Relationships...In the Beginning - Ep. 136
In the beginning, God was good. He created us for intimacy, co-dominion, and co-stewardship of His creation. Male-female relationships and marriage may have gotten distorted after the Fall, but in the beginning, it was not so. Listen in to hear what Genesis 1-3 has to say about God Himself; God’s original design for humanity; and God’s plan for salvation following the consequences of sin. You might be surprised to learn what’s actually in the creation narratives…and what’s not. If you’ve learned something new here and are enjoying this series on “Marriage, Mutuality, and Gender Roles,” please leave a rating & review! Podcasting by: Kensi Duszynski, MA, LMFT, CPC Editing by: Evan Duszynski, MA Music by: John Tibbs FULL TRANSCRIPT: Welcome back to the Brave Marriage Podcast! Thank you so much for your earnest desire to grow as individuals, do marriage with intention, and live a mutually empowered, purposeful life in Christ. I’m really glad to be working my way through this series with you and really encouraged by some of the conversations I’ve been having lately. In upcoming weeks, we will get into a few interviews where we’ll dive more deeply into marriage and mutuality, but today, we’re covering marriage in the Creation account and after the Fall. I believe last episode, I said I’d cover Ephesians 5 as well, but that was a little ambitious, I found, and so that episode will drop on Monday, November 29th. And the reason I wanted to include these biblical teachings in a series on marriage, mutuality, and gender roles, is because I think for many of us, we’ve heard these passages so much that we often don’t even hear them for what they actually say, or we hear these verses so piece-milled to prove a point, that we don’t even understand their context. So what I’m hoping is that the questions posed in the last episode encouraged you toward your own reading of Scripture, because today, we’ll be diving into it together with fresh eyes and ears. Let’s start by taking a look at the Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2: Genesis 1:26-31 says: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ [So notice, when God says, ‘let us make man in our image, and after our likeness,’ He’s referring to the relationality between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—whom we know as the Triune God. The word man used there is adam in Hebrew, and the them is ha’adam in Hebrew. It’s plural for humanity or mankind. And Scripture says that God made humans to have dominion over the earth and other created creatures—not dominion over each other.] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [In other words, from the Hebrew, God created mankind, in the image of God he created mankind; male and female he created mankind.] And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” So in the first creation narrative, here in chapter 1, we have the Creator God, who in the Hebrew in chapter one, is referred to as Elohim. Elohim, God, we’re told, created the earth and humanity in His image. And compared to other creation accounts at the time, this God was described quite differently. For one, He was one—3-in-1; secondly, He was a good God; and third, He was a relational God, completely unified within Himself. In chapter 1, we’re zoomed out a bit, seeing how this all-powerful, relational-within-and-between-Himself God created the entire universe. If you can, imagine a movie that begins with a look at earth from outer space. From this aerial vantage point, we see that this God completed His work with the creation of humanity, instructing them to be fruitful, to multiply, to create, to rule, to subdue, and take care of the earth He created. And only after God created male and female—humans in His image—and instructed them to steward the earth for His glory, did this Creator God proclaim His creation “very good.” Here’s how I read that: In contrast to other renderings of the text I’ve heard, woman isn’t the epitome or the icing on the cake of creation, nor is man the “cake” itself, or instructed to bear the weight of the world alone. It wasn’t the man or woman whom God called very good; rather, it was the fullness of His image and His instructions to man and woman to be like Him (relational beings who were to be procreative and co-creative and stewards of His creation) that God called very good. But even more important than that, in my view, is the point of chapter one, the reason why males and females have meaning and purpose and see themselves in this story at all, and it’s this: in contrast to other beliefs about creation and different deities, the Hebrew people believed in a relational, monotheistic, Triune God who wasn’t afraid or threatened to create humanity in His own image, as other gods are portrayed, who valued human life so as not to engage in human sacrifice, as other religions did, and who created both man and woman with free will, whereas other creation narratives cite the creation of woman as a necessary evil, the gods’ punishment to men for their arrogance. Instead, the God of the Bible is loving toward His creation, values human life, gives humans free will, and instructs both men and women to rule, fill, and subdue the earth. This is a story about an all-powerful deity who created man and woman to be in relationship, to bear the fullness of His image, including, in how we act upon the created earth together. Now, as we take a look at the second creation account in Genesis 2:15-25, I want you to imagine we’re zooming in, moving from a distant view of the earth or an aerial view of the earth, to a zoomed-in, up-close, and personal look at the creation of man and woman. So imagine, revisiting the creation of humanity on the sixth day, and this time, we’ll get to know God not just as Creator and relational-within-Himself, but as the personal God of Israel, who is also very much relational-with-us. Starting with verse 15: “The LORD God [that is, Yahweh Elohim] took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ [Why? Because as we saw in chapter 1, God is a relational God and we are created in His image. Verse 19…] “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them [right, here we get this picture of a personal God who meets the man, who brings things to Adam to see what he will name them. It’s like God is delighting to watch Adam create as God had instructed him to.] And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” Meaning, he was creating and ruling and stewarding the earth alone, outside of a relationship with someone like him. But remember, in Genesis 1:26-31, God did not call creation completed until male and female were both created and both co-creating. Now in Hebrew, a ‘helper fit’ or a ‘helper suitable’ is translated as ezer kenegdo, meaning “a strength, an aid, or an ally who is like”, not a help who is subpar or who does a husband’s bidding. I was in a book club a few years ago where a woman, a pastor’s wife, shared that back when her husband was pastoring, they attended a marriage conference for pastors and pastors’ wives, where the speaker likened the husband-wife relationship to the relationship between a CEO and his executive assistant. But if the speaker had taken a look at the Hebrew, rather than just putting his own capitalistic cultural spin on the text, he would have discovered that the word helper, or ezer in Hebrew, is used 21 different times in the Old Testament to describe God’s strength and aid to Israel! So I can hardly imagine that what God had in mind when He said, ‘I will make an ezer who is suitable to, and like Adam,’ is a female secretary for Adam. Furthermore, if God Himself is an ezer, and if the Trinity is 3-in-1, equal in power and glory, this has significant implications for the way men and women are to partner to bear the fullness of His image. Let’s keep going, verse 21… “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman [ishah in Hebrew], because she was taken out of Man [ish in Hebrew].’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his
