Genesis, Faith, and Blessing

I have been reading Creation and Blessing by Allen Ross, which is his commentary on the book of Genesis. I am about halfway through the book and what has been noteworthy to me is the emphasis on blessing and faith through the book (and I am roughly at Gen 25). I wrote a paper several years ago for a seminary class on faith in Genesis and recall that being a major theme. God is a "blessing" God--He wants to bless and He does so in abundance and without us deserving His blessing.

One of the mantras coming out of seminary is "context, context, context" for understanding a passage or book. Genesis is written by Moses (no JEDP) to the generation that is about to enter the promised land under Joshua. Genesis is giving the people of Israel their founding stories, what God has promised that He is in the process of fulfilling through them, repeated pictures of what imperfect faith looks like, and how God faithfully took care of those He has promised to bless. "Is God with us?" asks this generation. Look at Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph--yes! "What kind of difficulty can I expect?" Opposition, war, famine, barrenness, delay--but this does not stop God from fulfilling His promises! "What does faith look like?" Walking into the unknown trusting that God will provide, especially when you know that where you are walking is directly part of His fulfillment of promise! "Is perfect faith required of me?" No, these Genesis stories recount men and women of imperfect faith, but also a God who is a perfectly faithful God. The blessing is based on God's covenant promise, not their (or our) faithfulness.

This is good news for us. We must learn to walk by faith and Scripture provides us imperfect examples to encourage our walk. God is perfectly faithful and stands by His covenant, provided to us in Jesus.

Professing to be wise, they became fools

The title comes from Romans 1:22, where Paul is discussing idolatry and the downward spiral that comes as a result of the choice to reject the true God for any and every substitute. One result is a loss of rationality ('futile in their speculations' in 1:21)--the basic ability to think clearly. This was on full display last night as I watched the new documentary What is a Woman from Matt Walsh at The Daily Wire. In this documentary, Matt goes around asking for people to define what a woman is, from the academy, to the random person on the street, to the politician, and even to a tribe in Africa! The documentary is more than just trying to define a woman, but is investigating the gender ideology space, including transitioning. One of the most poignant moments in the film was the complete inability of the people--with multiple degrees--to define a woman. Professing to be wise, they truly have become fools. Meanwhile the tribe in Africa laughed, gave a very simple answer--a woman bears the children. 

The most horrifying reality of the twisted gender ideology is how it encouraging hatred for and destruction of the human body, especially for teenage girls. Being a teen is already a tough period of life with physiological changes and the last thing needed is for adults to encourage making major medical decisions that have lifelong destructive consequences. In the Walsh video, one of the doctors admits that the drug used for puberty blockers has been used for chemical castration. And worse, much of this is irreversible--especially once you go down the surgical route.

It is the responsibility of the church to develop a healthy view towards the human body and sexuality and to encourage people to embrace their biological gender. What God has created is good and we must learn to rejoice, even in the fallenness, of being fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139:14). And parents--protect your children from this gender nonsense. Read Abigail Shrier's book Irreversible Damage. Look at some of the resources that Scott Newgent provides.