Foundation
As we all know a foundation must be laid first before the rest of the house is built. A foundation is not only non-negotiable and crucial, but it also has to be the right foundation. So, there is a right way of doing things and a wrong way. Why is that? For example, can you imagine a tall block of flats built on an L-shaped foundation? Obviously, it is only a matter of time before the block of flats would tip over and crash along with all the inhabitants. What would the state of mind be of the architect who laid an L-shaped foundation on which to build a tall block of flats? Precisely.
Across the total realm of human affairs, there is a right way of doing something and a wrong way and we all know it. Why is it that within all human endeavours and industries are there right and wrong ways of working? This says something about human beings.
Worldviews
It is not only in the world of construction that the right foundation needs to be laid. It is the same with Worldviews and how an ideology interprets all of reality, for an ideological/philosophical foundation applies to every human society. All human societies are built on a worldview, an interpretation of reality. So what is a worldview? Basically a worldview is based on the assumptions we have about reality, or how we interpret all reality.
Assumptions are like a pair of glasses. We don’t look at our glasses do we, no we automatically look through our glasses. It is the same with the Worldview we consciously or subconsciously believe in. We look through the lens of our assumptions to interpret all reality.
The crucial question of course is are those assumptions true? Do they correspond with all of reality? So, to answer the crucial question ‘What does it mean to be human’? We have to understand our worldview, but also, we have to be able to know that our worldview meets particular criteria in order for it to be verified and so we can know if it is valid or not.
A Tree is also a useful analogy for worldviews. The roots of the tree represent the core beliefs. The trunk are the values that come out of the core beliefs. Then the branches point to the behaviour that in turn comes out of the values and beliefs. Finally, the fruit on the tree represents the consequences, that inevitably come from the behaviour, the values and the beliefs.
Story
The theme of Story is also fundamental to humanity is it not? Story and identity for example are inseparable because our individual story as well as our national or cultural story shape us. We all have our own life story to tell and stories are a crucial part of being human. Even in the most basic way of asking ‘How has your week been’?
The answer will provide information about the story of your week with context, characters, relationships, key points, difficulties, good things, etc. Human life is characterised by story. To understand another person and develop a genuine relationship, we have to listen well to their story, or we will misinterpret them, because all we have to go on is behaviour.
Worldviews are also about stories, but the story of a nation and human societies is about the ideological foundation they are built on as noted. This also is crucial to how human beings are enabled to flourish, be fruitful, and contribute well to their societies with all their talents, gifts and abilities. As children, some of us were told stories…once upon a time.
Another way of saying this is…in the beginning.
Space, time, and matter, nothing more or less represent objective reality
Genesis 1v1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth is also about a Story. God’s Story. This is the foundation for all reality.
Some people ask ‘Where did God come from’? This question though assumes the wrong ‘God’ for the Creator God of Genesis 1v1 is not affected by time, space, or matter. If he is then he is not God.
Space, time, and matter are a continuum that must come together simultaneously. Now Genesis 1v1 is a reference to time, space, and matter.
As Henry M. Morris stated in his extensive book ‘The Long War Against God’
“Furthermore, the basic structure of the physical universe is that of a tri-universe, consisting of space, time, and matter, no more, no less. This is not a trio (three entities combined to make a whole) but a true trinity (three distinct entities, each of which is the whole) The universe is not part space, part-time, and part matter. All of it is space, all is time, and all is matter, permeating all space-time. This system is the same type of system as the divine Trinity of the Godhead-Father, Son, and Spirit of whom is equally and always the One God who created all things, sustains all things, and will reconcile all things…Similarly, space is the omnipresent basis of all physical reality, manifested in the phenomena of matter, interpreted and experienced through time” (Morris, Henry M The Long War Against God, the History and Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict p275)
Beginning is a reference to time; heavens refer to space and earth obviously refers to physical matter. Furthermore, space, time and matter are all made up of three dimensions. Space has length, width and height, Time is past, present and future, and Matter has solid, liquid and gas. In the ten words of Genesis 1v1 there is a trinity of trinities created instantaneously.
If there is only physical matter but no space: WHERE would you put the physical matter?
If there is physical matter and space but no time: WHEN would you put the dimension of time?
Space, time, and physical matter cannot exist independently of each other, they must come together and exist simultaneously.
This begs A KEY QUESTION: How then do these three dimensions of space, time, and matter integrate ALL AT THE SAME TIME?
Every ideology and interpretation of reality must be able to answer this question because these three dimensions are objective reality. If you believe truth is only relative, then is it relatively true that space, time, and matter exist? Of course not, they absolutely exist, and we all know that to be objectively true. You have to check out the Hotel Reality to deny that space, time and matter exist.
So let’s check back in to the Hotel Reality shall we?
Genesis 1v1 answers this question in just ten words. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’.
So, the question ‘Where did God come from’ assumes the wrong ‘God’ as I have pointed out. The God who created space, time and matter must be OUTSIDE of space, time and matter, in other words Transcendent. If he is limited by any of these three dimensions, he is not the God of Genesis 1v1.
For example, the person who made the computer I am writing this from, does not live inside the computer, he/she lives outside and is independent of the computer. The God who created the universe is also outside (Transcendent) the universe, but he is also inside the universe sustaining it through the laws of physics and laws of nature that He created to sustain the universe.
The Creator God is both Transcendent and Immanent
The Transcendent Creator God being inside the universe is called Immanence meaning nearness. The Creator God is Immanent throughout history, supremely in the Incarnation when God became a human being in the Person of Jesus Christ. God is Immanent and at work in the lives of those who surrender their lives in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14v6) and as I have mentioned the universal laws of nature, of science, of physics are also ways that the Creator God is sustaining the universe from within. God is therefore both Transcendent and Immanent.
Genesis 1v1 and the ultimate questions of life.
Now if Genesis 1v1 is true, then it also answers the ultimate questions of life.
FIRST, who am I ? . In other words, ‘What does it mean to be human’? Genesis chapter 1v26-28 answers that human beings were created by God, moreover, were created in God’s own image and likeness.
This FIRST ultimate Question is the NUMBER ONE QUEST OF THE 21st Century, especially in Western Culture….Here are a few brief reasons why:
The Downward Line of Despair: First in the 18th century man became centre and God became the Great Clockmaker-this was Deism- so God had no involvement whatsoever in the whole realm of human affairs. God was only transcendent in Deism which believes that after ‘God’ created the universe, left it to run by the natural laws He created, but He was NOT involved in any way whatsoever within His Creation. He was transcendent but ceased to be Immanent.
Then in the 19th century man tried to put God out of the picture altogether-They changed the Story in the 19th century from ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ to ‘In the Beginning Nothing’ Or Nature’. Our view of what it means to be human depends on our view of God.
The irony or tragedy is that Secularism has not led to Humanism. The Post Enlightenment ‘thinkers like Darwin, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche in particular and the worldview of Secular Humanism then tried to take the Creator God out of the picture and make up a new story. Secular Humanism changed the Story to making God being the Truth about the world to making God a private preference for the individual.
Secular Humanism basically said to the Western Church…”You can have this tiny piece of culture in the private realm of faith and values, but the public realm of society is a Forbidden Zone” And the Western Church said “Oh thank you so much for our tiny piece”….and stays silent on crucial social issues like Adam in the Garden when the Serpent was tempting Eve.
Case in point: The unprecedented livestreamed Genocide of the Palestinian people by Zionist Israel about to reach one full year and the Church has stayed SILENT. The criminal pirates of the West sailing on an Ocean of the Blood of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America, the Global South and the Palestinians….while the West enjoys its American Dream of the ‘good life’ of Bourgeois Suburban materialism, individualism and consumerism.
Comfortably Numb….like a Heroin Addict
SILENCE….IS VIOLENCE. But thank you for our tiny Ghetto amidst the crumbling Western empire. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir…and thank you especially you God hating Secular Humanists for our Tax Exemption status….Maybe that’s why the Institutional Church stays silent ?
The Theory going into the 20th Century was that the DEATH OF GOD would lead to the PROGRESS OF MAN because ‘man became the measure of all things’ and ‘science’ and technology replaced the Creator God as the final authority on all of life.
Human Reason replaced Revelation to more ‘freedom’ and autonomy to DEFINE REALITY AS HUMAN BEINGS DECIDED. We were all born East of Eden into an Unseen spiritual war and we decide what is Good and what is Evil thank you very much. Secularism made Humanism possible but instead it lead to a profound De-Humanism.
When we look at where we are at now in the 21st Century. What has happened? Where are we at now?
We find that we go from God as the Centre of all of life….
to the death of God in public life….
to the death of man in the 20th Century…..
and now here we are in the 21st Century holding onto terms like equality, diversity, human rights, tolerance, woke, political correctness, political Left and Right, ‘Hate speech’, etc but basing them on what? Science, technology and the State have become DEIFIED.
When the Creator God of Genesis 1v1 is declared to be ‘dead’ by Human Reason…the ancient ‘gods’ rise again….meaning to unleash very dark forces from the kingdom of darkness. The West is comprehensively across the spectrum of it’s institutions Neo Pagan.
“Do not forget that the fundamental contrast has always been, is still, and will be until the end: Christianity and Paganism, the idols or the living God” –Abraham Kuyper
In commenting on Genesis 11v6 where God said ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing will be impossible for them’
Pam Frost is a researcher and speaker for Truthxchange a Christian Think Tank in Washington State and her main topic of research is Globalism. She was interviewed on the subject of ‘Globalism and the Great Reset’. Pam asks a Question: What does it mean that nothing will be impossible for them because God is the only one who is Omnipotent and all knowing?
She answers
“A united Pagan humanity working together as one on the earth, with no boundaries of the depth of evil to which they would go. It was an act of preservation and protection that God confused their languages. So God scattered them throughout the earth and drew boundaries around them as nations’ (Pam Frost https://truthxchange.com/what-is-paganism/)
The Creator God was Incarnated and born into Greco-Roman Pagan culture (based on Oligarchy) and the leaven of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in His substitutionary Death and Resurrection permeated the entire Roman Empire….until 312AD when a counterfeit false ‘Christianity’ joined the Empire via ‘the Edict of Milan. But 2Oth/21st Western Culture became NEO Pagan in its assumption of all reality because of its REJECTION of the Gospel.
After the most violent century in Human history-the 20th century where more people died than in any other century- Here we are in the 21st century in a rebuilding phase trying to work out what it means to be human…
The West was predicated on the idea of the Creator God- But it has thrown out THE only Story that corresponds with Reality that explains human identity and is hanging in ‘mid-air’ on NOTHING. This is why we are in such chaos.
The SECOND question ‘Where did the universe come from’?
It was created by the Triune God who is personal, infinite, and eternal. No physical inanimate object can create itself, neither can the universe create itself. Neither did NOTHING cause the universe from a collision of atoms and molecules into a ‘big bang’. The law of inertia states that a stationary object can only move if moved by an outside force. A football can only move if kicked from outside itself by someone else or it will eventually turn to dust.
What was the outside force that caused the atoms and molecules to collide then? Evolution’s presupposition. In the beginning NOTHING. This means human beings came from NOTHING, are going to NOTHING. Guess what? We must BE NOTHING….The lie of the Serpent echoes loudly from Eden.
Thirdly, ‘Why are we here’?
If God created the entire universe and humanity in His own image and likeness, it must be for a reason, therefore we need to know what that reason is. This is why the Creator God became flesh to reconcile us back to God….and deliver us from our profound Alienation from God, from within ourselves (who am I?) from each other (individually and nationally) and the alienation between Creation itself and humanity.
Finally, where do we go when we die? That depends on God because he is the Creator of all things, so we might want to know. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jesus Christ John 14v6) ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die’ (John 11v25)
I am simply laying a foundation based on Genesis 1v1 and that objective reality such as space, time, and matter reflect not only the eternal Triune Creator God, but that Genesis chapter 1 is the foundation for all of reality. This is the metaphysical basis for all reality, though of course this has been rejected.
The spiritual crisis of 21st Western culture is rooted in a rejection of the personal infinite Creator Triune God who created space, time, and matter and human beings in His own Triune image and likeness.
There is nothing apart from space, time, and matter. Of course, there will be many explanations of Genesis 1v1 but whatever the explanation, space-time-matter continuum is an objective universal fact that no one can deny. Therefore, everyone can understand that the universe has a Creator who is both infinite, and eternal like space and time, but also manifests in the life of humanity because of His love and care for His creation.
Genesis 1v26-28 Creation Mandate and the meaning of Dominion
And God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them” Genesis 1v26-28
What does it mean to say though, that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God?
The Imago Deo
According to John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Centre for Christian Worldview,
“What does it mean that humans are created in the Image and likeness of God’? Historically theologians have given two answers to the question One is the functional view. This means that we resemble God in His abilities. God is creative, we are creative, God is rational, we are rational, God is volitional, we are volitional, God is moral, we are moral. This is how we are different than the animals.The other view is the relational view. Fundamentally God IS a relationship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We reflect this relational God in our body, soul and spirit and in our relationship with others. The human soul for example is made up of the mind, emotions and will. What the text shows us is that humans are given a place in the Creation that God has and then shares. Everything exists because God tells it to, He is absolute Sovereign over all his creation. God is so in charge of everything, that He even speaks into Nothing and Nothing obeys Him” https://breakpoint.org/john-stonestreet/)
The Biblical Theological Perspective of the Imago Deo:
From Genesis chapter 1 we can see clearly that God is absolute Sovereign over His entire Creation. Everything in the Cosmos exists because God tells it to, and everything obeys God’s spoken Word. God is so in charge that even Nothing obeys Him, He speaks into Nothing and created the universe ‘out of Nothing’.
Let Us make
In Genesis chapter 1 God declares ‘Let there be’ eight times, so it serves a kind of formula in the narrative of Genesis 1 ‘Let there be and it was so and God saw what He had made and it was good, Let there be and it was so and God saw what He had made and it was good’. God speaks into existence all there is, not with human beings.
This eightfold flow and rhythm basically hold Genesis 1 together, until you arrive at ‘disruptive change of language’ in Genesis 1 where instead of God saying ‘Let there be man’ He says within Himself as the Trinity ‘Let Us make man in our Image and likeness’. The most important attention-grabbing part in the narrative is that God then has a conversation with Man…’Be fruitful, multiply, have dominion over the earth and subdue it’. This radical shift in the narrative is to get our attention. ‘Man’ is a generic term from the Hebrew meaning ‘humankind’.
Fruitfulness, multiplying, subduing
God has created the heavens and the earth, including of course space, time and matter as specified above. He fills the void, darkness, emptiness and chaos of Genesis 1v2 by separating and filling. And at some point, the angelic host observe the creation of another creature that is unique in all creation, a creature in the very image and likeness of the Triune Creator God.
This ‘fruitfulness, multiplying and subduing’ is ultimately what God wants human beings to do. This means that the Ultimate Sovereign Ruler of the Universe created other rulers. To subdue and have dominion therefore means to rule, to be a vice-regent, to have responsibility to make the world all that God intended it to be.
Dominion however, does not mean to dominate. This is what human empires do for they are based on the theory of Evolution, hence ‘the white man’s burden’ to ‘civilise’ those darn black and brown people. Empires fill the earth with violence and bloodshed based on racial supremacy. Dominion over creation meant to be faithful wise stewards of creation.
Develop the Garden into a God glorifying culture as Image bearers.
God decreed the Garden of Eden to develop into a culture, a civilisation, and this was to be the Kingdom of God that was to fill the whole earth. It is for ‘the life of the world’ that God created us for. This is the Biblical position that the text itself reveals. It is not primarily a function that we have, it is not even our capacity for relationships as relational beings, although relationships are basically the very essence of life, in all of our lives, whether for good or bad, we are intrinsically relational.
Both the functional and relational view of the Image of God are not less than being fruitful, multiplying and subduing by building human cultures, however Genesis 1v26-28 does seem to imply that our position as Image bearers is primarily what it means to be in the Image and likeness of the Triune Creator God, to have a position, a place in the creation above everything else.
Positional then rather than functional or relational seems to encapsulate the creational, primary, intrinsic, and fundamental aspect of what it means to be truly human. But there is of course an overlap of all three aspects of the Image of God and there are more, but Positional is fundamental to our humanity.
Yet tragically here we are near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century in a rebuilding phase…
trying to work out
…..what it means to be human…From the Creator God…to Gadgets that now seem to define us….
Comments