Genesis 1
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral on 10th October 2021
I want to explore with you some basics of what the Bible teaches about gender, marriage, and family. We seek the mind of God; we wish our understanding to be consistent with his teachings. But some of the issues we are addressing are brand new; we haven’t had to deal with them before, and need to tread carefully. This is odd when you think about it, because gender is something we run into in the very first chapter of our Bible.
I intended to address the subject of male and female. But my mind kept snapping over to marriage, and that is another issue. I decided on a better question: what is a human being?
If we are to answer the question what is a human being, we need to have a place to stand. I mean, if you are a Marxist you will have one answer. If you follow Freud, you will have another. Or if you are an existentialist, or a post-modernist, another. These are different forms of humanism which also has its definition of what is human. You may not think you are any of these things; the truth is your outlook and attitudes—the things that seem obvious to you—are influenced by them all. If you are an Australian you will probably be a humanist, but you will be confused about which kind—or you may be an Islamist or a Buddhist and have other answers. Every “ism” has its answer to the question, what is a human being; in a multi-cultural society it’s not surprising if they come into conflict. But if you walk down Marine Terrace and ask people can they help you, and they ask where to, and you say you need to know what a human being is, so you can know how to live, they will think you are odd. In any case, most will have no idea how to answer you.
Christianity also has its view, and it starts in Genesis 1. If I ask you what Genesis 1 is about, probably you will tell me it is about God and how he made the world, which is true enough:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep … But God said let there be light, and there was light …
We do learn that God is real, and that he made the world, but this is only the foundation. If you read the whole chapter carefully, you will see it is leading up to something, to the creation of human beings—it is answering the question, “What is a human being?”
Still, the foundation is important. The foundation of many of the “isms” I mentioned, especially those connected to humanism, is that we are alone in the universe: God isn’t real, or if he is, he doesn’t matter. We have to find things out for ourselves. Bedrock for Christians is that God is there, and he matters more than anything, and on some things he has spoken. Humanism says, “Man is the measure of all things,” and goes on to identify happiness as they key to right and wrone. Since there is no God we must find our way to that ourselves. On other issues humanists used to accept the Christian view of things, so there wasn’t much difference on the surface. But now people have woken up that if there is no speaking God, they can believe anything they want about anything, including what is human, the place of gender, the meaning of sexuality, and all sorts of moral issues. The bottom line is happiness, but it is difficult to know exactly what happiness is, or how you get there, and, of course some people always get left out, like unborn children, and paedophiles, and in some places Christians. Christians don’t only believe God is real, they believe he has made himself known. That makes them dangerous, because they have certainty on some things where the various brands of humanism have their own truth, and do not like anyone to think differently. In Marxist and Islamic states dissenting voices are silenced, sometimes by killing those who will not submit to the official way of thinking.
What is a human being according to Genesis 1? The answer is that we are animals, but made in the image of God. Ths means that at one level we are not much different from rabbits. If you’re out in the bush and there’s no doctor, and you need one, but there is a vet, they will probably do a reasonable job. According to Genesis 1 we belong among the land animals. Genesis 2 says we are made from dirt. This means we are physical. But we are special because we are made in God’s image. God has made a model, a representation of himself, in the physical world of time and space. The material is dirt, but the blueprint is God. Extraordinary, but that’s what Christians believe!
Being in the image of God involves our ability to reason, to create, to draw, to sing, to dream, to love, to hate, to distinguish good from evil, to worship, and much more. We have some things in common with animals, but in other things there is no other animal anywhere near like us. Because humans share the same image, we can communicate with language. There is no language in the world you cannot learn. We can also communicate with God. He understands all our languages. Because we are in the image of God, God was able to become a human being, without ceasing to be God; there is now a man in heaven ruling the universe.
There is something else we learn in Genesis 1: God made us male and female.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Notice what it doesn’t say! It could have said he made us black and white and brown; but these are relatively unimportant variations of the fundamental reality of human. It could have said he made us slaves and free. This would have been understandable in the ancient world, where slavery was so ingrained. But this was an evil distortion of human society. Or it could have said we are also homosexual and heterosexual, transgender and the rest. What it says is that we are all humans of the male or female variety.
Being male or female then is foundational. We are all one or the other, and there is no other indicated. We cannot agree with those who maintain that gender is a social construct, nor with those who reason that because some are born with abnormalities, they are neither male nor female. This is one of those issues where we must simply state our presupposition that God is real, that he created all things, and that his word reveals that male and female is part of the bedrock of his structuring of things. We have Science to support us here.
But what if a person is dissatisfied with what they are at birth? We are becoming familiar with what is called gender-dysphoria: the girl who wants to be a boy, the boy who wants to be a girl. This is real enough, though I must say that in my 75 years of life I have only had to deal with one serious case, where a woman wanted to be medically transformed into a man. We were all aware of “tomboys” and effeminate males, but this was part of the variety of life, and certainly no basis for discrimination. In the over-structured society of my upbringing it was understandable that women would feel drawn to roles that appeared to be reserved for men, and vice-versa. Role differentiation is very much society at work; there is nothing un-Christian about a woman wishing to be prime minister, or a train driver, nor for a man to be a nurse or a secretary, though these things would have seemed strange in my childhood. The Bible does not teach that women should stay in the kitchen. The woman of the book of Proverbs, who buys and sells property, trades, engages in business and manufacturing, teaches, and is trusted and admired for her wisdom, is a far cry from the Islamic ideal that deprives her of education and keeps her out of sight and out of society. It is also out of line with the picture John gives us of Jesus’ interacting with the woman of Samaria. The disciples were surprised that he would be conversing with a woman, let alone a Samaritan woman—such was their culture. But he is perfectly comfortable engaging her in discussion of important theological issues, and sending her on a mission to bring eternal life to her townspeople. This is consistent with Genesis 1, where we find nothing about inferiority and superiority.
What we do find is a command to fill the earth and rule it.
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This is not a command to the man or the woman, but to them both. Human beings—male and female—are to rule the world for God. That is the teaching of the Bible, and there is nothing that approaches it for grandeur or significance in any of the philosophies and religions of mankind. Most of the “isms” have a view on what a human being is, and most also agree that the ultimate goal of human life is to be happy and fulfilled. Even the Westminster Catechism agrees when it says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But something is missing here. If God’s mandate is that we manage his creation, surely this is entailed in being human—and perhaps the reason life can be so difficult. A former Prime Minister of Australia said in a TV interview, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.” It caused a wave of shock-horror through the Australian community. Surely life is meant to be easy, and it is the government’s task to ensure that people are happy. But if we have been created for such an awesome task as world-management, this may not be the whole truth. Job suffered terribly and never learned why. At one point he cries out to God (Job 7.12-19):
Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me? When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones. I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath. What is man, that you make so much of him … that you visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long until you look away from me, and leave me alone till I swallow my spit?
What is a human being? If we knew the full answer, it would explain a lot of other things.
The next thing to note in Genesis 1 is that God blessed the man and woman.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
What does blessing mean except that our destiny is to be happy and fulfilled. There may be difficulties, there may be suffering, there may be challenges, but if everything was to be doom and gloom—if humans were made to be the slaves of the gods, as the Babylonians believed—then you could hardly speak of blessing. No, God is a good God. He wishes good for his children, and that is why Genesis 1 concludes that when God looked at everything he had made it was good.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
The problem with humanism and all the other “isms” is that they do not know what a human being really is. Nor do they have any idea of how great is our destiny. They seek happiness, and that is good, as far as it goes, but they do not know where it is to be found. Happiness is elusive. Jesus said, “Whoever seeks to gain their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel will gain it. How will it profit someone to gain the whole world, and lose their soul.” This is why it is so important that we hold on to Jesus and learn from him.
I need to come back to the possibility that a boy might wish to become a girl, or a girl a boy. Now that this is said to be possible, and a sex-change becomes an option in constructing one’s own individual identity, we hear of it much more. This week’s local newpaper has a full page spread promoting the possibility.
Genesis does not tell us whether or not it is permissible for a person to change their sex. But we should question whether it is possible. A man who becomes a woman may find he is still a man, notwithstanding all that medical science can do. Here I would invite you to speak to your doctor. Ask him or her exactly what is done with this surgery and medication, and judge for yourself whether the outcome is a true change of sex. I have heard a doctor describing what is done, and I will not repeat what I heard here. It was enough to convince me that there is a real question here. A boy who wishes to be a girl undoubtedly has a problem, but its healing, insofar as healing is possible, in my view will come through growing up and learning to think differently. Massive surgical intervention may do irreversible harm. Nevertheless, some will take this course, and will not for that reason cease to be loved by God and sought by him. Seeing things differently does not mean Christians do not wish to live positively and caringly, and engage respectfully with the many players in our multicultural society.
But coming to terms with God—and now I am talking about conversion—makes a huge difference to our thinking on any number of things, though it may not solve all our problems in this world. Our natural viewpoint is to see ourselves as the centre of the universe. Everything revolves around me. If there is a God, he is there to assist me. I will use him as much as he helps me to live my life my way. If he is not useful, I will discard him. This is the mentality of those who feel Christianity limits their freedom. “I am not interested in church; it is just not relevant to me.” But when you encounter the living God things change. I discover I am not the centre of everything, God is. He is not my servant, I am his. And then we want to restructure our thinking according to his word.
What Genesis 1 teaches us is that we are God’s creation: we belong to God. He made us to be like him, and to represent him in the physical universe. He made us male and female, and together has given us this awesome task of populating the world and ruling it on his behalf. And he has made it so that through this we will find happiness and fulfilment. This should fill us with awe and wonder and great joy.