Leviticus and Offerings (2)

I have always assumed that the Leviticus offerings were all about sin. I was surprised to find that three of the five main offerings have nothing to do with sin. They are acts of worship to God. The fourth offering was for “decontamination”. It deals with the effects of sin by cleansing people from them. It has nothing to do with guilt. The only offering that deals with sin is the fifth offering described in Leviticus. And it only deals with a limited range of sins.

Understanding that offerings have very little to do with sin, totally changed my thinking. I had to ponder the reasons why they offered. I came to realise that they were not designed to appease God, even though that is what many Christians teach. They had a different purpose, which I have described in Leciticus and Offerings.

Leviticus and Offerings (1)

I have always tried to read through the Old Testament once a year (and the New Testament more frequently). When I got to Leviticus, I usually skimmed through the first chapters quite quickly because I was not interested in the detail the book gives about how sacrifices/offerings should be done. I assumed that because they had all been fulfilled by Jesus' death on the cross, I did not really need to understand how they functioned.

A few months ago, I arrived at Leviticus once again, but felt prompted to go through it in detail this time. I was amazed at what I found. The detail given is strangely interesting and important for understanding God's purposes. I have written up what I discovered in an article. It is too long for Facebook, so I will post it on Substack, in three parts.

We tend to assume that the law and the tabernacle offerings were God's first attempt to bring deliverance in the world, but Moses and the prophets failed, so God had to have another go, and send Jesus to do the job properly. However, God does not make mistakes, so this is wrong. The Law and the Tabernacle were perfect for the purpose for which they were given. They actually achieved the purpose that God had created them for.

When I approached the tabernacle offerings from this perspective, (rather than seeing them as part of a failed system from the past) they suddenly made more sense. I discovered what God had achieved through them, and recorded them at Leviticus and Offerings.

Spouses and Authority

This is something I only learned a couple of weeks ago. I had simply never thought about it before. I have never seen it mentioned in the many books on healing that I have read. I have always realised that 1 Cor 7:4 is radical teaching in culture. Paul explains that the body of the wife belongs to her husband. That was standard understanding in New Testament times, but Paul shocked the natives by saying that the body of the husband belongs to the wife. I always understood this, but I had never noticed that verse is significant for healing too. Paul wrote,

A wife does not have authority over her own body but her husband does.
In the same way, a husband does not have authority over his own body but his wife does (1 Cor 7:4).

Paul uses the word “exousia”, which is the main New Testament word for authority. When praying for the sick, authority/permission is always central. I only realised recently that this means that husbands and wives have an important role in prayer for healing.

• A husband has authority over his wife’s body.
• A wife has authority over her husband’s body.

Sickness affects our body, so anyone with authority over our bodies will be essential for our healing. Jesus gave us authority over sickness, which is good. However, he has also given people freedom, which is authority over our own lives.

When we pray for sick people, the authority to heal comes up against the authority/freedom of the person we are praying for. The authority of the person we are paying for will usually win out. Sometimes the person asking will give us permission (authority) to pray for them, but keep the part of their life where the sickness is rooted locked up. This can make our prayers for healing ineffective.

The same applies if the sickness is caused by a bad spirit. God has given us authority over the spiritual powers of evil, so if we command them to leave, they must submit and go. However, if the person that they are harassing has given them permission/authority to be in their life, they might be able to resist, until the sick person gets tired of being harassed and wants to escape their power. Persistence might be important in these situations.

The authority situation is complicated in a marriage, because if a person is sick, both they and their spouse have authority over the sick body. This has several consequences.

• A person’s sin can cause their spouse's body to be sick (sickness is only sometimes caused by sin. More often it is an unfair attack by the spiritual powers of evil). If sin is the cause of the sickness, the spouse might need to confess and repent, before the sick person can be healed.

• If the sickness has been enabled by negative words spoken by the spouse (such as a negative declaration, or a curse), the spouse might need to renounce their words and free the sick person from the power of their words.

• If other people are praying for a sick person, they might need permission from both the sick person and their spouse, to have complete authority in the situation. Getting agreement/permission from both spouses might be important for a healing breakthrough.

• A follower of Jesus has authority over their spouse’s body, so they can pray for their spouse’s body to be healed, even if the spouse does not have faith for healing. If an unbeliever can be saved by their spouse’s faith (1 Cor 7:14), they can probably be healed by the faith of their believing spouse.

There are probably other implications that I have not thought of yet.

Government Incapability

Aurelien has posted some interesting essays on Substack warning of modern governments lack of capability to deal with the multiple problems being faced. He warns that we should not expect governments to come up with solutions or implement them effectively.

The kind of crises that we can expect over the next few years will be beyond the ability of our enfeebled governments to tackle, and that in any case their room for manoeuvre to tackle them will be very limited.

In a culture where governments are expected to solve all problems, this is a disturbing suggestion.

For a number of reasons both individually and in combination, the challenges of the future are likely to exceed the capability of our weakened states to manage, and for that matter the capability of our increasingly-juvenile and performative ruling class even to understand. So, building on the argument above, the first thing you would expect to see is western states losing “power” in the sense of losing the genuine ability to affect things, and get things done that they wanted. And indeed this is what we see.

But the greatest weakness at all levels in modern political culture is one that I’ve touched on several times in these essays: the modern preference for performative acts and speech in place of actual practical activity, and the tendency to confuse the one with the other. Of course, this approach only succeeds as long as really critical problems don’t come along.

He looks for alternative sources of hope, but does not find much.

But how would we prevent it, in a world where the State no longer has the capability to do things, but only perform? One way to approach the question is to ask what makes people band together for any purpose, develop common objectives and find and follow leaders.

Many states in Africa, indeed, have highly sophisticated social control mechanisms working alongside poorly-functioning formal western-style mechanisms, and to some extent substituting for them. So what would be the equivalent in the average western state? Well that’s an interesting question with a potentially very depressing answer. There may not be one, or at least not one we would like.

Collective action has to be based on some sense of shared identity and interest, but the only shared identity that Liberalism acknowledges is shared (and often transitory) economic interest. Unfortunately, that puts criminals, or those prepared to be most ruthless, in positions of “power,” as always happens in periods of crisis.

And in any case, what are the alternatives? How else would we organise ourselves in the effective absence of a state, if not by economic interest and the strong dominating the weak? In the West, we seem to be just incapable of spontaneous organisation of the type you find everywhere in Asia.

His outlook is bleak.

The two actors who are likely to become most powerful in a crisis and the effective disappearance of the state are organised crime and, in Europe at least, extreme Islamist groups.

The one hope that Aurelien is missing is the church, and I don’t blame him because it is demonstrating the same incapability to achieve its goals and preference for “performance ministry” as the modern state. But that is not how it should be. Social collapse and chaos should be a great environment for the flourishing of the church, but the modern Sunday meeting professional-pastor approach will struggle to function if that is what emerges.

In this season of political and economic uncertainty, it is more urgent than ever for followers of Jesus to form kingdom communities that can provide support and strength during troubled times and open the way to transform society to release the kingdom of God. We must be prepared for distress and equipped for victory.

Pause Ending

Back in 2009, I shared the following words about New Zealand.

New Zealand has forgotten God.
As a nation we once knew him;
not very well,
but we tried to serve him,
we tried to obey him,
we tried to worship him
and he blessed us.

But now New Zealand has abandoned God
most people have rejected his love,
many have forgotten who he is,
some of our leaders oppose him,
and others really hate him.
Given that we have forgotten God,
we should have lost our blessing
we should have lost it long ago.
But God is merciful
and has held back the judgment
He has held back the trouble and sorrow,
He has held back the pain,
and allowed his blessing to remain
although we had forgotten him.

Now the long pause,
between forgetfulness and consequence
between sowing and reaping
is coming to an end.
Within a year
of a bright light being snuffed out
the economy will start to shake.
Just when people are saying,
The doomsayers were wrong.
We have avoided the hard landing,
a strident shudder will strike.

Ten years later, I gave a more detailed explanation of what these words meant in an article called Economic Turning Point. However, I had no idea who or what the “bright light” that would be “snuffed out” could be, except that I had a vague feeling that it represented a female leader.

Now, the identity of the “bright light” who has suddenly disappeared from political life is obvious to anyone living in New Zealand (and also to many people who don’t) and the exact timing of her disappearance from the political power is clear. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern left Parliament on 15 April 2023.

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is a person. He has thoughts, feeling, a will and emotions. He speaks (Luke 8:29) comforts (John 14:16) teaches (John 14:25) reveals (Luke 2:26) and decides (Acts 10:6,7). The Holy Spirit is a moral person (Acts 15:28). He experiences joy (Luke 10:21).

To really experience the fullness of the Spirit, we must develop a relationship with him We must get to know him (John 14:17). The blessing that Paul prayed for the Corinthian church was that they would experince the "fellowship of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:13). Fellowship is a word that is not used much today, so we do not understand what it means. The Message Bible translates fellowship as "intimate friendship". God wants us to have intimate friendship with the Holy Spirit.

The key way to become the intimate friend of the Holy Spirit is by talking to him and listening to what he says. Imagine two friends that never spoke to each other: what a weird friendship. To develop our friendship, we should ask him what he is thinking and what he is feeling. We should tell him about what we are feeling and thank him for what he does.

We should learn to be aware of his presence. In some places or times, he is present more intensely than in others (Luke 5:17). As we develop his friendship, we should experience his life and presence more fully.

We should also learn to recognise his absence. Because he is a person, we must be careful not to grieve him (Eph 4:30). If we do grieve him, we should put things right immediately and restore our friendship.

Every time I go out, I grab my wallet and keys. I go nowhere without them. If I am on may way out and I realise that I have left them at home, I will go home and get them. I should have the same attitude to the Spirit of God. If I have gone out without him, I should feel lonely. I should rush home and wait there till I find out why he has is not with me.

More at Walk in the Spirit.

Performative Government

Aurelien wrote on Substack this week about the challenges facing the world and the incapability of governments to deal with them.

We are facing a series of unprecedented changes and crises at a time when capability to deal with them has never been lower... The problems are of an unprecedented gravity, the individuals who have to deal with them probably represent the weakest political class in modern history, and the surrounding circumstances greatly limit their ability to act, even if they knew what to do...

It is wise to assume that the solutions cannot come from enfeebled governments and adolescent political classes.

It’s perhaps hard to realise just how far government has become performative and virtual in recent decades. It’s not simply that governments have lost capability, it’s also that they don’t care. For modern political parties, the imperative is that of the Party in 1984: to be in power. Actually doing things is dangerous: you might fail, and even if you succeed you could annoy potentially powerful groups.

Talking about doing things, on the other hand, is fine. Blaming others (especially outside forces), condemning your opponent’s or your rival’s plans on ideological or financial grounds, successfully burying a problem or even denying that it exists, are the standard tools of government today...

Earthly and Spiritual Authority

We are engaged in a tough spiritual battle, so there will be no end to the struggle until Jesus returns. The spiritual powers of evil will continue to be tough to deal with because they have such a stronghold in church and government affairs. They are not going to go away, because are one of the best weapons the spiritual powers of evil have got in the current age.

Prayer is not always be effective against these government-spirits, if church leaders and political leaders are giving them authority to be there. These human leaders usually have more authority in their sphere than the ones praying, so if intercessors confront a spirit, it will ignore them because people with authority have given them permission to be there.

Prayer is a powerful weapon, but success is not always inevitable. The outcome often depends on who has the most authority in a situation. This is true in the physical too. I cannot command a bad person to leave a house, if the owner of the house has a different view and has given them permission to be there (even if that permission was given without an awareness of their bad character).

We cannot change a situation by prayer, if others have more authority in that institution, because they can use their position to overrule us. If they are already being controlled, the spiritual powers of evil can persuade them to use their authority to overrule us.

More at Prayer and Authority.

Strategic Survival Personality

I grew up on a farm in a rural area, so when I was old enough to go to high school, I was sent to a boarding school in Timaru so that I could get a better education. I hated life at the boarding school and was glad to get out when I reached an age where I could leave school.

Boarding school was an odd place for a young person to live. A small group of popular boys really enjoyed it (it is hard to say what made them popular). Another group of boys really hated it because they were bullied intensely, usually because they were a bit different. I was in the large middle group who got by without being noticed. However, I understood how easy it was for a boy to drop into the bottom group, so the middle group was a precarious place to be.

The bullying was mostly low-level. Verbal insults were frequent. Sometimes when you went to bed and night, you would find that someone had put leaves or branches in your bed. Occasionally, an older boy would thump you on the shoulder while you were waiting in line to enter the dining room. I was good with words, so I probably deserved some of the stuff that happened when I was smart to bigger boys.

I coped with life by taking refuge in the school library and spending all my free time there. I loved reading and found an endless supply of good books to read. The “tough boys” did not go near the library, because they were scared of books, so it was a really safe to be. However, by escaping in this way, I probably cut myself off from other people and became a bit of a recluse.

A few years ago, I heard Nick Duffell talk about Boarding Schools and Strategic Survival Personality. He was explaining how many politicians like Boris Johnston lost their empathy by being sent to Eton at the age of 8 or 9. His talk rang a bell with me. I took the following notes

When a boy goes to boarding school,
his relationships with parents, siblings and friends are broken.
He leaves a place of safety,
a cocoon of peace
and is forced to be independent.
He develops a pseudo-self-sufficiency.
He makes all decisions, and solves all problems himself.

Boarding school is a dangerous place.
You never know when bullies will hit.
They are insecure, so they find a place by striking out at those who are weak.
The way to be safe
is to be untouchable.

Boys learn quickly not to show any vulnerability;
don’t show any weakness
don’t show any vulnerability
don’t show any anger,
because that encourages the bullies.
Don’t let them know that they have got at you.
Shut down your emotions.
Many lose any ability to have empathy,
which makes them bad leaders.

I escaped to the library. I read book after book after book. Bullies never went there, so the library was my safe place.

Friendships at boarding school tend to be shallow, but there is safety in numbers. I had three friends. We walked to class and assemblies together, waited in line for meals together, because it kept us safe (that was unspoken). But we never shared our fears, or our dreams, because that would be too risky, so my friendships did not last beyond school.

Duffell put survivors into three categories.

• Compliers – they say that boarding school was the best years of their lives. The self-sufficiency and emotional detachment got them to where they are, so they will not criticise the place that gave it to them.

• Crushed – Some children are badly damaged. They were often emotionally or physically abused.

• Rebels – They tend to become anti-establishment. I think that I fell into the rebel category. I never accepted the authority of the housemasters and prefects, because I did not respect them. I am not sure how much anti-establishment baggage I still carry.

From Past to Future.

Past to Future (3) Looking Back as Adults

We can review the significant and repeated events from our childhood, along with the emotions associated with them in our memory, in light of who we have become. The diagram explained in my previous post can help us respond to our growing awareness. Every aspect of an event will need to be reassessed.

Thoughts/Perspective
How do we feel about the event now, looking from an adult perspective, or having become a Christian?

We should ponder whether our thoughts and perceptions of the event were correct. As noted above, the perception of a child will usually be incomplete, or wrong. If an event was traumatic, then a child’s perception of the event was almost certainly incorrect. The other person was almost certainly wrong in their behaviour. The people who should have protected them might also have been at fault. If we review the event from an adult/Christian perspective, our perception of what happened will likely differ.

We might need to ask God how he understood the event. Then, ideally, we should modify our perception of the event to align with how he saw it, even if we did not discern his presence.

Emotions/Feelings
We can also review our emotional response in light of who we are now. An emotion is never right or wrong. It was what it was. However, we can think about what our emotional response would be to a similar event now, especially with a different perspective on what was happening. We might realise that we are now a different person and that our emotional response would be different too.

We might need to ask God to remove the emotional response from our memory, because we want to respond differently now. Having a memory of our emotional response is different from having the actual emotion in our memory ready to pop out again when triggered. For example, remembering that I was angry at the time differs from still feeling angry when I think of the event.

In this consideration, we should remember that emotions are not right or wrong. They are just a reflection of how events are affecting us.

Actions/Behaviours
We can review the behaviour that the event and our emotional response to it produced. We should understand that a child’s response will always be self-protective, so this means that it is never wrong. It was the right thing to do at the time if it kept the child safe, even if an adult might think the child should have behaved differently. Gabor Mate explains,

Everything within us, no matter how distressing, exists for a purpose; no matter how troublesome and debilitating it may be. The truth is, these disturbers of our peace have always been friends, strange though it may sound. Their origins were protective and beneficent and that remains their current aim, even when they seem to go about it in a misguided way. I call them stupid friends.

If the child believes that an action was necessary to keep themselves safe, (even if that was not strictly true), they have no choice but to act according to their perception of what was happening. Therefore, what they did was not wrong. For example, suppose an adult told the child at the time that their outburst was terrible. The adult is mistaken because every child is entitled to do what they think will keep themselves safe (even if they responded with an emotional overreaction).

We should reflect on how we would behave in response to a similar event now, or how we should respond now that we have more wisdom than we had as a child. Possibly a different response would be wiser. It might involve speaking up about our perspective on the event and challenging the other person's actions.

Of course, it is not always safe to speak up, even when we are mature adults. If the relationships have not changed, remaining silent might still be safer. However, we should understand that choosing to stay silent to keep the peace is quite different, and far better than keeping silent because we believe that we don’t have the right to speak. The former is a proactive response by a person who understands the situation, whereas the latter devalues us as a person.

Even if the understanding/perception of the child was correct, their behaviour might have been inappropriate. However, a child is not responsible for solving every problem that they face. Parents are usually responsible for resolving serious issues between siblings. If they fail to do that, the responsibility should not be dumped on a sensitive child.

We might need to ask God to break the link between the emotion and the behaviour so that the feeling does not always trigger the behaviour. The ideal outcome is that we can act on that particular emotion with various responses depending on the event.

Decisions
We can review carefully any decisions that we have made. If we have vowed not to do something, that is constraining our behaviour unnecessarily. We should agree with God that we are not bound by the vow that we made when we were in a stressful situation that we did not fully understand. He will set us free from it.

From Past to Future.

Past to Future (2)

Gabor Mate explains something important about the way our memory works.

For efficiency, the brain is designed to form clusters in our neurophysiology and mind—connections among certain memories, emotions, ways of perceiving the world, and behaviours—which stay together as internal units that can be activated when needed.

I created the following diagram to illustrate what Gabor Mate is explaining.

In our memory (shaded circle), we often cluster events, perceptions, feelings and behaviours together.

• Our perceptions and thoughts about an event influence our behaviour, but they are not always remembered clearly.

• Our emotions/feelings often dominate the memory (over our rational thoughts). Strong feelings (particularly negative ones like fear, shame or anger) give the event a stronghold in our memory. If there are no strong emotions during the event, it will go into a weaker place in memory and will be quickly forgotten.

• Our behaviour/actions will often be motivated by the emotions we feel. The more intense the emotion, the stronger will be the response/behaviour. That is good if we need to respond powerfully, but it can also cripple us.

• In response to intense emotional events, we often make decisions/vows about what we will do in the future, eg “I will never do that again” or “I will never speak honestly to my father again”. We are often not always aware that we have made these decisions, and they do not always go into our memory with the event, but these vows significantly constrain our future behaviour.

Strong emotions will automatically produce the same behaviour during subsequent events, even if the situation is different. A powerful feeling prompts the behaviour that is clustered with it in our memory.

More at Past to Future.

Confusion

The Labour government that has ruled New Zealand for the last six years seems to be struggling. Since Jacinda Ardern stepped down as Prime Minister at the beginning of the year, five cabinet ministers have resigned or been sacked from their roles.

In a way, this is not surprising, as apart from a few skilled ministers, Labour was always a fairly weak team, and managing a government department is a very challenging role. Very few politicians are up to it. The chief executives of the key government departments have spent years learning to work the system, and those who get to the top role are very skilled power operators. It is very difficult for a relatively experienced politician to rein them in (I explain this further in Political Power).

When Chris Hipkins became the leader at the beginning of the year, the news media jumped on the band waggon, but now their mood has changed. They are writing articles suggesting that Labour may have already lost the election in September, in order to position themselves as those who determined who becomes the government (as they like to believe).

The most recent resignation was the Minister of Revenue, who resigned because he disagreed with tax policies announced by the Prime Minister. This suggests that in addition to personal failures, the cabinet is also fraught with power struggles over policy issues.

When I look at this situation and try to understand the spiritual realities behind these difficulties, the word that comes to mind is “Confusion”. In 2015, I wrote the following words about the spiritual climate in Wellington when I sensed that a spirit of confusion had been released by those with power in the capital city.

Wellington will be confused
People will buzz in and out of the beehive,
uncertain of what to do,
Filled with fear, perplexity and confusion (Is 22:5).

All treading on each other
to get to the top (out of habit),
but not knowing where the top is,
or what they will do if they get there.
Not knowing their right hand
from their left (Jonah 4:11).

No ideals, except for
pride,
power,
position,
privilege.

Trouble to the left
Trouble to the right
All is confusion
All is confusion
Disaster behind us
Terror ahead of us
Confusion,
all is confusion.

This confusion has been bubbling away for quite a while but is now becoming manifest. The leaders of the National Party are crowing about the problems of the incumbent government, but they have forgotten their own struggles with confusion. Following their loss in the 2017 election, they suffered several leadership coups that produced four leaders and four deputy leaders in two years. Each of these leaders came from quite different political perspectives, so there is obviously a great deal of division and confusion beneath their desperate, election-driven unity.

Most of the people with government experience disappeared from the political scene during the leadership struggles, so if National does win the election, they will have a bunch of untested ministers trying to control the heads of government departments with years of practice at handling power. They will come under the same spirit of confusion and will not have the spiritual wisdom to deal with it.

Past to Future

Perhaps because I am getting older, I have been thinking about my life and the people that have influenced me to be what I have become. I have thought about my childhood and the influences that shaped my life.

My thinking has been partly inspired by reading “The Myth of Normality” by Gabor Mate. It is a fascinating book, and he communicates the insights of Psychology in a way that is relatively easy to understand.

I have written up some of the insights that I gained from reading his book in a substack article called Past to Future. The article also describes what I have learned about myself. I will post some key insights here, but for the full article you should read Past to Future.

Bad Stuff

A lot of bad stuff is happening in the world, but these things are normal in a season when the people of the world have forgotten God. Modern expansions of power are just the world doing what the world does, and the world expands while the church sleeps, but I am not surprised, or disturbed. God sits in heaven and laughs. He scoffs at their plans (Psalm 2:4).

Without God, serious problems always occur, so people look to political power to rescue them. And there are always power seekers willing to step up and try to do it. They often start out with good intentions but get corrupted by power. Some arrive at a place where they believe that they can achieve more good by doing evil. Some bad people also try to manipulate political power to advance their evil goals.

This is happening now, but it has always happened. Read English and European history, and you will see that it has been going on forever. The same thing was happening in Judges 9. It is an analogical to what is happening in our time.

In the last hundred years, we have seen massive increases in political power as faith in God has declined. With every new crisis, leaders demand more power to deal with it, and the people are mostly glad to see it, because without God, they need the government to rescue them. I note that people who grumble about increasing political control expect the government to rescue them when their homes are damaged by flood, landslide, or earthquake, or when a pandemic disrupts their business. I am not surprised, or distressed by these changes. They are the inevitable consequence of people losing faith in God. Without God, people need political powers to rescue them.

Fortunately, the limits of political power are also being completely exposed. Every time a crisis is dealt with, another worse problem that they did not expect pops up in its place. The political powers are just not smart enough to deliver the peace and plenty that they have promised, so all over the world, government leaders are being shaken and are failing.

Biden, Macron and Rutte are examples. And the powerful people who try to manipulate political power, like Schwab and Soros, are getting older and are no longer confident that they can resolve all the problems that frighten them.

Railing against the world for doing what it always does is a waste of energy and will not help. We have an effective solution to the problems of the world. That is the gospel of Jesus and the alternative kingdom that he is establishing with the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the church seems unwilling to push this solution seriously.

Systems of the World

The systems of the world are being shaken, and will eventually fail, but I am not confident that we are close to their collapse. They are being shaken, but I think they are tougher than we realise, and will persist for longer than many expect.

The rulers of the world are desperate and will use every resource and power they can get hold of to keep on top. Unfortunately, most people in the world still believe that political power of some kind is the solution to the problems that the world faces. They will gladly give the powers of the world more authority in a desperate attempt to hold back the darkness and keep the peace.

We will see systems failing in ways that look like they are collapsing, but it will not be their final fall. At these times, the systems of the world will appear to be beaten, but they will move and switch, and come back even stronger. For example, the United States could collapse in on itself under the strain of political and cultural division, economic crisis and inability to resolve it, and another serious military defeat. However, these crises will just create the conditions for a more ruthless leader to rise to power, and make the United States militarily stronger, but probably more evil.

What worries is the complete unpreparedness of the church for what lies ahead. Although there are plenty of secular and Christian warnings of troubles ahead, nothing much has changed and the church is even less prepared than it was twenty years ago.

God will not allow the systems of the world to collapse, until his people are ready to take advantage of the power vacuum and put something better in its place. That's why I wrote,

We should be joining together, so we can advance God's Kingdom when the kingdoms of the world collapse and fall. Radical change is needed, so we can shine brightly in the darkness and share in the victory that God has planned.

I fear that if the world systems were to collapse tomorrow, most of the church would not be prepared to stand, so that it would be wiped out along with the powers of the world. That would not be very helpful to God's purposes.

So God will allow the world system to persist for a long time yet. He will allow it to keep going, as long as it takes for his people to get prepared. And that is a bit out of his control, because he will not force his people to make changes that they are unwilling to make.

Curse

The second part of the curse/consequence of the fall does affect the relationship between men and women.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you (Gen 3:16).

God spoke to the woman and warned her that as a consequence of their handing authority on earth over to the spiritual powers of evil, she would be “ruled over” by the man.

The Genesis account does not explain how this would happen, but the Hebrew word translated as “rule” is “mashal”. It is a strong word. It means to “rule” or “have dominion”. God warned that women would be dominated by men. This was a change. Adam had not dominated Eve when they were created in the garden, so this was a consequence of the fall.

The reality is that there are only two ways that men could dominate over women:

• Superior intelligence.
• Superior physical strength

There is no evidence in the scriptures that men are more intelligent than women, so it must be superior physical strength that allows fallen men to rule and control fallen women. I have already noted above that there is no evidence in Genesis that men were created physically stronger than men. Rather, it suggests that they were created equal in strength.

This suggests that something happened at the fall to increase Adam’s physical strength over what it had been when he was created. Or perhaps, the change to women that increased their pain in childbirth diminished their overall strength and made them vulnerable to the physical dominance of men.

This physical dominance would be reinforced by their continuing attraction to men, even those who are damaged by sin. Genesis says that women would continue to be attracted to their husbands. This was the natural outworking of their natural ability to communicate and interact, so it seems to be a good thing and not the consequence of the fall, although it might be attenuated by it.

From Gender Difference in the OT

Attachment

Genesis explains something important about the nature of men. In creation, before the fall, loyalty to a wife takes priority over loyalty to parents.

That’s why a man abandons his father and his mother and attaches himself to his woman and they become one flesh (Gen 2:24).

We tend to focus most on the “one flesh”, which is possible because they are made from the same stuff. However, the first part of the verse uses a strong word to describe the change that occurs when a man finds a wife. The man abandons his parents. The Hebrew word is “azab”, which means loosen or forsake. Men must honour their parents, but they are expected to leave their parents and form a new strong relationship with their wives.

The husband attaches himself to his chosen woman. The Hebrew word is “dabaq”, which means “to cling, stick, stay close, cleave, keep close, stick with, follow closely, join to, overtake, catch.” This is a strong word. A man is expected to really cling to his wife and stay close. The common understanding that men are created to go out into the world and do bold things, whereas women stay at home and cling to their men is wrong. In the beginning, God created men to pursue and cling to their women. Obviously, this shapes the personality that God gave to men, but not in the way that is usually claimed.

From Gender Difference in the Old Testament".

Inflation

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced yesterday that its Monetary Policy Committee agreed to leave the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 5.50%. They believe that they are getting price inflation under control. They note that the CPI, which they use as a measure of inflation, was 6.7 percent over the past year.

Unfortunately, that does not resolve the problems that inflation has created for ordinary people. Focussing on inflation over the latest year creates a false perspective. Since the December 2019 quarter (before COVID), the CPI has increased by 17 percent. Over the same period, wage rates for workers doing the same role with the same skills have risen by only 9.5 percent. That gap is why people feel there is a cost of living crisis.

The wage-rate increase for the accommodation and food services industry in the private sector rose was only 6.6 percent. For people in this industry, the gap between price increases and increases in their wages increases is even more severe, unless they can get longer working hours, or find a better-paid role.

The CPI does not measure the effects of changes in mortgage interest rates, so the gap above is only part of the burden that wage earners are feeling. For most, the increase in the additional interest that they will have to pay is the worst aspect of the inflation pain that they are experiencing. And there is no sign that mortgage interest rates will go back to the low levels to which house buyers have become accustomed.

A bank economist said today that in a couple of years, this inflation will be just a memory, but that is not right. In the unlikely event that the inflation rate returned to zero, prices will not return to the level that they were before the inflation started in 2019. Prices just stop increasing, so the price increases that have already occurred are locked in forever.

Unless, wage and salary earners can get an increase in their wages to compensate for the 17+ percent increase in prices that has occurred, they will be permanently worse off. That is why bank employees are currently frustrated by a 7 percent pay offer from their employers, especially when the banks have been making record profits.

Genesis 2

Genesis tells us that it was not good for a man to be alone/separate (Gen 2:18). Up until this point in the creation account, everything had been good. Adam being alone was the first thing that was not good. The animals created did not provide a solution to this problem (Gen 2:19-20). He needed relationships with other humans. This did not make him different from women. The type of companionship that Adam needed is described in Genesis 2:18, where God declared what he intended that he would "make him a helper as his counterpart".

This phrase has been badly translated to support male dominance. There are two key Hebrew words. The Hebrew word “neged” is translated as “suitable for him” in many traditional English translations of this verse. However, its root meaning is “front”, in the sense of “in front of, what is conspicuous, in sight of, parallel to, opposite”. There is no sense of inferiority or subservience.

This phrase has been badly translated to support male dominance. There are two key Hebrew words. The Hebrew word “neged” is translated as “suitable for him” in many traditional English translations of this verse. However, its root meaning is “front”, in the sense of “in front of, what is conspicuous, in sight of, parallel to, opposite”. There is no sense of inferiority or subservience.

The other Hebrew word is “neged”, which means “helper”. Again there is no suggestion of weakness or compliance. The word is mostly used to describe God’s role as our helper (Ex 18:4; Deut 33:26; Ps 33:20; 115:11; 121:2). If God can be called our helper, then a woman can take on the word with honour.

God decided that he would give the man a “helper corresponding to him”. The common translation “suitable for him” makes it seem that the woman was created to support the man, but there is nothing in the Hebrew text to support that suggestion. The woman is a helper corresponding to the man. The woman is equal to the man. They two are stronger together because they support each other. It is not a servant/master relationship, but two equals supporting each other. There is nothing in the phrase to suggest that men are created to lead and women to follow, as some theologians claim.

The phrase “helper corresponding to him/in front of him” tells us nothing about any differences between the personalities of men and women. The woman is a helper in the same way as God is our helper. The role does not require a difference in personalities (even if a difference exists for other reasons).

From Gender Difference in the Old Testament.

Gender Differences in the OT

I recently completed a study on gender in the OT. It is too long to publish here, so I have put it on Substack. See Gender Differences in the Old Testament. The following paras are the Introduction.

A common teaching is that God created men with a disposition for leadership and women with a disposition for following. People who hold this position claim that a man must be the leader in his home to find fulfilment and that women can only be fulfilled if they actively submit to their husband’s leadership. The problem with this view is that it does not exist in the Bible.

I went to the scriptures to identify what they say about the personality differences between men and women. I was surprised to find that they actually say very little about the personality differences between men and women.

When we study the scriptures, we need to be careful to distinguish between:

• statements about what ought to be, and
• descriptions of the way things are.

We need to understand which type we are reading.

1. The Bible contains statements about God’s intentions for the behaviour of men and women. His commands can imply a difference between the personalities of men and women.

2. Descriptions of behaviour can point in two different directions.

   • When God created humans in his image, he made them male and female. If men and women behave differently, this could be a reflection of what God created them to be. Differences in behaviour can be a consequence of being created male or female.

   • Humans are also affected by the fall. If men and women display different personalities or behaviour, it could be the consequence of the fall. This type of difference does not reflect God’s original purpose for men and women.

When studying the behaviour and personalities of people in the Bible, we must be aware of these two possibilities.

When studying the scriptures to identify how males and females are different, we should consider which of these two categories apply to the passages under consideration.

• Any differences that were introduced at creation are what God intends to be there. They are normative.

• Differences that came as a result of the fall are not normative. Rather they are to be resisted and should disappear when we are born again and transformed into the likeness of Jesus. This restoration might only come to fullness when the body of Jesus grows to maturity.

We must distinguish “what is” from “what ought to be”, especially when studying the Old Testament.