Love Began in the Garden: Love Discussion #2

“Where Love Began”
First Presbyterian Youth Group
December 7th, 2008
Director of Youth Ministries Adam R. Quine

And so in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. A few more things were created and when God stepped back to take a look at what he did, God was happy and saw that it was good!

What you just did was recreated or re-told the story of Creation, the beginning of time. For the past few minutes you familiarized yourself with the story as well as you could and then as a group you used resources to make the story come alive.

I encouraged you to think about using your five senses, to put yourself in God’s shoes, to make it silly, serious, funny or dramatic. You for a half hour were in charge of telling how things came to be.

Tell me now, what was it like creating this scenario? How easy or difficult was it for you and your team to make this come alive, to think about how all of it will come together?
What was your favorite part of the story? Why?

Genesis is where love begins and it is for this very reason why we did this exercise. I wanted you guys to get a hands-on experience as to what it would be like to create the world, to create plants and animals and to create God’s beloved, man. As you know, there are some differences in the stories which you retold. (We will not get into this now but we shall on Tuesday night!) I wanted you to use your imagination about how you think it all went down. I wanted you to get your hands dirty (perhaps literally) and see how uniquely created everything is. Above all I wanted you to hear the importance of how God created man.

The Imago Dei
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness…so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.

He formed them from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils and the man became a living being.

Then when talking about the Garden of Eden it says that he put the man in charge of the garden, the man whom he had formed!

Created in God’s image—formed by God—breathed on by God.

Genesis begins with God creating the world and then creating people “in his own image.” Friends, that is you, me and the guy sitting next to you. Yet what does the writer of the story mean by his own image? Does God have 5 fingers and toes? Is God old or young? Is God a he or she? Is God cute? Let me explain it a little better for you.

There is a Hebrew word being used here in regards to image which is tselem, and it has a specific cultural meaning. What we need to realize about the stories we just read, the Creation story, is that it started back in the Middle East. Around this time the ancient Near Eastern cultures believed that kings would rule in the image of a particular god. How many of you have heard of King Tut (King Tutankhamen). His name translated is “the living image of [the god] Amon). The king then was seen as the embodiment of a particular god on earth. So if you wanted to see what a particular god looked like, you looked at that god’s king. (Sex God pg. 19)

If you take a look at the story of Genesis and how things were created, one would see that the writer makes it clear that in all of the things created there is something about humans. We aren’t God and we will never be God but we do reflect what God is like and who God is. A divine spark resides in every single human being! Everybody, everywhere are bearers of the divine image!

Now this may seem like it is a little off subject but how many of you have either participated or know what I am talking about when you hear, hot or not? That is when you rate people on how good looking they are or are not.

Again I ask another question, it may be too embarrassing to ask or it may to personal but I ask it anyway. How many of you have either whistled at someone attractive, make a comment on how hot(t) someone is or have been on the receiving end on a whistle or comment? If you don’t mind, how did that make you feel?

When we do this, what happens to the way we view someone? If we look at a girl and see only physical attribute and we only see how good-looking a guy is, what are we doing? Do we tarnish the image of God in which they bear? All of the hooting and hollering may seem innocent and harmless until what? That’s right, you are the girl or the guy and then it hurts. You feel degraded. You feel violated. It does something to a person’s soul. It is a very bad thing when a person becomes a “that”.

Jesus says something in the Gospel Matthew about one of God’s children, an image-bearer, becomes a “that”. Jesus says, “that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Isn’t it interesting how Jesus connects our eyes and our intentions and our thoughts with the state of our hearts? But if you keep reading it sort of gets violent and gross. Jesus says that, “if your right eyes causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.”

Painful huh? Think about society. How many of us would be walking around with only one eye or perhaps, no eyes. Jesus however is not saying that blind people don’t lust yet what we can conclude is that Jesus is using the “it’s merely a flesh wound” picture to point us to something else. If you read on Jesus then says that, “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

It seems like there is one extreme to another. Either cut body parts off or go to hell. What exactly is Jesus getting at here, huh? He’s stretching this whole lusting thing a bit, isn’t he?

Jesus makes his connections this way because of the understanding of the 1st century Jewish understanding of heaven. Heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be and a place where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime and with anybody. To aid us in this discussion we can turn to the Psalms where it says, “The Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom over all.”

Also in the Psalms it is said that “the highest heavens belong to the Lord and the earth he has given to humankind.” That is us, we are the human kinds. God has heaven, if you will, where things are the way God wants them and then there is the earth where God allows temporary existence of another kingdom; other realms of authority, kings, presidents, etc. So we are left then with how we view the earth, how we rule earth, with two options: what do you think they are?
A. Live under the rule and reign of God or
B. We can choose to rebel against God and live some other way

Now think about this. If there is a realm where God reigns and rules the way God intends them to and there has to be an opposite place right? There has to be a place where the rulers are image-bearers but treat one another not as humans, you know, how do you rate “that” as we look at someone with ill-intentions. There has to be a place where the rulers aren’t going according to God’s will. This place is called hell.

When we think of hell what comes to mind? Fire, the devil with pointy ears and pitchfork, a place that is not beautiful and lonely or scary. How many of you have heard the expressions “living hell” or “for the hell of it”. Often times these things are being said because a decision is being made for no apparent reason. It was pointless or random with no meaning. These go against what God is right? Purpose, meaning and beauty.

War zones, working conditions, divorces, families are often times referred to as hell on earth.

You see, every time you view someone not as an image-bearer but someone who has no soul or divine spark, you are making a choice that goes against the kingdom. That is Jesus’ point too about the whole “gouging out your eye” teaching. His point isn’t that you should mutilate your body if you find yourself lusting after someone. His point is that something serious—sometimes hellish—happens when people are treated as objects, and we should resist it at all costs.

Tonight, we retold a story, trying to recreate it in 30 minutes. We then looked at what it means to be made in the “image of God”. Realizing that there is more to it than whether we can prove God has 5 fingers or 5 toes. We discussed how inside each and everyone one of us is a divine spark that resides and that every time we begin to wonder away from this and begin to see people no-longer as humans, we prevent God’s reign on earth. There is more to people than their physical attributes/features and we have the ability to either edify or to degrade them. Jesus suggests that at all cost, whatever it takes, we must never get to that point in life where we are asking our friends to rate someone based on their looks. That once and if we get there, then we have no longer seen heaven on earth, rather we are the ones who bring hell itself to this place.

We are crated in the image of God. Uniquely made, shaped, formed and breathed on. With something inside us that makes us beloved and we reflect what God is like and who God is. You, I and still that same guy sitting next to you are bearers of the divine image!

God loves me this I know, for he breathed in me and made me in God’s image!