And God Made Them Male and Female

Did my title make you cringe? I can hardly believe I am diving into this here, but truth IS my purpose . . .

I was scrolling through some posts on Facebook the other day and found one from a friend with a similar title. I read it with trepidation, but pretty much agreed with the gist. Then I read a couple of responses (again from friends) and was chagrined at the logic- or lack thereof. And yet, one of them said something I had been wrestling with for years- just never had the courage to spout it off in public. And that's usually my thing- I work through something before I put it out there (it's too bad so many people post things online without thinking).

But that got me thinking even more. This is now where I stand on the subject:

God made humankind in his image. Male and female, which I think is interesting, because both are present in God's being. As it is with most of us- we have aspects of masculinity and femininity blended together to make a unique being- like no one else. Yet we are born with one set of organs or the other. These define us from the moment of conception- way before we are born.

Obviously (well, not so obvious to so many these days), truth is involved and all truth is God's truth, wherever it is found. And I'm talking about absolute truth, not subjective truth. No matter what we WANT to believe, truth is absolute. We cannot change it to fit our wants. Something is either true or it is false. It's truth or a lie. You cannot have one truth while I have another. That is a lie. Oh, and who is the father of lies? Hmmm, he had a little something to do with all this, methinks!

I've heard that "God don't make no junk" and I believe it. He has a design and purpose for each of us.

Here's where some get tripped up. They think because there are those who are born with both organs, that somehow sets a rule for everyone. The problem is, we can't base truth on the sin that has corrupted just about everything around us (I'm not saying that person has sinned or they are evil).

You see, humankind fell and brought sin into the world (apparently sin existed before it came to this world, because there are heavenly beings who also fell before we did). That sin, brought with it a corruption that messed with all of God's perfect creation. Think of it- there were no weeds before sin's corruption! But now those weeds spread like crazy to the point where we hardly know what it could be like without that corruption. Corruption is "normal" to us! It's all we know. Ouch!

That corruption has brought weeds, cancer, and a whole lot of other problems into the world. I can't even begin to make a list here. And because of the corruption, we cannot make rules based on the fallen world around us. We need to look to God's Word for the only perfect foundation for human faith and practice.

And truth.

Back to how God made us- one or the other. 

I gotta tell you that the Enemy does everything he can to get us to believe we are anything and everything BUT what God designed us to be. The LAST thing he wants is for us to fulfill God's purpose for our lives! If we even listen for a moment to his lies, we begin to travel down a road that leads far away from God and what he intended for us. Allow me to illustrate with a (condensed) personal story:

I really disliked school as a kid. There are a lot of reasons for that, but in the end, I was convinced that school was not for me and I wanted nothing to do with it. Then I learned that one of my spiritual gifts was teaching. NO WAY! I said. Because to be a teacher, you have to be a student first. And I was NOT that. O please God- ANYTHING but that! When I let my guard down and actually listened to God, I found there was a whole lot about learning and teaching that I liked and enjoyed. I finally agreed with what God made me to be and all of a sudden, learning and teaching exploded for me. There's been no looking back since. I love it!

BUT, for years the Enemy tried desperately to convince me that I was NOT a student/teacher. It's sad to see how long I was deceived by his lies in my own life.

Today we see a LOT of people struggling with who they are; what they are. I have absolutely no problem telling you that struggle is from the father of lies. If you listen to him, your confusion will only get worse. You will never "discover" who you are. You will never find truth. The truth is "who God made you to be" and once discovering that (and his love) you will be set up to accomplish his purpose for your life. And the Enemy will have a lot less hold on your life.

As for those born with multiple sets of organs, I suggest we take each case individually. Do I have an answer for that situation? No. Sin has confused everything beyond what we can sort out on our own. Yet I believe God has a purpose for that person's life. They will struggle. Don't we all struggle with something? God will redeem their situation to his glory- if we let him. God does have their answer. We will find it nowhere else.

Pruning

This picture is from our front yard in Myrtle Beach. It is a Crepe Myrtle. At the moment, it looks wonderful. That is, compared to what it looked like just 2 months ago!

When we retired into our home, this tree had been growing in our front yard for 10 years. In that time, apparently no one knew what to do with a Myrtle Tree. Therefore, it was covered in some kind of tree rot, did not look good at all and appeared to be dying. 

So we did some reading and called a local guy to come out and murder our tree. Yes, you read that right- it's called Crepe Murder!

I figured he would clean the junk off the bark and cut it back a bit. After a minute of bark cleaning, he started his chain saw and cut it down to almost nothing! I was horrified! Imagine this image with no leaves at all- just 3 sticks about 4 feet high and you've got the picture. We had 3 sticks in our front yard as our central tree! Aauugghh!

After a winter of "stick in our yard," all of a sudden it started to grow branches. I'm told this is normal for such a tree. Every few years we will do the same thing and it will grow again into a much larger, healthier tree.

Pruning. It's a common gardening practice. However, it's not so common in The Salvation Army. I think it should be.

We are currently in a tough place. COVID and (frankly) dealing poorly with our officers has left us in a state much like my old tree. Rotting and appearing to be near death in some places. We are stretching ourselves way too thin with way too few resources. Some of our locations are dead already and leadership refuses to see it.

I'm not going to go into a lot of explanation here, because I think you are smart enough to figure it out. We should get about pruning those dead locations and put the resources into ones that are still living and have actual potential for growth.

Yes, it would look bad for a time, but when the "Spring" comes, all of a sudden we would begin to see new growth that is much healthier. And that growth will supersede what we have now. But I don't think it's going to happen if we continue on our present course.

Corps Murder. There- I said it.

Elohim, Our Authority and Nephilim

I may be jumping into this subject mid-stream. I have learned a lot since I regularly blogged, so there are quite a few things I may have to explain from the middle. Hopefully I won't confuse you!

There may be a past blog where I talked about Psalm 8, in which the word Elohim is used. I used to reference this verse as evidence of our being placed above the angels, in God's creation/authority order. I have since learned I was a bit off. Not in our authority, but where we actually sit in the creation/authority order. I won't rehash my old thoughts here unless I need to reference them to explain something.

In Hebrew, the word "Elohim" can be singular or plural. In it's singular form, it refers to Yahweh/God- the One and Only; there is none like him. In it's plural form, it refers to the "gods" (beings) that Yahweh created. As far as I can tell at the moment, all heavenly beings God created are Elohim (plural). In other words, there are no "beings" that are angels. 

In Psalm 8, we have BOTH the singular Elohim and the plural form of the word.

The word "angel" means "messenger." An "angel" is not a being, as such, it is a "job description." So any Elohim given a specific task is considered an angel. I guess when they complete that task and go back to "normal operation," they are no longer considered an angel (sorry for all the quotes!).

Moving on to the creation order, we have God, gods, human-kind, then Nephilim. So we are below the gods, but above the Nephilim. Yes, there are gods who have fallen and they may have done so while they were angels (are you following?), but my point is that I no longer believe demons are fallen angels, rather fallen Elohim/gods. The more I think about this, the more it makes absolute sense to me regarding our authority to cast out demons.

I used to say we were created ABOVE the angels, so when they fell, we naturally still had authority over them; to cast them out. But that thought process fell apart when I realized we were BELOW the gods/angels.

I now believe demons are the disembodied spirits of Nephilim, whom God did not create, so they have nowhere to go, after they die. They go around looking for another physical body to inhabit, so they can do something/anything in the physical realm (remember Jesus and the herd of pigs?). This understanding is nothing new, as it has been around for a long time. Why do we often lose the understanding of things we used to know?

Nephilim came about by Elohim's (the gods) physical union with human women- they were god/human hybrids. Like Hercules, as it were. See where a lot of mythology has come from? I find it fascinating that so much mythology has its basis in reality. Hmmm, I wonder if there actually WAS a Nephilim named Hercules . . . mind blown!

Well if I haven't confused you by now, I'll finish with my purpose of this post- we do have authority to cast out demons. No surprise, since many of us have seen/done this over the years (and Jesus told us to do so), but for me this explanation is the reason we can do it.