Promises and commands all have a context. Just as Jeremiah 29:11 was a promise with a context (not modern-day graduates, but ancient Israelites in exile), so also proverbs have a context, a specific situation at which they are aimed. And instead of seeing proverbs as “general” or “broad” statements, we need to see them for what they truly are: very specific and particular statements. They speak to the minute details of life, which is why they can even sound contradictory at times. 

Pick up a book with Bible-reading advice, and you’ll barely get your nose in before it gets mashed with the ubiquitous yet astonishingly forceful declaration: Proverbs aren’t promises! This piece of conventional wisdom is everywhere. Though it has roots in careful thinking about the genre of wisdom literature, this advice often goes too far and misses the point of the proverbs.
In almost every case, the counsel comes with strong emotion and a reference to Proverbs 22:6. Too many people have seen too many people bludgeon the hurting parents of wayward children through immature and thoughtless reference to this crucial verse about parenting. (“If you had trained your child right, he would not have walked away from the Lord.”) And the pastoral reflex is just right. This is not how to use Scripture.
Train me up. I promise I’ll be good.
But the conclusion—that proverbs are not promises—is not right. In this case, the cure is worse than the disease.
Deep Roots
Consider first, the many respectable authors and pastors who promote the conventional wisdom. They often offer sound counsel, and their sensitivity to abuse is spot on. But when discussing how to read wisdom literature, they move in synchrony:
“A common mistake in biblical interpretation and application is to give a proverbial saying the weight or force of a moral absolute.” (R.C. Sproul)
“The proverbs commend certain paths to family members because they reflect the ways God ordinarily distributes His blessings. But ordinarily does not mean necessarily…Proverbs are not promises.” (Richard Pratt)
“The particular blessings, rewards, and opportunities mentioned in Proverbs are likely to follow if one will choose the wise courses of action outlined in the poetic, figurative language of the book. But nowhere does Proverbs teach automatic success.” (Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart)
“The proverbs are meant to be general principles.” (John Piper)
“The proverbs appear to represent likelihoods rather than absolutes with God’s personal guarantee attached.” (James Dobson)
In other words, all agree: Proverbs are general, but not universal, statements. Proverbs are usually, or ordinarily, true. They speak about what is likely, not about what is guaranteed. But proverbs certainly are not promises. They are not absolutes. We cannot bank on them completely.
Where the Roots Run Aground
But consider some amazing statements from the proverbs. And consider where we end up if we read them as probabilities instead of promises. The conventional wisdom feels right with a verse like Proverbs 22:6, but it doesn’t hold up with much of the rest of the book.
According to Lady Wisdom: “If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you” (Prov 1:23). According to the conventional approach, this means that only most people who turn at wisdom’s reproof will know her words. It cannot be absolutely certain that wisdom is available to those who turn to her. Some who turn will be disappointed when she rejects them anyway.
Or consider chapter 2: “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding…if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God” (Prov 2:1-5). This can’t really mean what it says. What Solomon wants to communicate is that those who receive and treasure, pay attention and incline their hearts, seek wisdom like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure—such people might understand the fear of the Lord. Some—but not all—who seek the wisdom of God, and who seek it in the way God requires, will know God in the end. Hopefully you can be one of the lucky ones.
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Written by Craig A. Carter |
Monday, August 12, 2024
What we see occurring today in Western culture is the late stage of a process in which Christianity is being systematically rejected by the cultural elites. But they have no new religion to replace it. For this reason, they are unable to do anything other than tear down and deconstruct Christianity. The more they succeed, the more a vacuum is created at the heart of a culture where religion ought to exist.

The blasphemy and perversity on display at last week’s opening of the Paris Olympics raises the question: Why did they do that? When given the opportunity to put the best of its culture on display for the world, why did France resort to a tableau of drag queens posing in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper? The Christian faith, as a matter of historical fact, has been integral in creating the culture of France, yet here it was mocked and treated with contempt.
France is at the heart of what historians have called the “West,” that is, a culture centered in Western Europe but now spread around the world, emerging out of the conversion of the pagan peoples of Europe during the Middle Ages. This culture was marked by the separation of church and state, the creation of representative government, the rise of universities and eventually modern science, and by the idea that God has endowed human beings with rights and dignity that the state must recognize to be just.

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The angular sizes and apparent brightnesses of distant galaxies are consistent with the Doppler model and not with the big bang. To be clear, the universe is indeed expanding because the average distance between galaxies increases with time as these galaxies move through space. But apparently, the fabric of space is not expanding. The FLRW metric is wrong. This affects the estimated sizes of distant galaxies because the FLRW metric predicts a magnification effect that is simply not seen. 

We have previously seen that observations of distant galaxies using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are contrary to the predictions of the big bang but match predictions of biblical creation.  Now, new observations of the angular sizes of distant galaxies challenge one of the essential underlying assumptions of the big bang – that the “fabric” of space is expanding as galaxies recede.  Without an expanding space, a big bang is impossible.  These observations support a new creation-based model of cosmology – the Doppler model – which makes specific quantitative predictions about future observations.
Introduction
In the early twentieth century, Albert Einstein discovered the equations that describe how matter “bends” the fabric of space, which causes the phenomenon we call gravity.  These equations allow us to predict how mass moves through space.  By making certain assumptions and approximations, physicists attempted to apply these equations to the entire universe.  In the 1920s, four physicists independently realized that Einstein’s equations imply that the entire universe could be expanding or contracting, like the surface of a balloon as it grows or shrinks in size.  The mathematical structure of space is called a metric.  And the particular metric that describes an expanding or collapsing universe (under the aforementioned assumptions and approximations) is named after these four physicists: the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Walker-Robertson metric (FLRW metric).
In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble published a new discovery he had made which we now call the Hubble law.  Hubble had been measuring the distances to galaxies along with their velocities by measuring the spectral shift of their light.  He found that almost all galaxies are moving away from us; their light had been shifted to longer wavelengths.  The shift of light to longer wavelengths we call redshift.  Amazingly, Hubble found that there was a relationship between a galaxy’s distance from us and its redshift.  The farther a galaxy is, the larger its redshift.  This is the Hubble law.  It basically means that farther galaxies are moving away from us faster than nearby galaxies.  Hubble interpreted the redshifts as being due to the Doppler effect.  The faster a galaxy is moving away from us, the more its light is stretched to longer wavelengths.
One of the physicists who had discovered the FLRW metric, Lemaitre, realized that the Hubble law could be explained if the fabric of space is expanding (just as the FLRW metric allows) rather than being caused by a Doppler shift.  Consider points on a balloon.  As the balloon expands, points that are nearby slowly move away from each other; but points that are already far away from each other move apart much faster.  If galaxies are like points on the surface of a balloon, then an expanding universe would naturally produce a Hubble law.  Most astronomers came to accept the expansion of space as the explanation for the Hubble law and as confirmation that the FLRW metric was correct.
In 1931, Lemaitre speculated that if the universe is expanding like a balloon, then perhaps that balloon started from a size of zero.  This was the first version of what would later be called the big bang.  The big bang assumes that space is expanding according to the FLRW metric and that it started from a size of zero.  Most creation astronomers have accepted the FLRW metric as the correct explanation for the Hubble law but reject the notion that the universe started from a size of zero.  An expanding space does not require or imply that space started with no size at all.  It just means that space was smaller in the past.  How much smaller depends on how old the universe is.
Expanding Space vs Doppler Effect
An expanding space according to the FLRW metric is a fundamentally different explanation for the Hubble law than Edwin Hubble’s original interpretation.  Hubble interpreted the redshifts of galaxies as being due to the Doppler effect as galaxies move through space.  We are all familiar with the Doppler effect in sound waves.  When a car is approaching us, its pitch is higher than when the car is moving away.  Light also does this, although the effect is harder to detect partly because light is so much faster than sound.  But when an object is moving through space away from us, the light waves are stretched to longer wavelengths, and we detect a redshift.
On the other hand, the same effect could be achieved by galaxies that are essentially stationary in a space that expands like a balloon.  Dots painted on a balloon do not move relative to the balloon’s surface.  But these dots will all move away from each other as the balloon expands.  If galaxies are more-or-less stationary in an expanding space, then they will move away from each other.  This also causes a redshift of their light because the light gets stretched to longer wavelengths as it travels through space that is being stretched.  Light from the most distant galaxies has been traveling longer through expanding space and is thus more redshifted than light from nearby galaxies.  So, the expanding space of the FLRW metric naturally results in a Hubble law.
These are two fundamentally different explanations for the Hubble law.  On the one hand, the galaxies could be basically stationary, but the expansion of space carries them away from each other over time.  This is the FLRW metric and can be thought of as dots painted on an expanding balloon.  Alternatively, the Hubble law could be due to the Doppler effect.  Galaxies move away from each other through non-expanding space such that the farthest ones move the fastest.  Let’s call this the Doppler model.  It can be thought of as pocket billiard balls after a break.  The farthest balls move away the fastest, but the table does not expand or contact.
Nearly all astronomers embrace the latter model because it naturally explains why the most distant galaxies should be the most redshifted.  However, the Doppler model could also explain this from a Christian theistic perspective.  Namely, God may have imparted the most velocity to the farthest galaxies for reasons of stability – it prevents the galaxies from all collapsing into a black hole.
Furthermore, big bang advocates must embrace the FLRW metric because the Doppler shift interpretation does not allow for a big bang.  The big bang requires that all space was contained in a singularity billions of years ago.  But in the Doppler model, space does not expand; thus, there never was such a singularity.  If galaxies are simply moving away from each other through space, then you might initially think that they all came from a common central explosion.  But this cannot be the case because galaxies have tangential (“sideways”) motion in addition to their recessional motion.  That is, running time backward, they would “miss” each other and would not converge to a common center.  Thus, big bang advocates must embrace the FLRW metric and cannot consider the Doppler model without abandoning their own origin story.
You might think that it would be impossible to observationally distinguish the Doppler model from the standard model that assumes the FLRW metric.  After all, both models can account for the redshifts of galaxies (although their explanations differ).  Both can make sense of the Hubble law even though the reasons for the Hubble law differ.  Observationally, the two models are nearly indistinguishable.  However, there are two observational effects that differ between the two models.  And recent data from the JWST now allow us to test which model is correct.
Angular Diameters
From everyday experience, we know that a distant object appears smaller in size than a nearby object whose actual size is the same.  The size of an object as it appears to the eye is called the angular size.  The moon, for example, as seen in Earth’s sky, has an angular diameter of ½ degree.  The sun also has an angular diameter of ½ degree, so it appears about as large as the moon in angle.  In reality, the sun is 400 times larger than the moon.  But since it is also 400 times farther away, its angular size is nearly identical to the moon.  This is what makes solar eclipses possible.  The angular diameter of an object is inversely proportional to its distance.  That is, if I double the distance to a given object, it will look ½ the angular size in each dimension.
This applies to galaxies as well.  Consider two galaxies of identical (actual) size.  If one galaxy is twice as far away as the other, it will appear half the angular diameter.  If space is non-expanding, then this effect works at all distances.  Galaxies will continue to look smaller and smaller as we look to increasing distances.
However, in an expanding FLRW universe, things are more complicated.  As light travels long distances in an expanding universe, this will affect the angular diameter we perceive for any distant object.  It will cause its angular diameter to be larger than it would be in a non-expanding space.  The expanding space of the FLRW metric acts a bit like a magnifying glass, causing distant galaxies to appear larger than they would otherwise.  I will not attempt to go through the mathematical details on why this happens.  These are given in the corresponding technical paper.  But it is a well-accepted and mathematically proven principle that expanding space causes distant objects to appear magnified.
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Rome was not built in a day, and neither was the confessional, Reformed, Protestant church. The faithful men and women of the seventeenth century continued the work of the sixteenth-century Reformers by bringing every doctrine, every practice, and every thought captive to the Word of God.

In our day, many Christians have a view of church history that is a popular, but unfortunate, caricature. They believe the church started in the first century, but then soon fell into apostasy. The true faith was lost until Martin Luther recovered it in the sixteenth century. Then, nothing at all significant happened until the twentieth century, when Billy Graham started hosting his evangelistic crusades. Regrettably, we form caricatures of history on account of our ignorance of history. Too often, our historical awareness is sorely lacking. What’s more, we don’t fully know where we are, because we don’t know where we’ve been. We might be aware of certain historical figures and events, but we are often unacquainted with what our sovereign Lord has been doing in all of history, particularly in those periods that are less familiar to us.
This is the seventeenth year that we at Tabletalk are focusing on a specific century of church history.
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The titles of God are not mere labels; they are revelations of His nature, declarations of His character, and signposts for His authority. Taking God’s titles in vain means taking His name in vain and taking Him in vain. Using them in a way that diminishes their significance, misrepresents His nature, or treats them lightly is a violation of this third most holy command. 

Beyond a Rigid Literalism
There is a kind of rigid literalism when it comes to this command that says, as long as I do not take the name of the Lord God in vain, then I have honored this commandment. So long as I do not say the word God, followed by the word Damn, or insert a curse word after the name of Jesus, then I am all good and honoring the law. But that, my friends, is reductionism at its finest.
As we have seen in the Ten Commandments, a world of application is under the surface. For instance, in the command to honor father and mother, there is a much larger application that applies to all elders and all persons in authority over us. In that command, you dishonor your father and mother when you are combative with your elders at church, or when you refuse to listen to a boss at work, or mouth off at a police officer who pulled you over. You disobey “father and mother” whenever you disregard the authority structures God has sovereignly placed in your life. My point in sharing that is that the application of the fifth commandment is much broader and more comprehensive than a rigid literalistic reading.
Understanding that there is also an expanded application here on the third command. For instance, the Bible is not saying you can disparage God all you want, malign His character, doubt His promises, or eschew His acts of creation and providence, so long as you do not say a curse word with His name. You could use your mouth to utter all sorts of godless atrocities, to speak about the character and work of God in every vile and venomous way you so choose, so long as you do not say the GD word, and you would be golden. That line of thinking is tremendously absurd.
The Meaning of God’s Name
In the Bible, God’s name encompasses more than the letters GO and D. When the Bible speaks about “His name,” it includes all of His attributes, character, and being.
For instance, when the Lord passes by Moses and proclaims His “name” in front of him, He says: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful, and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” The text explicitly says that God passed by Moses, hiding in the cleft of the rock, announcing His name. When God announced His own name, His superlative and perfect character was included as well. His perfect and holy attributes fall under the banner of His name, so if you doubt His love, you doubt His name. If you reject His mercy, you reject His name. If you provoke God to fury, despising His patience, then you do nothing short of taking His name in vain! To malign, doubt, reject, or disagree with His character is to take His name in vain. His name represents all of Him! Therefore, this command says we cannot take any of God in vain. We must not allow vanity into any part of our relationship with God because His name represents all of Him!
This is why when Psalm 8:1 says that His name will be proclaimed in all the earth, it means God Himself will be proclaimed. That is why when Psalm 20:1 says that the name of God will protect you, it means that God Himself will protect you! His name is synonymous with Him! This is why Proverbs 18:10 says that the name of the Lord is a strong tower.
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While many churches are replacing the teaching of the word of God with other “spiritual tools” and “spiritual disciplines,” the knowledge and understanding of the actual word of God is receding to the background in the information base of many Christians. This sad phenomenon has reached “crisis status” in our opinion. However, as far as the Church has wandered, the only antidote is still the word of God, studied in context and applied liberally, which strengthens the spiritual immune system.

Nehemiah is one of my favorite Old Testament books, and while reading it this week, I came across a familiar favorite passage of mine. Though I am familiar with the passage, I was struck anew with its importance. Nehemiah had overseen the rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall after Israel’s return to her land after exile. In this passage they were installing the new gates to the city.
Nehemiah states in Nehemiah 7:1
“The gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed.”
At this point Nehemiah turned over the charge of Jerusalem to his brother and the governor of the castle. Exiles were returning from Babylon and were sorted out according to their genealogies. Anyone who did not appear in the register “were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.” (Nehemiah 7:64b). They had all been in Babylon for many years, which was rife with idols and pagan beliefs. With the core reconstruction completed and the people organized, the hearts of all the people seemed to turn as one to focus on the word of God:
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. (Nehemiah 8:1)
They stood for the reading “from early morning until midday” (Nehemiah 8:3) and listened attentively. (Nehemiah 8:4) The line in the historical narrative that grabbed my attention was in Nehemiah 8:8:
They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
There was a hunger for the word of God and a desire to not only hear it read but understand what it meant. Not only did they want it read aloud but wanted Ezra and the other readers to exegete the text. They wanted to know its meaning. Having returned to the land, they were in the process of reconstructing their faith.
We host a live online evening study group on Tuesday evenings. A few weeks ago, while we were discussing the phenomenon of “deconstructing faith,” I (Don) mentioned that something plaguing the church today is the wild spread of “spiritual A.I.D.S.” among the flock. Dr. Donald Williams, who is part of the teaching team, looked a bit puzzled by my statement. I explained that “Spiritual A.I.D.S.” is a phrase we coined about two decades ago.1 The acronym stands for the “Acquired Ignorance of the Doctrines of Scripture” and it is to us a spiritual equivalent of physical A.I.D.S. which stands for Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome. A compromised immune system leaves the individual largely defenseless in fighting off various illnesses.
As we compared the two, Dr. Williams agreed it was an apt description and thought be might adopt it himself. While many churches are replacing the teaching of the word of God with other “spiritual tools” and “spiritual disciplines,” the knowledge and understanding of the actual word of God is receding to the background in the information base of many Christians. This sad phenomenon has reached “crisis status” in our opinion. However, as far as the Church has wandered, the only antidote is still the word of God, studied in context and applied liberally, which strengthens the spiritual immune system.
We can clearly see the results when Biblical training is lacking, demonstrated in studies like the 2022 State of Theology. 41% of Evangelicals in 2014 agreed that:
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“It to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it. Seeing that Christ went about the world giving the most violent offense to all kinds of people, it would seem absurd to expect that the doctrine of his person can be so presented as to offend nobody.”

Since one collection of essays by the late great Dorothy Sayers is titled The Whimsical Christian, let me begin with a whimsical personal story. A learned and well-read friend had shared a neat Sayers’ quote on a social media post of mine, but without further reference. Now to my way of thinking, not at least mentioning the book or article a quote comes from is an unforgivable sin.
I suspected where it might have come from, but I had to spend the next 10 minutes sniffing around, until I finally found it. So I pulled that volume off my shelves, and this article is a result of all that. But there was another good outcome: in the process I came upon another of my books that also quoted it, and in it was a ‘free coffee’ card!
Moral of the story: do not use ‘free coffee’ cards as bookmarks. But in this case I rebuked my friend for her grave sin of half-hearted referencing, and then I thanked her for the pleasant discovery en-route to finding out the source of the quote. (And to make it even more interesting, moments after I found this card another friend was quoting from the very book I had just found it in.)
So I pulled out the essay in question and reread it: Creed or Chaos? It was a talk she had delivered on May 4, 1940. Hodder & Stoughton released it as a booklet that year. It has appeared in various other forms since then. One of them that I also have is the aforementioned The Whimsical Christian (Macmillan, 1978), which first came out as Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World (Eerdmans, 1969). It contains 18 of her more important writings on theology and Christianity.
While she is quite well known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detection novels, her work as a lay theologian is top-notch and deserves widespread attention. I discuss her a bit more in this article: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2006/05/03/a-review-of-creed-without-chaos-exploring-theology-in-the-writings-of-dorothy-l-sayers-by-laura-simmons/
Here I want to simply offer a number of quotes from her brief essay. The 18-page piece opens with these words:
And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.
-John 16:8-11
It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.
If you think I am exaggerating, ask the army chaplains. Apart from a possible one per cent of intelligent and instructed Christians, there are three kinds of people we have to deal with. There are the frank and open heathen, whose notions of Christianity are a dreadful jumble of rags and tags of Bible anecdote and clotted mythological nonsense. There are the ignorant Christians, who combine a mild gentle-Jesus sentimentality with vaguely humanistic ethics – most of these are Arian heretics. Finally, there are the more or less instructed church-goers, who know all the arguments about divorce and auricular confession and communion in two kinds, but are about as well equipped to do battle on fundamentals against as a boy with a pea-shooter facing a fan-fire of machine guns. Theologically, this country is at present in a state of utter chaos, established in the name of religious toleration, and rapidly degenerating into the flight from reason and the death of hope. We are not happy in this condition, and there are signs of a very great eagerness, especially among the younger people, to find a creed to which they can give wholehearted adherence.
This is the Church’s opportunity, if she chooses to take it. So far as the people’s readiness to listen goes, she has not been in so strong a position for at least two centuries. The rival philosophies of humanism, enlightened self-interest, and mechanical progress have broken down badly; the antagonism of science has proved to be far more apparent than real; and the happy-go-lucky doctrine of laissez-faire is completely discredited. But no good whatever will be done by a retreat into personal piety or by mere exhortation to a recall to prayer.
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The primary interaction was between two boys about the same age. I saw the one who was evangelizing get up off the ground after being pushed down. With tears in his eyes, he came close once again to the kid who had pushed him down and said, “I love you and just want you to know Jesus.” With that, the kid who had pushed him down said, get out of my face, and then swung a wide punch and hit him squarely on the cheekbone, which caused the kid to stay down for a while as his friends gathered around him to make sure he was alright. Seeing this, I was torn. 

Last night, I woke up thinking about something I had witnessed long ago that had disturbed my young faith. The years have stolen most of the details of that night from my memory, but the impactful aspect of the event still lingers. It was one of those moments when the simplicity of youth is confronted with the complexities of reality.
Here is what I remember about the night. It was the late 1980s. My parents, a good friend, and I had traveled to another small town in western Kansas, and we were at a county fair. It was one of those nights when the warm air feels good on your skin. My friend and I had gone off alone to do what 15-year-old guys do—look for cute girls. I can still see the short brownish buffalo grass that carpeted the fairgrounds. It was almost dry enough to crunch under your feet when you walked. That detail probably remains with me because I would soon see a kid about my age lying in it after he was knocked to the ground.
The incident I am about to describe might seem trivial compared to the more shocking scenes we see on social media today, but it left a lasting impression on me. To help understand, you will need to recall what it was like to be young if you are not currently living it. Remember the time when everything was bright and new. Think back to when your primary mode of transportation was a bicycle, and romance was an exciting new prospect you did not fully understand. Other than schoolwork, nothing yet had begun to lose its sheen. During this time of life, we feel everything emotionally, and it does not take much for something to be a learning experience.
My faith had seen few challenges and, though real, was simplistic. I still held the idea that just about anything considered Christian was unequivocally good, and anything opposed to it was, without mixture, bad. It was this freshness of youth and simple faith that accompanied me as I walked with my friend to the outskirts of the fair, where we saw a commotion. There were about five kids our age, a couple of girls and three boys, surrounded by about six or seven other guys. The smaller group had been sharing their faith with the larger one, and when we walked within distance to see what was going on, some of the guys in the larger group started to grow hostile.
The primary interaction was between two boys about the same age.
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Only God can tell you who you really are. It is difficult to ascertain what it means to be human. But our identity and function are tied to our being created in God’s image, as male and female. God made us finite, bound by space and time to live in community and care for creation. To lose this essential truth is to lose ourselves.

What does it mean to be human? The answers to this question are many and varied. To the robot on your computer, identifying and clicking pictures of traffic lights proves that you’re human. For others, to be human is to be wise—we are homo sapiens. What it means to be human is an age-old and puzzling question. Yet traditional African cultures affirm the Genesis story that God created mankind from the ground as male and female.
This widespread belief tells us at least five things about what it means to be human. First, we are creatures made in God’s image. Second, we’re finite, having limits and bounds. Third, to be human means to be male or female. Fourth, God created humans for community. Finally, we both depend on and have a duty towards the rest of creation. This article will briefly expound on why these five points are essential for our identity as human beings.
God Created Humans in His Image
First, to be human is to be created by God (Genesis 1:26-27). We are not accidents, but creatures made and known by supreme wisdom. We all are products of divine intentionality and owe our existence and identity to God. To be truly human is to live as God’s creatures—made by him and for his purposes.
Not only are we made, but unlike other creatures, we are created in God’s image and likeness. In ancient cultures, images of wood and stone were believed to mediate the presence of the gods. Likewise, people in places like Mesopotamia and Egypt saw kings and priests as the likeness of the gods. But the Bible teaches that all human beings are made in the image of God, a concept that connotes relational (and representational) existence.
To be human is to have the potential to consciously relate with God as his children (Genesis 5:3), thereby being like Jesus, God’s image as Son (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:2-3). And only as image bearers can we have universal ‘human’ rights.
God Made Us Male and Female
Not only are we created in God’s image, but also, we are made male and female. As the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament insists, “Only in the polarity of man and woman are human beings made in the image of God.” That is, the complementary male-female qualities properly reflect the image and likeliness of God, and as such, male-female sexuality is fundamental to personhood.
To be human is to be male or female with nothing in between.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, August 11, 2024
In the modern west the sort of thick community, that which would allow us to witness each others’ Christians lives lived up close, is often unattractive to us. It requires us to give up some of our rights for the benefits of others. It requires us to privilege particular individuals (rather than a vague ‘everyone’ which is much easier but not what Jesus demands of us) over ourselves. 

In the last post on the causes of the discipleship crisis, I explored why Sundays are shallow. The gathered worship of the church is supposed to be the pattern of life for the church scattered and for the life of the world. However, it’s not supposed to be the training pitch of that culture.
Because our communities have narrowed and atrophied our opportunities to encounter and catch what the life of faith and faith formation look like have narrowed to just an hour and a half on a Sunday morning. If you’ll forgive the machinespeak: it’s unsurprising that if you reduce the inputs, the output lowers too. Except that isn’t how it works, but it is how it looks.
There was day, now long past, when we would have all been involved in webs of community within our localities, reinforced through many different associations, of which the church would have been the keystone. For an array of reasons those days are long gone; and while we can lament, they won’t naturally arise again in our lifetimes.
What does that mean that we’ve lost? Previously you would have seen people live their Christian lives in front of you, their foibles and sin visible as you all looked to Christ to redeem you. Their patterns and rhythms of life would have been open to you. The opportunities to express your frustrations and challenges, as well as to see how Christ applies to all of life, would have been myriad.
This is probably a little rose-tinted. I’m sure plenty of ordinary Christians didn’t muse about the faith down the coal mine or bring Christ into everything that they did. However, they would have prayed together and sung together. Those sorts of communal habits are forming to our hearts and our households.
I don’t think we can simply recover those patterns—not in our lifetimes anyway, though working for the long haul two generations hence would be worth a lot—
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