One reason runaway consumerism (ever-increasing pursuit of acquiring better stuff) and binging on entertainment isn’t good: We were created as royalty, as kings and queens in the image of God, tasked with subduing the earth, ordering, flourishing, multiplying, creating, playing, spreading, loving, learning. Consumerism distracts us from what we were made for.

“No one ever spoke the way this man does.” (John 7:46)

Scot McKnight wants us to abandon strong authority/submission language:

“Those who have a proper relationship to the Bible never need to speak of the Bible as their authority nor do they speak of their submission to the Bible. They are so in tune with God, so in love with him, that the word ‘authority’ is swallowed up in loving God. Even more, the word ‘submission’ is engulfed in the disposition of listening to God speak through the Bible and in the practice of doing what God calls us to do.”

Blue Parakeet, p. 93

But here are eight reasons to optimistically embrace strong word-categories of authority, submission, commandments, and obedience as sweet, not bitter:

1. The apostle Paul uses these word-categories for marriage, church, employment, and parenting:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands… The church submits to Christ… Children, obey your parents in the Lord… Obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” (Ephesians 5-6)

2. Paul uses these word-categories for relating to rulers and authorities:

“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work.” (Titus 3:1)

3. Paul encourages preacher-elders to exhort and rebuke with all authority:

“Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2:15)

4. Hebrews uses the word-categories for relating to leaders:

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” (Hebrews 13:7)

5. Jesus himself embraced them.

“Jesus himself emphasizes in the Gospel of John that he was sent to do the Father’s will, that he received a command as to what he should do (John 12:49-50), and that he always obeyed his Father. Naturally, he delighted in obeying the Father (John 15:10-11), but such obedience was also demanded (John 14:31).” (Thomas R. Schreiner, http://cbmw.org/uncategorized/a-review-of-scot-mcknights-the-blue-parakeet-part-iii/)

6. Jesus does not dichotomize love and the language of obedience.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments… Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:15, 21)

7. Jesus was humble in embracing obedience:

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8)

8. His commands are not burdensome.

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:2-3)

And that is the real issue. The world sees the obedience of commands and submission to authority as fundamentally burdensome. If God is not good, then it is hard to see authority and submission and obedience as anything but demeaning, exploitative, unloving, miserable, non-genuine, and un-relational.

But if God is good, then we have every reason to embrace him as our authority and submit to all the authorities he has put in our lives. To obey them with sincerity and joy. We can reclaim and redeem the strong word-categories of authority, submission, commandments, and obedience. We’re not slaves to cynicism. We are servants of Christ who loves us.

If you die to the hope that anything has meaning or purpose or value or duty or morally significant essence, then you can resurrect as a liberated person to manufacture your own meaning and purpose and value, free of outside constraints or definition or involuntary identity.

Secularism’s resurrection story requires the death of Christianity.

Less multi-tasking. More single-tasking.

Sustained, concentrated work.

Being young in the era of explosive technological innovation and social upheaval is exciting.

1. We admire faith, hope, and love in children before they’ve even developed a critical discernment between good parenting and bad parenting. They seem like virtues to be cultivated and protected.

2. Discernment has a place in the maturity of faith, hope, and love: love “rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

3. It is impossible to be neutral with these virtues. We seem either eager to have them or eager to avoid them.

4. Because of #3, we must be resolute in choosing, determining, intending, and resolving to have faith, hope, and love. Or else we default to a *disposition* of cynicism, suspicion, and lovelessness.

5. Resolve isn’t enough to change our deepest desires. We need God to recreate and shepherd our hearts. “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:25)

A cynical definition of freedom: Maximizing one’s individual self-expression, not having any guilt or shame or disappointment, having the total ability to control one’s destiny, and having total prerogative to define one’s identity and the meaning of one’s own life.

An optimistic definition of freedom: Doing what we were designed to do, and being what we were meant to be.

This is optimistic because it assumes that we do, in fact, have a purpose and a meaning.

Freedom in a purposeless or meaningless world is ultimately… meaningless. But if God has a meaning and a purpose for our lives, then freedom means living that out.

If we have no greater purpose, then freedom requires manipulating the outside world (including people) to conform to our inner desires. But if God is real, true freedom is conforming our inner desires to his reality. It’s more about our own character development and having a relationship with God.

The pessimistic view of freedom (maximizing self-expression, defining one’s own identity and meaning) assumes there is nothing greater than ourselves. It means the self is one’s last hope.

One has to trust that they have the ability within themselves to manufacture a durable and satisfying meaning and purpose. It’s like saying, “I’m all I have left. I am the light at the end of the tunnel.”

This view of freedom is initially exciting, but in the end is despair. The self is too enslaved, too dependent, too needy, too desirous, and too defined by involuntary nature to manufacture meaning and purpose. This is especially true for the naturalist (who has reduced reality to mere physical nature).

If freedom means defining our own morality and cutting off what that causes pain, then it means the death of love.

Love isn’t morally indifferent: If we don’t love people we *ought* to feel guilt and shame. And when we do love people we should feel satisfied and fulfilled. When we don’t “mourn with those who mourn”, or “rejoice with those who rejoice” — when we are indifferent — we should ask God to change the way we feel. When we fulfill the obligation of love we flourish.

I remember asking my atheist friend Richard, “Don’t you have a moral duty to feel a certain way about other people?” And he said, “No.” I was surprised by how cold he had become. That is no more liberating than permanently losing your eyesight or legs. It’s better to see and feel and know pain.

The same things that “bind” you and help you feel pain help you know satisfaction, and meaning, and function… and love.

I love this short-hand definition of being in another’s “image”: functioning as he would if he were embodied.

The Faithlife Study Bible:

“The image of God likely [in the Old Testament] does not refer to any specific ability unique to humanity (intelligence, sentience, emotional capacity, free will, etc.). This interpretation results in an ethical problem, since human beings do not possess these qualities equally. Defining the image as the ability to pray or communicate presents the same problem. Likewise, connecting the image of God to the internal makeup of a human being (nephesh [“soul”]; ruach [“spirit”]) does not resolve this issue, as both terms are used to describe members of the animal kingdom. The image also cannot refer to a visible resemblance between humankind and God. Rather, it refers to our creation as God’s image, His unique representatives on earth. In this respect, members of the angelic host are His representatives in their own sphere of responsibility. People are thus God’s agents, functioning as He would if He were embodied. Jesus is the ultimate image of God (Heb 1:3).” (Barry, J. D., Grigoni, M. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Mangum, D., & Whitehead, M. M. (2012). Faithlife Study Bible (Ge 1:27). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.)

I have some quibbles with that FSB paragraph. Capacities and internal makeup are not relevant to functional responsibilities. God made humans suitable to the task of representing him. But the point is still taken: being in the image of God primarily refers to being his embodied representatives. This accounts for:

• Genesis 1:26–27 — Where the image is immediately associated with having representative dominion over creation.
• Genesis 5:1–3 — Where Adam fathers Seth “in his own likeness, after his image…” Seth was, in a manner of speaking, an embodiment of his own father.
• Genesis 9:6 — Where the image again is immediately associated with representative authority to execute capital punishment, as well as the human life and dignity of the victim killed.

One can speak of image as referring to personhood, faculties, and capacities, and even physicality (particularly with 5:1-3). But it can’t simplistically be about physicality, or merely about personhood or capacities. To “embody” another is the big idea.

Jesus is the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” (Colossians 1:15).

May 22, 2018

1. Being more conformed to the image of God and Christ is a spiritual transformation that even happens as our bodies “waste away” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
2. There may be other types of creatures that are more in the image of God (defined here as capacity) than we are.
3. There may be other types of creatures made in the image of God (over other realms) that look nothing like us.
4. “Image” in Genesis 1 sounds more like a meaningful duty than a superficial likeness — to reflect his rule over the rest of creation.

January 29, 2020

Would you be upset if God made a species of creatures that was superior to you? And that your “imaging” responsibilities were narrow relative to another species who had a broader domain of “imaging”? I would not. I am not equal to God. I am not of the same species as God. God can do as he pleases.

If (and that’s a big “if”!) we found out that dolphins were sentient, that wouldn’t bother me or threaten my theology.

Why *must* humans be the only kind of sentient, relational, emotional, worshipping being in reality?

You do realize, don’t you, that God is capable of creating creatures in his image that look nothing like you? And that he is capable of creating sentient, relational, emotional, worshipping beings that aren’t humans?

Public goods: a refuge and peaceful meeting place for enjoying humanity/creation with others we deeply disagree with:

• Music
• Art
• Technology
• Humor, memes
• Nature / outdoors (this weekend, sledding at the local park)
• Animals
• Food, meals
• Sports

A God-given salve.