Today feels like the wettest, coldest day of the year. And I am indoors writing this in front of the heater. The difference in temperature between my living room cum study and my bedroom is something like 5 degrees. Before I go to bed, I have to shoo away the penguins under my covers. But, finally it is cold like it should be in winter which is a strange solace to have nature ticking along.
I've been thinking alot lately on
God and The Union of Man and Woman. Jesus in his ministry describes his relationship to us (the church, the temple, of christ-followers) as one between a bridegroom and a bride. Nowadays, we understand that as, when we are going to get married/in a relationship, we look to God's relationship to the church to get our cues. I don't like that idea at all.
We know everything God created was for his glory. So, everything somehow points to God's glory in someway. Now, think about the church; it was not God's creation. He doesn't really call it that even. What it is, in the OT and the NT, it is a community of christ-followers with certain types of directions and traditions and ways. God always wanted the the heart, and still wants ours heart but not the "how" we do it. In Jesus' time, there was no "church". In fact what was there was the temple - a place to worship God. which in a strange way, Jesus was almost saying wasn't the way in fact. Jesus' ministry is a people ministry, a relationship ministry - a heart ministry.
The union of man and woman, now that is clearly God's creation. Man and woman came together in the beginning, the union, the marriage of two people, the establishment of a family came first before all of the church and its idealogies. So, in fact, the church, the community of christ-followers (I don't like the generic reference of"christian" anymore) should follow the union of man and woman; rather than subscribing to it the other way around.
In Ephesians, Paul talks about marriage as a relationship like that between Christ and the church; how the man is supposed to treat the woman and the woman to treat her man. Churches tell men to love their wive the way Christ loves the church.
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord... the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body... just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her." Eph 5:22-25.
Now, that is all very well meaning, but how is that at all helpful? What does it mean
as Christ also loved the church? I don't think the way "Christ also loved the church" is very clear to us nowadays. It's not very tangible. But if we look at it the question the other way around, asking, "How can I know how God loves me?" I "know" in my head, but how can I feel that way? How do I know what it "feels" like to be loved by God? How can I understand that love? By looking at the way a man is with a woman, the way a bridegroom is with the bride.
There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Yes, four which I do not understand:
The way of an eagle in the air,
The way of a serpent on a rock,
The way of a ship in the midst of the sea,
And
the way of a man with a virgin.
- Proverbs 30:18-19
The whole dynamics of this thing called love is so incredibly wow! I'm not referring to the specific feeling individuals have for each other but the whole dynamics of it. LOVE. What is it? you can't see it, you can't feel it, yet you know it! We know God's for it, he created it, and there's a whole book devoted to the physical manifestation of the way of a man with a virgin in Song of Songs! Awhile back, I spent a week with someone really special to me. One of my first trains of thoughts after was this - is this a mirror of what God's love is like and how God loves us? Is there anybody who understands
the way Christ is with his bride, mankind?
And suddenly, it makes so much sense. If this could be how passionate we can be loved, how passionate must God's love be for us. If this is called "love", then what is marriage but a longtime commitment to will to love. Nobody needs to remind us how hard marriages are set up to be this time and age, divorces at 51% hit rates and all. Divorce, is us backing out of our commitment. At this stage, I can only imagine how incredibly difficult it is to keep at it.
So how can we look at the marriages around us nowadays, how can the body of christ-followers follow
that?" Let us think about how God intended his love to be, walking with him in the garden and remember the union of man and woman as God intended in the Garden before the fall.
We look there where we started from; because we do what we desire to do because it is in our nature to do so. And, if in keeping to Christ principles we desire to do something, its because we were designed to do it. We don't pretend its not there and deny it. When we do what we were created to do, we reflect God's glory. Birds fly cause they were designed that way. An eagle reflects that glory of God when it does the thing that it loves and does best. Fly. When I do something I am designed to do, I feel and manifest the glory of God. We have natural desires that have physical manifestations because we were designed that way and when all of that comes together the way God intended, it powerfully reflects his glory. What more than the first few things he created, the importance given to that particular aspect of creation? It blows my mind to think how the union of man and woman is such a powerful reflection God's love for us. So the question I have tried to get my head around is how and what do those manifestations tell me about God.
I think about how it is between God and me, how God loves me
and my affinity for disobedience. But he keeps loving me back. How incredibly sad and hurt God must be with us when we dissapointment him constantly - we know we will, we can expect we will. If divorce is painful, can you fathom the kind of pain God must put up with? And from so many people he loves!
One more thing about the man and woman as a model of God's love. Man and woman don't 100% understand each other because we were created differently. Spouses can spend a lifetime together and still they won't be in the "headspace" of the other's private thoughts. You can know each other very well, but short of being a man (or woman) we will never understand the other perfectly. Its like how, our little brains, cannot fathom and understand God. no matter how much theory we have massed.
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For the longest time, I had a few private questions with God. Like, how much is my soul worth? how much is anyone's soul worth? I asked myself this when I deciding about what to do. if i went to the field for all my lifetime, gave everything single thing up, all the luxuries in the world and then maybe some more of the needs, if for all that, I win 1 soul, would it be worth it?
For one soul saved, the angels in Heaven woop for joy right? I know that in theory - but I don't know if I really could go the distance without the result. How much it would take for the angels to woop for joy, or for him to love anyone enough that, in theory, all the imaginable hard work and sacrifice would be all worth it for one soul saved. So I asked God, what is a soul worth to you? What is
my soul worth? How much do you love me?
If I can get know that (and I also know of course, its beyond fathomable reach to know that), then maybe knowing how much God loves me the way he would love that one soul, would spurr me to persue that one soul for him. So, I'm still asking "how can I understand how much God loves me?", that I may know how wide and long, how high and deep is the love of Christ. I've been praying about those things and thinking with God about them... and maybe this is a light to lead me in that direction; the union of man and woman as a model of God's love.
Audio: No One Like You by David Crowder Band.
Biblio: Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian.
Cerebrio: It'sall up there...
