. :: Are You Blessed?

Are You Blessed?

And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

I often ask people, "How has God blessed you?" Invariably, they indicate that spouse and children are there greatest blessings from God. And who can argue with that?

But this answer leaves with with an uncomfortable feeling. It's that same feeling I get when I hear loud crash and then a wail of pain and then several participants in a shouting match. I encounter the situation and ask, "What happened?" It's that "I don't know" answer that leaves me feeling uncomfortable like I had asked a real good question but didn't get all the answers that fully fit the truth.

I'm not suggesting that spouse and family are not at the highest order of blessing, in fact I will argue just that, but I am always left wanting to hear more. "Be fruitful and multiply," God said. What a wonderful first command! Apparently this is one of the few commands obeyed most enthusiastically. "Aye, Aye Sir!" "Wilco! God" "Right away, your Lordship" No debating here. No painful moments of deliberating whether to give into peer pressure or to do the godly thing. And God has blessed us with the inclination and apparatae to be successful in our zeal to obey. Still, I feel uncomfortable.

I feel uncomfortable because, as any sentence-diagramming sixth grader can tell you, there are three verb phrases in these first words that fall on man's ear. Subdue! Rule! Let alone our zeal to subdue and rule the world, what in the world does that entail?

The reason I ask the question about God's blessing in the first place is to provoke us to broaden our understanding of blessing. God does not bless us to make our lives better - although, through obedience, that is a wonderful side effect. I believe God blessed us so that we are capable of working His will in our lives. God wants us to populate the earth so He blesses us accordingly. God also wants us to subdue and rule the earth. How has he blessed us in that regard?

To subdue is to bring something under our control. We have all attempted to subdue an unruly patch of weeds in the garden, a gaggle of grade-schoolers, or that stack of papers that accumulates exponentially seemingly on its own. Subduing also implies dominating with out destroying. You don't subdue a wild stallion by shooting it.

Having procreated according to God's perfect plan, he wants us to move on to subduing the earth - there must be some logic to this sequence of events. Think about the flow of things. There you are bopping along, naked in the Garden, no cares in the world. This command of God is alive in your heart so when that single one of the complimentary gender comes in sight, you are eager to oblige God of His will. After that, well, you know the drill. We have to go to Wal-Mart and get shower curtains and stoneware since we are setting up house together. Soon, all too soon, the younguns start popping up left and right. They need food, diapers, their own room, a tricycle, and a puppy. You have to come up with all that stuff. Early on God gave you the idea of the "wheel" thing, so the tricycle is no big deal. Except you have to go cut down a tree or something to give the little tyke something to sit on. And while you are at it, winter's coming and you and the family are thinking some fur skins would make things more pleasant than last winter. Now you are full scale subduing! You have to impose your will and effort to bring those things that are necessary (and desired) into your control. In laymen's terms - you go to work.

Bjorn in the next oasis over notices that the tricycle is a neat idea, but he can't pull it off. He's no engineer, but he's good at trapping muskrats; so the two of you work a deal. You happen to be an indoors kind of human anyway, so Bjorn doing that gross stuff is no skin off your back (pardon the pun).

Now you have entered into a community effort of shared subduing. You discover that you are blessed to subdue in a certain way(s) and that others are blessed in their way. Together, there is strength in numbers and an individual and collective ability to obey God. When I ask how has God blessed and people stop with the family answer, I wonder if they realize how active God is in blessing them on the earth-subduing level. Making a living to provide for our families is a dimension of our life blessed by God every bit as much as the blessing we receive in our procreating. I don't know where we got away from that away, but it is wrong to not recognize God's blessing in our work.

The answer I expect from someone who realizes God's blessing to subdue the earth would go something like, "I am blessed with a wonderful mate, healthy children, and the unique ability to anticipate rises in stock prices." I encourage people to connect their ability to earn an income (which acquires a medium of exchange whereby we purchase the things that others have subdued and which we need) with this first commandment from God. I don't think the world was a weedy, chaotic mess that God needed Adam to straighten up. I believe God meant for Adam to subdue the earth for Adam's needs as well as for God's sake. Just as being fruitful and multiplying is an ongoing (Thank You God and So Be It!) process so is subduing, and God blesses each one of us to be successful at it.

That leaves us with the last element of the trio of commands "have dominion over. . . every living thing." Since meat-eating wasn't vogue until around Genesis 9 (approximately 1500 years after creation), this command is not referring to the first MacDonald's franchise. Although it includes animals, that procreating part clearly requires that dominion must be over man as well. I think we can all agree that that dominion means rule with authority over another. I don't know if you've studied your -archy and -ocracy suffixes lately, but we are all supposed to rule over each other. (Adam started it, but just as the rest of us kids are to procreate and to subdue the earth, so too we must have dominion if our interpretation of the verse is to be consistent.) To most readers, this sounds like a giant step backwards from control and order that we sought in subduing.

If God blesses something, He also establishes the most effective means of achieving or administering His will. The family is His administration of the first command and honest work with out coveteousness is His administration of the second command. How would God have us go about ruling over one another. First of all, earthly rule must not predominate heavenly rule. Jesus taught us to pray for God's "will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Jesus came into a world of sinners preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. I don't think He meant that in a figurative sense. If the kingdom is at hand, so must the King be! And what could be closer to us than our hand - with which we reached out touched Jesus. Jesus taught us - reminded us - of what had been lost in the Fall in the Garden, that God's dominion over us is the source of our dominion over one another.

Consider Ephesians 5:21, "be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." That is how we rule over one another - by being subject to one another! Consider Galatians 6:2, "Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ." We follow God's dominon over us by dominating - not other's lives but other's burdens! Consider Titus 2.15, "These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you." What things do we speak with such authorityb that no one dare disregard us? "Deny ungodliness and worldly desires. . . live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus (Titus 2.12, 13). Amen and Amen. This was God's original plan, not that we should anticpate Jesus, but originally that we live in such a way in relation to Him and to others that we would need no savior. Having failed that, how blessed we are to be ambassadors of His dominion to a world enslaved to a despot of despair and a dictator of destruction!

How are we blessed to have dominion over others? Jesus said, "My peace I give to you" (John 14.27). In John 17, in His last prayer on earth, Jesus prayed for us to have the love for one another that He and the Father have for one another. How are we blessed? We are blessed with the supernatural ability to dominate by subordinating. Jesus constantly reminded us that he came not to be served but to serve. He cautioned us that the first shall be last, and the last first. Paul shared the lesson this way: "Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:4-5). We are blessed by the regenerating power of God to seek His will for ourselves and others rather than our own.

I love to hear that people feel that God has blessed them with a great spouse and wonderful family. And still, I know that is not the full story. We must search out and discover how God has blessed us to subdue the earth so as to provide shelter and food for our family. We must also search out and discover how God has blessed us to rule this kingdom on His behalf until He returns rules for a righteous eternity.

Having searched and having discovered, we should find these many blessing repeated inaudibly in our hearts as we pray without ceasing and audibly on our lips as we say without ceasing:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Amen!

Amen!