn for. This is represented in the marriages that are successful through the years; no matter the trouble, no matter the trials. It is why Noah sits beside the bedside of his love, ravaged by Altimer's, and gently falls into death's sweet embrace with her as their journey on this life ends (The Notebook).
The brokenness of the balance that God designed into the makeup of man and woman is, as is all sin and corruption that feeds this fallen world, a result of the Fall. But, understanding what that balance is requires that we go back to and examine the reasons why God told Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" and why He told Eve, "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you."
I have stated, if you have followed this blog in the journey I've undertaken, that Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden.....in the chaos and darkness of the creation world. As John Eldredge accurately describes, "Men were born to be wild..." He was created from the dust of the earth, shaped and molded into the human image of God Himself. The Garden was created for Adam's purpose, for him to tend and work to keep the chaos and darkness away. God declared everything 'good' up until Adam. And then God recognized that an imbalance had occurred...which was bad. The first time in the creation account that God says something is other than 'good'.
Women, far from being secondary or inferior, are far more. In the creation of Eve, Scott Engelmann; Spiritual Director of Awakened Hearts Ministries points out that "according to God something more was necessary if a man was going to fulfill all that God had planned for him as God's representative here on the earth." Paul points out what is necessary in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 "But in relationships among the Lord's people, women are not independent of men, and men are not independent of women. For although the first woman came from man, all men have been born from women ever since, and everything comes from God." As in the beginning, as Engelmann points out, "Eve was created for Adam, as Adam was designed to meet Eve's needs." God created an interdependent balance in the creation of mankind, each equipped to fulfill the needs of the other and both with distinct and intertwined identities that desire such balance. Distinctly separate, made to complement and balance each other.
"And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.'" And, since the Fall, both sexes have desired that balance and tension that was created in our design. This is why same-sex relationships of a sexual and physical nature never seem to work, because the 'like me, but different' tension created into our beings is never accurately portrayed in such unions. "It is the woman's 'similar-yet-different nature," Engelmann says, "that makes her the 'suitable helper' or 'companion' for the man."
And it is understanding what a woman was designed to be, beyond the cultural and societal mutterings of human declarations, that will enable even women themselves to understand what they want and need, far beyond the scope of a distorted and crippled feminist movement of equality. It is beyond the realm, in my mind, that women were created as equal partners; although physical and mental capabilities lie distinctly different between both sexes. The differences do not equate to secondary or subservience through domination but rather enhance and delight each balanced marriage as God intended.
Far beyond the distortion and misunderstanding given to Peter's declaration of this unique balance is the truth of his insight. "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers." (1 Peter 3:7 NIV) As most theologians point out, this 'weakness' does not refer to moral stamina, strength of character, or even mental capacity but most likely to the medically proven physical strength. But, even that human truth excites and inflames the passionate rejection of feminists of a Godly design.
It is this misunderstanding and ignorance of this 'feminine design' that hasn't been "taken into consideration and [seriously] honored as [men] daily relate to the women in our lives" that have hampered our relationship with God, because we have amputated part of a balanced Godly design. Women have had to step into the gap created and serve against the purposed design; longing for the balance their souls crave.
In the quest to discover the answer to the question, we have to seriously look at how men relate in an considerate and honoring way to women; especially their wives and how the designed role of women have been distorted by the inactivity of men, the forced role of women to live the man's role, and the mess created because of it.
Why, if women demand equality with the sexes do they spend their time with their friends lamenting the lost 'manly man'?
A warrior should not fight the battle for the world against the fallen and broken design of the Enemy alone, and they aren't equipped to.......women are warriors too and uniquely designed to struggle in the fight with men, not against.
As Engelmann points out, far beyond the point of man being created from the dust of the earth, women were made.......... in God's image, also.
"So God created people in His own image; In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and told them, 'Multiple and fill the earth and subdue it. Be Masters over the fish and the birds and all the animals."' (Genesis 1:27-28)
Both man and woman were created as image-bearers of God; one the warrior of 'creating life in chaos' and the other the warrior of 'relationship', i.e. enhancing life. It is far beyond a biological mandate, being a foundational balance of the empowerment of the creational mandate. Both man and woman are necessary for the subduing and ruling of creation, interrelationally, and yet designed to represent and play an unique role in its equal fulfillment. Both were made to represent God and, as many marriage counselors, programs, and studies show.......it is the godly design of marriage that shows us the balanced image of our God.
Engelmann points out that the word 'helper' isn't what it has been distorted to mean in today's society, that of a 'subjugation of one to another'. Ezar, the Hebrew word for 'helper' is used only six times in the Hebrew Old Testament, referring to God as a 'Mighty Warrior' except in the verse found in Genesis 2:18. God, in those other verses, comes to His people's aid in times of trouble and desperation in a warrior fashion, triumphing their needs.
Even in Ancient Middle Eastern culture, 'helper' didn't mean inferiority but exalted. It referred to a warrior, mighty and powerful, who came to the aid of the desperate with the ability to deliver them from the troubles they faced.
In that context, the woman being a 'helper' to Adam takes on a larger, deeper meaning; a fellow warrior who is uniquely designed and gifted to give "deep and engaging relationship" to Adam, who's greatest enemy was the loneliness that he experienced in the inferiority of animals (who weren't created bearing God's image) and the great superiority of God Himself.
Eve becomes, as Engelmann states, "a suitable relationship with an equal" that Adam desires in his loneliness. "A woman reflects God's heart for relationship," Engelmann continues, "and His hatred for loneliness."
And it is the human distortion of God that is created by the 'male superiority' and 'female inferiority' definition of worth that plagues society today as a generation raised on such sinful distortion comes of age and wonders who they are.....................
It is in this understanding that the complaints of Volpe and others about the scientific and medical differences between the sexes becomes understandable and even logical. A balanced design of a complexity that no human can recreate and only a human can fully enjoy.
What does a woman want?
Far beyond being part of the story of a man, or being treasured as a prize won….. A woman wants to live her heart; "invite and unite others in relationship ---and to enjoy meaning in life through connection with others."
Esteemed by a fellow warrior, a man, who acknowledges the beauty of the equality of their creation and honors the complexity of her feminine design; distinct and uniquely different….but necessary to the balance of life.
This is my take on a study given by Scott Engelmann, Spiritual Director of Awakened Hearts ministries, at the last M3 meeting on October 25th, 2008. The topic was "Understanding Women" and was given at the National City Bank in Troy, Michigan. You can obtain a copy of the talk thru the www.M3ministries.org or www.ahmministries.org.
Apparently Ms Volpe reads a different Bible than I do, because I don't see where it says in the "Holy Scriptures" influenced by a male God that the female gender is inferior or secondary to the male. Of course, according to Ms. Volpe, boys are allowed to run roughshod and empowered to 'be all they are', while women are taught their role is to take care of the rest of the world......and ".....it is therefore not surprising that, when you ask a woman what she wants, she often has no clue," Volpe concludes.
It is a question that men, being the 'brutes' they are, grunt and mutter under their breath about for the generations that have followed Adam. Even the 'greatest' mind in psychology, Sigmund Freud, threw in the towel. "The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What exactly does a woman want?'"
The Feminist movement failed to define the 'needs' of its believer's and caused more damage than it was originally intended to. While triumphing 'equality of the sexes', such a movement further muddied the waters of physical and mental inferiorities and concentrated on a concerted attack upon professional and ethical demands. By maligning boys and their older selves, men, such feminists devalued themselves and the God-ordained strengths. "I am woman, hear me ROAR!" became the battle cry and the superwoman; mother, wife, career woman, and activist; was born. And women began to die.
What does a woman want? is one of those questions that bring perplexed looks to anyone, of either sex, that it is asked to. No one knows what a woman wants, even though the answer is given in the very 'holy scriptures' that Volpe mistakes as a source of inferiority. Such biblical quotes as scripture stating women should not speak up in church, should not hold leadership roles in the biblical community, and should 'submit' to their husbands lead such angry women as Volpe to such claims. They are far from the truth and further away from what God spoke through the writers of the Scriptures. True; culture has created the 'war of the sexes' and with that distortion of biblical creative design of each is giving way to homosexuals, lesbian, gender-confused, and trans-gendered distortions of Godly creation. It has created the 'feminized man' and the 'manly woman'. Gone are the traditional thoughts behind the raising of male and female children to a morph of gender ambiguity. Both sexes are far from the traditional and biblically designed roles they had. And the world is hurting because of it. "Behind every man is a p*****-off woman," as the saying goes. Unfortunately, that is the only thing that society and the feminists got right.
Most pastors won't even go deeper with this topic; simply shrugging their hands in surrender as they try and equate 'helper' as an 'equal and important' partnership. Several have excellent oration of this; women, in no way inferior in the eyes of God, are to willingly submit themselves under another's authority....an equal serving another by allowing them to lead. Some point out that men are to be servant-leaders in the role of Spiritual head of the family; serving the needs of their wives, their children, and their communities first before themselves. Each is a step in the process of reclaiming biblical gender design for both sexes, but neither fully gives to me an adequate answer to the age-old cry of both men and women.................
What do women WANT??!??!!!!!
If we can discover that, we can rebalance the structure of the family from falling over the cliff into universal disaster. If we can find that reasoning, that answers that ancient cry within the bones of all mankind, we can find restoration of marriage...far beyond an 'equal, universal' societal definition. It goes far beyond men reclaiming masculinity and women defining feminity. It lies in rediscovering the God-designed definition of what is a man...and what is a woman.
There the answer lies dormant and in clear view.
I have often said that men were designed to move in chaos and darkness, protecting the beauty and order which is woman. It is the baseline reaction of any man, except those distorted by evil, to react to the 'damsel in distress.' We want to fix, fight for, and gain the victory 'kiss' of the princess in the ivory tower to which we are owed for fighting the evil dragons and overcoming the traps and snares waded through along the way. We make the woman the prize of the fight. We lose the battle as we turn to this woman and receive a right roundhouse to the jaw.
Women, I have said, are the beauty and order of the balanced equation that God designed into His more troublesome creation. They bring nourishment and nurturing to all things and are the source of support, edification, and adulation that all successful and balanced men yearn for. This is represented in the marriages that are successful through the years; no matter the trouble, no matter the trials. It is why Noah sits beside the bedside of his love, ravaged by Altimer's, and gently falls into death's sweet embrace with her as their journey on this life ends (The Notebook).
The brokenness of the balance that God designed into the makeup of man and woman is, as is all sin and corruption that feeds this fallen world, a result of the Fall. But, understanding what that balance is requires that we go back to and examine the reasons why God told Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life" and why He told Eve, "Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you."
I have stated, if you have followed this blog in the journey I've undertaken, that Adam was created outside the Garden of Eden.....in the chaos and darkness of the creation world. As John Eldredge accurately describes, "Men were born to be wild..." He was created from the dust of the earth, shaped and molded into the human image of God Himself. The Garden was created for Adam's purpose, for him to tend and work to keep the chaos and darkness away. God declared everything 'good' up until Adam. And then God recognized that an imbalance had occurred...which was bad. The first time in the creation account that God says something is other than 'good'.
Women, far from being secondary or inferior, are far more. In the creation of Eve, Scott Engelmann; Spiritual Director of Awakened Hearts Ministries points out that "according to God something more was necessary if a man was going to fulfill all that God had planned for him as God's representative here on the earth." Paul points out what is necessary in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 "But in relationships among the Lord's people, women are not independent of men, and men are not independent of women. For although the first woman came from man, all men have been born from women ever since, and everything comes from God." As in the beginning, as Engelmann points out, "Eve was created for Adam, as Adam was designed to meet Eve's needs." God created an interdependent balance in the creation of mankind, each equipped to fulfill the needs of the other and both with distinct and intertwined identities that desire such balance. Distinctly separate, made to complement and balance each other.
"And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.'" And, since the Fall, both sexes have desired that balance and tension that was created in our design. This is why same-sex relationships of a sexual and physical nature never seem to work, because the 'like me, but different' tension created into our beings is never accurately portrayed in such unions. "It is the woman's 'similar-yet-different nature," Engelmann says, "that makes her the 'suitable helper' or 'companion' for the man."
And it is understanding what a woman was designed to be, beyond the cultural and societal mutterings of human declarations, that will enable even women themselves to understand what they want and need, far beyond the scope of a distorted and crippled feminist movement of equality. It is beyond the realm, in my mind, that women were created as equal partners; although physical and mental capabilities lie distinctly different between both sexes. The differences do not equate to secondary or subservience through domination but rather enhance and delight each balanced marriage as God intended.
Far beyond the distortion and misunderstanding given to Peter's declaration of this unique balance is the truth of his insight. "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers." (1 Peter 3:7 NIV) As most theologians point out, this 'weakness' does not refer to moral stamina, strength of character, or even mental capacity but most likely to the medically proven physical strength. But, even that human truth excites and inflames the passionate rejection of feminists of a Godly design.
It is this misunderstanding and ignorance of this 'feminine design' that hasn't been "taken into consideration and [seriously] honored as [men] daily relate to the women in our lives" that have hampered our relationship with God, because we have amputated part of a balanced Godly design. Women have had to step into the gap created and serve against the purposed design; longing for the balance their souls crave.
In the quest to discover the answer to the question, we have to seriously look at how men relate in an considerate and honoring way to women; especially their wives and how the designed role of women have been distorted by the inactivity of men, the forced role of women to live the man's role, and the mess created because of it.
Why, if women demand equality with the sexes do they spend their time with their friends lamenting the lost 'manly man'?
A warrior should not fight the battle for the world against the fallen and broken design of the Enemy alone, and they aren't equipped to.......women are warriors too and uniquely designed to struggle in the fight with men, not against.
As Engelmann points out, far beyond the point of man being created from the dust of the earth, women were made.......... in God's image, also.
"So God created people in His own image; In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and told them, 'Multiple and fill the earth and subdue it. Be Masters over the fish and the birds and all the animals."' (Genesis 1:27-28)
Both man and woman were created as image-bearers of God; one the warrior of 'creating life in chaos' and the other the warrior of 'relationship', i.e. enhancing life. It is far beyond a biological mandate, being a foundational balance of the empowerment of the creational mandate. Both man and woman are necessary for the subduing and ruling of creation, interrelationally, and yet designed to represent and play an unique role in its equal fulfillment. Both were made to represent God and, as many marriage counselors, programs, and studies show.......it is the godly design of marriage that shows us the balanced image of our God.
Engelmann points out that the word 'helper' isn't what it has been distorted to mean in today's society, that of a 'subjugation of one to another'. Ezar, the Hebrew word for 'helper' is used only six times in the Hebrew Old Testament, referring to God as a 'Mighty Warrior' except in the verse found in Genesis 2:18. God, in those other verses, comes to His people's aid in times of trouble and desperation in a warrior fashion, triumphing their needs.
Even in Ancient Middle Eastern culture, 'helper' didn't mean inferiority but exalted. It referred to a warrior, mighty and powerful, who came to the aid of the desperate with the ability to deliver them from the troubles they faced.
In that context, the woman being a 'helper' to Adam takes on a larger, deeper meaning; a fellow warrior who is uniquely designed and gifted to give "deep and engaging relationship" to Adam, who's greatest enemy was the loneliness that he experienced in the inferiority of animals (who weren't created bearing God's image) and the great superiority of God Himself.
Eve becomes, as Engelmann states, "a suitable relationship with an equal" that Adam desires in his loneliness. "A woman reflects God's heart for relationship," Engelmann continues, "and His hatred for loneliness."
And it is the human distortion of God that is created by the 'male superiority' and 'female inferiority' definition of worth that plagues society today as a generation raised on such sinful distortion comes of age and wonders who they are.....................
It is in this understanding that the complaints of Volpe and others about the scientific and medical differences between the sexes becomes understandable and even logical. A balanced design of a complexity that no human can recreate and only a human can fully enjoy.
What does a woman want?
Far beyond being part of the story of a man, or being treasured as a prize won….. A woman wants to live her heart; "invite and unite others in relationship ---and to enjoy meaning in life through connection with others."
Esteemed by a fellow warrior, a man, who acknowledges the beauty of the equality of their creation and honors the complexity of her feminine design; distinct and uniquely different….but necessary to the balance of life.
This is my take on a study given by Scott Engelmann, Spiritual Director of Awakened Hearts ministries, at the last M3 meeting on October 25th, 2008. The topic was "Understanding Women" and was given at the National City Bank in Troy, Michigan. You can obtain a copy of the talk thru the www.M3ministries.org or www.ahmministries.org.
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