Married to Diversity

In my last blog, I had drawn out the conclusion from one of the question marks in Mark 10 that the human race, and really almost all of life, was based upon a reproductive design that was capable of bringing, not cloned organisms, but diverse organisms and humans into existence. To this point, marriage, as Jesus describes it in Mark 10:5-9, was designed in at the very beginning of creation by God so as to create and preserve the crown of his creation, human beings. It was not some judgement made by Moses, or any other sage down through the ages, that is the foundation of the marriage institution. But really, it can be seen from the creation itself. ^{Roman 1:20} For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

But now, to farther extend that observation, it is interesting to look at how the Bible speaks of "The Church" as the "Bride" of Christ. We have already noted that one of the things that the bride does is to bring not a clone of the male into existence, but a completely new and diverse being; a unique mixing of the original gene set. My musings here would be to consider whether that is one of the intentions of Christ in using the marriage analogy. It could have been his way of breathing diversity into his followers who would "take up their cross and follow him." They would be followers of the Master, uniquely able to explore all the diverse nature of God by each grouping being able to specifically focus on some part of God's character. 

A bit of this can be seen in Mark 10:17 when this rich young ruler comes to Christ and asks about the proper path to eternal life. After cross examining him on how well he is following the standard path of keeping the commandments, Jesus points out that there is still but one thing that he lacks; heart-felt charity. That if he was to pick up this characteristic, and come and follow him, that eternal life (as well as great blessing and persecution) would indeed lie in his future. Here we can see that Jesus has diversified the path to eternal life as set forth by the authorities of that day to customize it for this individual. It was a new challenge that he as a unique person really needed to concentrate on. 

Is something like this what is happening with the diversity that we see in the denominationalism  that has cause so many splits in the Christian church. Might it be God's way of showing that the model of marriage is also active, not always in a negative way, but in a positive way, to allow us to see God from a multi-faceted perspective that spiritual clones could never be able to observe. Might it be that my not being able to understand a agree with your Biblical interpretation is not a bad thing, but a good thing. That instead of lobbing grenades at the people not walking our "narrow path", we might do better to hold hands across the divide that separates us; much like we often have to do with our marriage partners!  

Questioning the Question Marks

Some time ago, I developed a novel kind of Bible study technique that has proved to be wonderful method for digging deeper into scripture. It has led to some stunning insights that I have not seen uncovered  elsewhere.

The technique is really quite simple to apply. Whenever you see a question mark (?) in the scripture, you stop and analyze it. You ask a series of questions. 1) Who is asking, 2) Who are they asking it of, 3) What is the "right answer" that they are expecting, 4) what answer is given,  and then 5) what is going on here?

Doing this causes you to stop in the middle of very familiar passages and leads you down some very unfamiliar paths. That is exactly what happened at my 6 am,  Saturday men's breakfast meeting yesterday. We were studying Mark 10. And there, in verse 2 was a question mark! Analysis required!

Mark 10 (NIV) ¹Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

² Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

The Pharisees were asking Jesus a question. Their clear aim was to trap him into making the same ruling against divorce that had gotten John the Baptist in trouble with the Herod Antipas and Herodias affair and resulted in his head decorating the platter at a state banquet. A similar fate, for this irritating Galilean upstart, would have suited them just fine. If Jesus gave them either a yes or a no answer, they knew that they had him trapped.

But Jesus, as is so often the case, didn't give them a yes or a no answer. Instead, he answered their question with a question; a very common ploy of his. What was going on here?

First of all, you must realize that this question was not at all about marriage. It is about authority. Think about it. Suppose you were to ask some person on the street this same question. If they would say yes, it is not lawful to divorce ones wife, would only receive that answer as word on the subject? Of course not. You would only accept that finality of that answer if you knew the person answering it had some high level of authority. Otherwise, you would brush off the answer as, "Well, that's just what you say!" Clearly, the Pharisees underlying motive is to question the authority of Jesus to adjudicate anything spiritual or ethical. Answering questions like this was, after all, their exclusive, privileged domain as interpreters of scripture.

It is not therefore surprising that Jesus recognizes this and turns the discussion into a discussion of authority. He points the question back at them by asking them what Moses, their accepted authority on all things scriptural, had to say to this.

³ “What did Moses command you?” he replied.

Now this was easy territory for the Pharisees. They knew immediately what their person of authority on scripture had written.

⁴ They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

But now Jesus drills down to the real basis for where authority comes from. 

Jesus replied. ⁶ “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’

Where does the authority for interpreting where the rules and regulations enumerated by Moses come from? It comes for God, at the very beginning; in creation. And the Pharisees also knew that Jesus had laid claim to actually being with God there at the very creation of the world.

John 1:2   The Word (Jesus) was with God in the beginning.

So, who has the authority to adjudicate everything spiritual? It is Jesus, the one who was with God in the beginning. The man whom these Pharisees were deviously trying to get decapitated with their questioning!

So now that Jesus has established that he is the very Son of God, the Creator of the world, he is able to go on and help them in interpreting the very clever inherent design of creation. Something that he and the Father had worked out before the foundations of the earth were laid. The creators had, at that time, a far reaching plan for how this creation would work. One of these plans lay in how life would reproduce and thrive on this new planetoid they were forming. How is one living being going to create another? They could have opted upon something simple like with an amoeba which reproduces by separating. If you want to have a baby, you just take a sharp knife and cut off a finger. You then place that severed finger into a Kangaroo-like body pouch built into your chest cavity and keep it moisturized and lubricated by occasionally letting spittle run down your chin into the pouch. And after 9 months of drooling, you would carefully reach into that pouch and pull forth a wholly formed little living being that was just like you, only smaller! A wonderful, miniature clone of you. 

A plan -- but not a very good plan as the angels, overseeing the design reviews for this new planetoid, were quick to point out. "How could there ever be the level of diversity," they asked, " that will be needed to allow these new beings to eventually inhabit every diverse area of this planet. Life must  be able to diverge in glorious ways from the original life forms if people were eventually to become so weirdly different that some may thrive on the frozen tundra of Alaska while others would greatly prefer the sandy beaches of Tahiti." So now there grew, out of these "pre-world design reviews", the idea that the starting point would be not just life, but male and female life. If two distinctly different, yet mostly-the-same type beings would need to couple their genes to make a new lifeform, then there would be room for diversity to happen with each new birth!

A great idea, but accompanied by its own problems. How do you get these two distinctly different lifeforms, these males and females, to couple together. To meet this challenge, the creators decided to build into these separate beings mysterious, and to this very day, indiscernible, attractive impulses; mixtures of esthetics and chemistry and, well, blind-love craziness! Somehow, beyond all odds, these males and females were going to be infected with something that would make them seek each other out. And with that seeking and finding would come an irresistible desire for coupling together to create new beings! The angels gave this novel idea the codename Secret Element X, or SEX for short. And the infection of life with this new, mysterious element would provide a huge amount of drama for the history of the world!

This same "infection" would be part of all lifeforms that were going to have this strange, yet marvelous beginning as male and female, so  all life could share in this pathway to diversity. 

But in the case of male and female of the homo erectus type of lifeform, the wise creators had to devise yet an additional glorious mechanism to counter another problem. In this case, they realized that the babies arising from this coupling of these advanced lifeforms were going to be so complex and so cerebral that it they were going to need an excruciating amount of care over a long period of time. None of the stuff like with the baby giraffe so ardently watched on that live Zoo Cam where the baby giraffe drops out and then quickly, without the viewing audience even getting bored with the whole development thing, struggles shakily onto its wobbly feet. No, these highly ordered lifeforms, carrying in their craniums the brain power that would allow them to even try to grasp the thoughts of their creators, would need to have abundant and long-term nurturing. These pairing couples were going to have to also carry with them in their design some kind of a switch that got flipped as a result of this coupling. Once this switch was flipped by the very act that would lead to the birth of a new baby, there would be a bond that would form between them that was meant to mysteriously pull them together for a lifetime. Or as Jesus said it:

⁷ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, ⁸ and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

The angels, watching carefully over this unfolding design requirement, quickly added their stamp of approval and the thing became the law of the humanoid creation with God and Jesus adding their signatures!

⁹ Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

And that, at least in my humble opinion, is what lay hidden underneath that question mark, waiting to be revealed by that novel study method of questioning the question marks!

Oh, but wait! That is not all that lies buried there...!