I was reminded while reading Luke 8 recently, that God throughout Scripture, and ultimately in Christ, is completely counter cultural to all fallen cultures. Notice in this chapter how Jesus upends cultural expectations regarding women (several are named in this chapter as his closest disciples and supporters) and family. In the ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish world women were second or third class citizens, and family and clan determined your identity, value, and worth. The two instances in this chapter, among many throughout the gospels, show how Jesus challenged these expectations throughout his ministry. And Yahweh did the same thing all throughout the history of redemption.
Tim Keller has impressed this biblical theme on me in his books, sermons, and lectures. I love it because it would be very difficult, and I would argue impossible, for fallen, imperfect people to make up stories and a religion that goes so against the grain of our self-centered, culturally captive human nature. I recently finished one of his more recent books, Making Sense of God, which is a challenge to the skeptical, secular mindset of our current age. In a section called, “A Story of Reversal,” Keller gives us examples of just how God turns cultural and societal expectations upside down:
The Bible begins with the book of Genesis, written when primogeniture—the passing of all the family’s wealth and estate to the eldest son—was the iron law in virtually all societies. Yet the entirety of Genesis is subversive of this cultural norm. God constantly chooses and works through the second sons, the ones without social power. He chooses Abel rather than Cain, Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau, Joseph rather than Reuben. And when he works with women he does not choose women with the cultural power of beauty and sexuality. He does his saving work through old, infertile Sarah, not young Hagar, through unloved and unattractive Leah, not lovely Rachel. God repeatedly refuses to allow his gracious activity to run along the lines of worldly influence and privilege. He puts in the center the person whom the world would put on the periphery. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann comments on the place in Genesis 25 where God prophecies through an oracle that he will be working with the younger of two sons, Jacob rather than Esau. He explains that the lesson of Genesis is that “the oracle is against all conventional wisdom.”
“The Israelites must have wondered about this patriarch who was always in trouble. . . . This God does not align himself only with the obviously valued ones, the first-born. This oracle speaks about an inversion. It affirms that we are not fated to the way the world is presently organized.”
“That is the premise of the ministry of Jesus. the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry. . . are the heirs to the kingdom” (Matt. 5:3-7).
This tendency of God to turn human expectations upside down is exactly what we would expect God to do if the Fall we learn about in Genesis 3 is true. In the first two chapters of Genesis we read that God created the universe “very good,” or we might say “right side up.” When Adam and Eve were deceived by the Devil into believing that in disobeying God they could become like him, “knowing good and evil,” everything was turned “upside down.” Natural, fallen, man (“male and female he created them”) ever since has presumed that he could order reality by his own lights, that he could define things without any reference to his creator. Big mistake! All the misery, suffering, and death we experience in this world comes directly from this pride of the autonomous self, that we apart from God can determine the ultimate meaning of existence.
And this is a consistent theme throughout the Bible, through it’s 66 different books, and 40 different authors, in three different languages. We call this the self-authenticating nature of Scripture, and it is a powerful testimony to its authenticity. This is only one of the multitude of reasons we, and our children, can trust this book, our Bible, and God’s special revelation to we his people, not only in this life, but for the life to come.
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