There is a saying that goes something like, "One day, you'll only be a memory for some people. Be a good one." But we should be more than just good memories. We should actually do the good God has set us to do. So what is our part to play in all of this? What is the good God has set us to do?
In the new world of internet revivalism, where the cultural mandate is anything from influencing the town council in order close bars on Sunday to painting pretty pictures because your art is going to change the world, I thought it might be helpful to actually look at the cultural mandate. "Why?" you might ask. Because it isn't what you think it is. In fact, it's actually the opposite emphasis of what many consider the cultural mandate.
Many people think that the cultural mandate, as they call it, is the building up of material culture through dominion in the areas of hierarchical structures in empires, the arts, entertainment, the ritualistic expressions that dominate a society.
The irony is that the people in Genesis who are doing all of the art, architecture, and cultural influence through those types of externals (craftsmanship, music, physical infrastructure, etc.) are the bad guys. They're in the line of Cain, which in Genesis 4, is framed with an inclusio that presents these people as the murderers, the destroyers, those who are the seed of the serpent and have wandered far afield from God's true cultural mandate. They've emphasized this development of material culture, as Genesis implies, because they believe they are doing good by pursuing the preservation of society through these things.
But this isn't the cultural mandate that God gave to His images in Genesis 1. Instead, the Hebrew text reads as follows:
"Then God said, "Let Us make man as our image, according to our likeness; and he will rule over the fish of the sea, over the bird of the sky, over the domesticated animals, over the earth, and over all the scurrying animals which scurry upon the land. So God created the man as his image, as the image of God, He created him, male and female He created them. Then God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill up the earth, take dominion, and rule over the fish of the sea, over the bird of the sky, and over every living thing that scurries upon the earth."
So the image of God is linked to the mandate but what is the mandate? To build magnificent buildings, sculpt beautiful statues, and obtain the mandate through the influence of material culture?
Let's take a look at the actual command because it's often read as though it is a series of multiple commands where I would suggest that it is actually a single command.
This is easier to see when we go backward, so let's do that. "Rule over the fish of the sea, the bird of the sky, and the animals that scurry upon the land." How does the image rule over it? By fulfilling the imperative that comes before it. By subduing the land. What is the means the image is to take to subdue it? By fulfilling the imperative that precedes it as well. By filling up the land. How does the image fill up the land? By fulfilling the imperative that precedes it. By multiplying. How does the image multiply? By fulfilling the imperative that precedes it. By being fruitful.
Hence, the singular command is, "Be fruitful in order to multiply. Multiply in order to fill up the land. Fill up the land as the means to subdue it. Subdue it in order to rule over it."
In other words, the means the image is to take to subdue and rule over the earth is to have children, to multiply God's image upon the earth through childbirth. Not painting pretty pictures. Not building fortresses. Not craftmanship and weaponry and ingenuity and innovation. Not in commanding great armies and building empires. But by having children.
Children are the influence we are to leave upon the world. When you die, your memory will fade, your material accomplishments may or may not be remembered, but it does not matter, as that was not your task to begin with. How do we rule the world? Not by might. Not by prestige. Not by impressing the world through empires. Rather, by having godly children, images of God, multiply in the world, filling it up.
Every invention will be replaced by another. Every city will be buried in the dust. Every attempt at preserving life will fail. All die. There is nothing we can do about that. That is an accomplishment only one can achieve, and has achieved, for us. Our role is not to eternally preserve our children as it was not our parents' role to eternally preserve us. Our role is to have and raise godly offspring so that Christ will eternally preserve them.
Empires will not save them. They will not save the world. It is not how we take over it. My encouragement is to invest in your family, not as a means, but as THE means through which God will fill up the world to come.
The reason why the destroyers focus on preservation through material culture is because they are still under the lie of the devil that they are God, that they can do what only God can do, which is to not only to decide whether they will have children (something God just commanded them to do), but also to use their divine powers to preserve them. They bring only death who play God. But they who are the image of God, who subjugate their lust to rule as God rules, and instead, submit to God's rule, will bring forth God's dominion over the earth by multiplying godly children. Their role is one of participation, not in ultimate preservation, but in creation. It is not through aggression, political or physical or cultural, that the meek shall inherit the earth but through the humble means God has laid out for them. One day, neither you nor your children will be remembered but you and your children will be preserved and brought back into not only memory but life, not through your work but through His and His Son's. We who have this hope pursue His means of dominion and not that of Cain's world, and so we seek to obey the biblical mandate and though our lives are temporary here, and though they look as though they are unaccomplished, we present our bodies as living sacrifices to God and gladly receive children in whatever number He chooses. And though we and our children may be lost for a moment, we look for the world to come, where every child in Christ is restored and every tear of loss wiped away. "And they will rule upon the earth" (Rev 5:10).
No comments:
Post a Comment