The End is the Beginning: Distortion of Vocation

If it is fair to connect vocation with creational intent, as I discussed in my previous post, then I think it also makes sense to look at Genesis 3 from the same vantage point. Genesis 3 is a fascinating chapter in the Christian scriptures, not least because of how little it really tells us. Read the chapter carefully, and you might catch that a lot of what is commonly assumed to be going on in the chapter is in fact an interpretive veneer that we lay over the actual text. Take, for example, the identity of the serpent - I've only once heard it postulated that the serpent could represent something or someone other than a personal malevolent entity known as Satan, and yet nowhere in the entire canon is that connection made. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad reading - but it isn't in the text. It has to come from somewhere else.

Likewise, we often assume a set of meanings in relation to the curse. Most of these meanings are based on later elements in the story, or even on popular theologies that are somehow read back into the text. For example, it's common in evangelical theology to speak of the curse as "separation" from God. But again, that's not in the text, or at least it's not described in terms of curse. The man and the woman are expelled from the garden, implying separation. But that's not the curse. That happens later, so that the problem will not be compounded by the man and woman continuing to eat from the tree of life and thus living forever in their cursed state. (Go ahead, read it - I'll wait. ;) The curse is all about vocation in Genesis 3.

Flip back a few pages to the end of Genesis 1. The man and woman have been given their divine task - to jointly image God and to participate in the creation project by ruling and filling the Earth. This is exactly what is twisted in Genesis 3. The divine vocation that was given to humanity is now frustrated; the creation project is in jeopardy. The curse on the man is mirrored by a curse on the ground - instead of ruling and subduing the earth, the man will now have to fight and struggle with the earth just to be able to eat. The curse on the woman is likewise reflective of the divine task - instead of filling the earth, childbirth will now be painful and costly. And, instead of jointly imaging God, the man will exercise authority over the woman, another corruption of the creational intent. Finally, in the end, both will die, returning to the dust from which they have been made, in what seems the final triumph of "uncreation".

We stand now at the point of driving conflict in the scriptural narrative. On the one hand, God holds forth his creation project, in which humanity is to serve as his chief representatives. On the other, humanity has rejected our own vocation and set ourselves in opposition to God's purposes, rather than in cooperation with them. This conflict echoes through the rest of the narrative. Every movement in the story from this point will be a move towards one of these two poles. And God now has a new task in the narrative - how will he rescue his creation project from those who have screwed it up so badly? And what will become of these humans, who were to serve in a pivotal role in that project?

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation

The End is the Beginning: Purity of Vocation

Vocation might seem like an odd connection to make when talking about (towards?) New Creation. It might seem even more so in relation to Genesis 1 - but that's where I want to begin. I'm going to sketch out a rough outline, starting here, and hopefully pull some themes to the fore that I think are largely ignored in contemporary western Christianity. As to what that will tell us about our place in the narrative - well, we shall see when we get there.

Those of you who (like me) grew up in or are currently a part of churches that lean towards the conservafundagelical will no doubt recognize the take on Genesis 1 that looks at the narrative as a description of how God created the world. There are different ways of navigating that, of course - literal six-day view or theistic evolution or days represent ages or whatever - but the perspective boils down to the understanding of the text as basically answering the question how. I've come to believe that there is really very little of that question in play at all in Genesis 1, and the parts that do talk about how aren't saying at all what we've come to believe. I think that Genesis 1 is basically talking about two themes: vocation and power. And those themes, I think, are intertwined, so that the questions that the text is answering focus on things like: who are we? What is our role or task in the world?

Those questions, you must understand, were also asked by others in the ancient world, others who had a particular motivation for having them answered in a particular way. When the text speaks of the image of God, it is using royal language - both the Babylonian and Egyptian empires used that language of their kings in connection with their right to rule. The logic goes something like this: You were created to serve the gods. The king is the living representative (image) of those gods. Therefore, whatever service you owe to the gods is due the king as their representative. So get back to work!

Genesis 1 is a text that, I believe, contains a powerful polemic against such language. God is portrayed, not as a harsh taskmaster, but as a gracious deity who invites Creation to "Be!" Humanity, both male and female, is portrayed as being created in His image - as His divine representatives on earth. All of us. We are tasked with a divine vocation - to finish the Creation project by ordering and filling the earth, taking up where God left off. I've written more extensively on this here; I owe much of my current understanding to Richard Middleton's excellent book The Liberating Image.

The point here is that, if New Creation represents the reinvigoration and reestablishment of God's original creational intent, then we have to recognize that this wasn't a country club existence, hanging out by the pool and getting free lunch. This was an invitation to service and work, to participate in the act of creation itself! It was an opportunity to become a partner with God by representing Him in the created world. And it was not an invitation to choose to exercise power over one another, but rather to partner with one another as well as with God.

Whatever New Creation will be, I have to believe that it will reflect this picture: an existence of active service, cooperation, and partnership with God and each other, bringing His creational intent into being.

Technorati Tags: imago dei, narrative, new creation, image

The End is the Beginning

I'm struck by several things that I think are related in American Christianity: first, we have no real theology of hope, and in fact we barely can speak in the language of hope; second, we have no real theology of vocation, and we struggle with a sort of neo-Platonic dualism that separates the physical and spiritual; and third, our soteriology is oriented towards escape, and is often little more than a description of what we are saved from, instead of being an articulation of that to which we are called. And I think that these particular struggles of ours are rooted in a particular way of understanding eternity, an understanding that at the end of the age we will be rescued to an atemporal, spiritual existence where we will live in eternal bliss, a sort of uber-retirement of leisure and rest, if you will.

The more that I think about this, the more that I believe "retirement" is exactly how a lot of folks picture what eternity is supposed to be about. In other words, I've worked my tail off, thank you very much, so now I get to kick back, play golf, and enjoy ten percent off at Denny's. And, since it's heaven, there will probably be a bit of singing involved or some such. But this is really a fairly bizarre sort of notion, and profoundly unbiblical - the closest that we come to something like this is the concept of the Sabbath-rest of God, which has absolutely nothing to do with leisure or relaxation. In fact, the scriptures present a picture of a God who is always at work, always participating in the world and taking delight in what he has made. The scriptures begin with a picture of God at work, doing the stuff of creation and finding great joy in the task. The scriptures likewise end with a picture of a God who is still at work, reigning in the great City over the New Creation, from which the river and the tree of life bring healing to the nations. And there is a very strong sense that this is a vibrant and active city, where kings and nations come and go freely, doing whatever it is that a hand unburdened by the curse will find to do.

What we see, then, in the end is what we find at the beginning: God is about the task of creation, ordering and filling the earth, and his representatives are about this same task, working alongside to bring his vision to life. All of the stuff in the middle, the stuff of this present age in which you and I find ourselves, is about how that task became frustrated and about how we abandoned our divine vocation, choosing instead to craft our own smaller stories and to forge our own meaning and purpose in defiance of the one that had been granted us. All of God's movements of redemption are about reclaiming that initial purpose, about restoring all things so that they are once again very good, in the sense that they reflect exactly what it is that God had in mind when he made them. The end is the beginning, in the sense that it is original intent reclaimed and restored. And so, to understand the end, we must begin at the beginning.

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation