Dismantled by Sin

There are lots of things in Scripture -- things made and endorsed by God -- that are no longer valued. Take, for instance, gender. The Bible says, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Gen 1:27) Male and female were not -- never were -- a social construct. They were a divine design. In their distinctiveness we see the need for a "helpmeet" (Gen 2:18), the need for community and for unity and for togetherness and support in our own distinct strengths and weaknesses. In their union we see the image of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:31-32). In their varied roles we see strengths displayed and need shared, a practical "bear one anothers burdens" (Gal 6:2). But we've abused them. We've minimized one gender over another. Sin put male and female at odds (Gen 3:16). Sinful men marginalized women. Sinful desires objectified the sexes. (If you think it is just men objectifying women, you are shortsighted.) And today "gender" is a problem. It is an individual thing determined not by God but by each individual "feeler" based on "how I feel." And in some places in this world you can go to jail for using the "wrong pronoun."

Take, for instance, marriage. Originally intended as the union of the genders, a merging of two equal but complementary beings into a united entity that provides procreation -- a human-sized image of a divine act of creation -- and mutual support, it is now ... well ... mostly undefined. There is no "union." There is no "complementary beings." God has been cut out of God's own program instituted in the Garden of Eden. Why? Because of sin. We abused sex and we abused fidelity. We abused the unity of marriage and we jettisoned the lifelong aspect that the union demands. We drained the ocean of significance of marriage -- not the least of which was the clearest picture of the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church -- and left it high and dry. Today, marriage continues to decline, sexual fidelity is considered a fossil from a bygone era, and marriage hasn't merely lost its savor; it has lost its meaning. It is most popular on the comedy stages where they will ridicule it and those wishing to take part in it or in the LGBTQ+ communities where they have no sense that marrriage means anything at all.

Take, for instance, having children. It wasn't that long ago that the expectation was that you would grow up, get married, have children, and perpetuate the family. They tell me now that the birthrate in America is the lowest it has ever been. We are no longer having children at a "replacement rate" (something like 2.1) (partly obscured, of course, because that "2" was predicated on a couple and parentage is not nearly as much of a case of "2" anymore as it once was). Beyond that, there are actual movements to urge people to be childless. Not merely personal choices, but recommendations for all. Some place childlessness as a morally superior position. Why? Because of sin. Because sex outside of marriage has become the norm. Because self has become the god of this age and having children really cramps their style. There is no small number that argue "Who would want to bring a child into this world?" Sin. For many today, doing the First Commandment -- "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28) -- is a moral evil. Because of sin.

Take, for instance, corporal punishment. From the beginning discipline was a primary function of parenthood. It was "Job One." The goal was to teach your offspring that choices had consequences and to teach them to choose those things that didn't give negative consequences. The Bible calls it love (Prov 13:24; Prov 23:13-14; Heb 12:6). But parents failed to see it as love and opted to make it about themselves. They saw disobedience as a personal affront and sought to hurt the child over it. They saw misbehavior as a slight to their reputation and sought to make their children pay for it. Guided not by love, but by anger, they made the loving discipline ordained by God into child abuse driven by Man. Today, it is evil in most "civilized" societies and illegal in some. And parents who love their children will not abide by what Scripture says is love in the form of discipline.

Take, for instance, patriarchy. Scripture is full of references to God as Father and Jesus as Son, establishing at the end (the New Testament) what was begun at the beginning -- the principle of patriarchy. Paul lays it out clearly. "I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God." (1 Cor 11:3). No question. And, yet, this will not fly today. It won't even fly among Christians. I've heard reliable, Bible-believing Christians tell me that patriarchy is evil. Really? Why is that? I mean, it was established, promoted, and defended by God. Why is it viewed as evil? Simply put, it's because of sin. God established as early as Adam and Eve that the male was the primary one responsible and then He made Eve. It was Adam that God held responsible for that first sin even though it was Eve who was deceived. Since sin came into the world, males have failed to properly meet their God-given responsibilities (e.g., Eph 5:25-30; Eph 6:4; Col 3:19, 21; 1 Peter 3:7). Worse, they've denegrated their responsibilities. Failing to love their wives, die to self, properly raise their children, etc., they've given God's instructions a bad name. Now God is the bad guy because He commands what we consider today to be evil.

In all these examples and more, the admonition from the Lord is "Do this" and we have said "No" so long and so badly that the command has been shifted to the category of "evil" and even believers consider these commands to be sinful. Now we can no longer see as good what God has commanded. Attempting to obey God in these things, you are viewed as an evil person. Doing it the way God commanded seems utterly impossible. And God is blasphemed because of us. You see, if God created and commanded all these things that we have now, in our greater wisdom, determined to be wrong, wrong, wrong, then it is God who has been wrong all this time. It is God who created all this evil and called it good and we were fools for buying any of it. You can see, then, the source of this dichotomy, right? It isn't God. It's His opponent. It is Satan, starting in the Garden -- "Did God really say ..." -- and pushing his agenda from the start to undercut God. He has, by our sinfulness, managed to dismantle much of the good that God intended and that we now spurn ... even while we call ourselves believers.