As many of you know, my personal studies over the last couple months have revolved around the theme of who God made me to be. I'm just starting to scratch the surface, but I wanted to share the first fruits of the study. I began with Genesis 2 & 3, the creation story, hoping to gain some insight as to God's intention for creating us.
This may take a few days to get through, because I want to keep it at a readable length. So the big questions of why God created us, as well as the insights into how we discern who He specifically made you and me to be will be coming.
But without further ado... part one (four? I’ve talked about this before) of who God made us to be...
God created us in His image... now this goes deeper and deeper the more you study it, but just a some basic questions lead us to livable answers. What is God's image? Why did He decide that we should be the ones created in His image, and not, say, cats and dogs? And how can a person reflect God's image, or likeness?
Some basic answers - My image is how I present myself to the world I live in. My face, my hair, the clothes I wear, how kempt or unkempt I keep my toenails. Now it is very possible that God created us in His physical image, but we have no way of knowing that, and I don't believe God puts things on the table for us to know that we can't know. And He's very up- front that if we see him physically, we're done. So it goes back to how He presents Himself to the world - namely, loving, just, forgiving and all the other characteristics we know about God. So I think we are created with the capabilities to reflect those characteristics about God. We can be loving, forgiving, fight for justice and so on. I notice that dogs and cats can also do things like love and forgive, albeit in more basic forms. But humans are capable of all sorts of deep emotions and reactions and choices that it doesn't appear other life forms are capable of. So He uniquely gifted us with the ability to be like Him.
God created everything and then put us in the middle of it... God gave us a role in the world He created... the story He is telling. He allows us to partner with His other creations to continue to create and innovate. We can use what He created to sculpt the world. God says rule, work, subdue, care for, nurture the land, the sea & the air. We, of course, get to choose whether we use that for good or evil. But I believe that was one of the reasons He created us was to partner with us in shaping the world to reflect Him. So God plants a garden and puts us in the middle of it. He calls the things He makes "useful" and "beautiful". More on this tomorrow...
God created us to be fruitful, to increase in number, fill the earth... God wants us to produce more of us. He gives us the, ahem, tools to fill the earth. He doesn't just send in more people - we have the pleasure of raising, nurturing and sculpting more people to do the things God created us to do.
There's so much more, but that's enough for one day... tomorrow I want to talk about living by God's law, being creative, not being alone, and being naked & feeling no shame... so for now, I'd love to hear the reasons you believe God made us, and any insights you have on how we figure out who God made us to be... so go crazy with the comments.
Let's work through four more points in Genesis 2 & 3 about what God created us to do. I believe these unlock truths that point to a larger question - how we determine who God made you and me to be specifically and what we do with that. We're nowhere near the end, so just keep tracking with me if you would. I'm a verbal processor, so it's helpful to work through all this out loud.
God created us to live by God's law... God knows the best way to live. It's a reflection of who He is and how He made the universe to be. These laws point to deeper truths about God - God says be generous, be loving... He lays out 10 commandments for His people and says if you let these sink into your life, you will live life the way it is intended to be lived. Scripture like Galatians 5 sheds more light on these laws and throughout the Bible, God lays out the best way to live. He intends for us to do it His way - not because He says so, but because His way is the way to the abundant life. Life to the full. All I can figure out is that since God created us, He knows how to best care for us. Like the creator of a lithium battery knows the best ways to maximize the life of that battery - keep it charged at a certain percentage, store it in a specific place, charge it on a prescribed timeline.
God created us to be creative... God parades all of the animals and allows Adam to name them. Adam gets to name God's creation! God creates an entire planet full of stuff and gives us all sorts of emotions and desires and intuitions about how to be creative with what He provided. Can we take this a step further? In what areas are we created to be creative? Romantic relationships, recipes, problem-solving, art, science and technology, all of the Trivial Pursuit categories are just a few that roll off my tongue.
God created us and said we shouldn't be alone... God watched Adam try to hash it out by himself and said that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. So He brings Eve into the picture and Adam says "now I'm complete!" People joke that this is a good thing or else men would always wear tacky clothes. And I'll go ahead and affirm that, but it goes deeper than that, right? Why does He believe this to be true? There must be something about sharing this life with someone else that is important. It is true that God should be all that we need, but God affirms our desires to walk with another person (in fact He created that desire), to celebrate and mourn with, to rely on and care for. To enjoy. So how does this fit into the who God made me to be questions? We'll come back to that, I promise.
God created us to be naked and feel no shame... Scripture tells us that Adam and Eve's eyes are opened and they realize they are naked and decided this was a bad thing. So we can properly assume, I think, that they were always naked and this was a good thing. What's up with that? Some scholars and many rabbis before them believed that while this was physically true, it was also emotionally true. In my relationships, I am fairly open about who I am, what I've been through, but the real gritty stuff - that only gets shared with my closest friends, and even then there is some stuff that I don't share. So it gets buried and eats away internally, till I have no choice but to put it on the table. I'm not necessarily advocating that we should go around sharing all of our deepest darkest with everyone we meet... but I am saying that in God's original creation this was a safe thing to do. There was nothing to be ashamed of. If we all walked around naked, most (if not all) people would say that's a bad thing. But we were created to be completely open with at least the mate in our life, to be so in tune with each other and so okay with each other, that being naked was not shameful. I believe this is still true in marriage today, and I look forward to the experience of being that comfortable and safe and trusting with someone else. And I believe it is an integral part of who God created us to be. To love each other so intensely that we can be stark naked emotionally and never fear judgment or shame.
So where does all of that leave us? After I was done with part one of my study, I didn't feel all that closer to the truth I was looking for. The truth I could live from. I haven't yet found that truth, but I marched on in the Word. The next place I was spurred to go to was the word "called". As in, "In Jesus, you were called to be this..." and I started finding more and more clues. So tomorrow, we'll march into that territory. I do value your feedback. Am I way off? Am I striking chords? Am I on the right track or missing a huge chunk of scripture? So feel free to leave comments, anonymous or not.
Till tomorrow, then... be blessed... be loved...
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