Tag: Genesis 12

Golden Mean vs. All-In

The wisdom of the world is often expressed as the golden mean.  The Oracle said, “nothing in excess.” Aristotle talked about virtue as the path between extremes.  Courage was the virtue between recklessness and cowardice. And it is not just a western thing.  The Buddhist might chart the middle path between existence and non-existence which was the expansion of the Buddha’s original rejection of both extreme asceticism (non-existence) and self-indulgence (too much existence).  And you can even find it in Christian thought.  For Aquinas and Dante the middle path is that between insufficient love and excessive love. In our love infatuated age it might be hard to imagine that second pole of excessive love.  But think again of courage and recklessness.  Isn’t recklessness an excessive love of risk? It is hard to outgrow old training so I return to a finance example. If one part of our society is engaged in the attempt to eliminate all risk, like shutting down all society for a virus, is not the other, invested in prop bets on Draft Kings and Crypto coins, running to an excess love of it?

And you would be a fool to completely reject the golden mean. But there is something in the spiritual life that speaks against it. Let’s describe it as submission and aggression. God says to Abram, “Go, from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you (Genesis 12:1).” It is the demand of absolute submission. Not much later God would ask Abram to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, the only child of that promise. And Jesus uses demands like this.  “”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ).”  Or speaking in a way that people responded – “this is a hard teaching, who can listen to it” – “”Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (Jn. 6:53).”  You shall have no other gods before me is a call for complete submission.

Yet that submission is aggressive, it is not passive.  “Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.  And Abram took Sarai…and Lot…and all their possessions…and set out (Genesis 12:4-5).” Sarah when Isaac was born told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and God told him to listen to his wife. Joshua was told to conquer the land and Israel was only rebuked when they didn’t go far enough. And like Abram who “journeyed on (Genesis 12:9),” Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).”  Within Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane “Lord, not my will, but thine be done” are both the absolute submission and the aggression.

I think there is something here of what we need. Occasionally it is the law which says do this.  And the “this” is usually some virtue or some golden mean.  The golden rule – “treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated” – is akin to that golden mean. If we all lived that way, we would have no problems.  But we don’t live that way.  And as much as the philosophers might agree in theory, in practice each one has their own list of virtues and their ordering. And when we find ourselves off the middle way, and the true path is lost, it takes something radical to restore us.  It takes the One who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17).” 

It is that One, who is not at all the middle way, but a jealous God, that we need. And who has shown up not walking a middle path dispensing wisdom like the Buddha, but setting his face for the cross. And it is that One who has given us a promise like Abram.  The Kingdom is yours.

Trusting Providence

We are reading through Genesis in the Wednesday bible study. Only slightly tongue in cheek I shared that the rest of the bible is footnote to Genesis. It is all there in the beginning. Yes, the entire history of Isreal, and then Jesus, and the church, certain fill things out.  But one of the New Testament’s favorite words is to be made full – “When the time was fulfilled…that the scriptures might be fulfilled.” (You can look up that word fulfilled in your concordance and see all it’s uses.) The mental picture of the word is that the form is already present like a pitcher or a jug or 40 gallon vat of water.  Events fill it up or even change the water into wine. The form is fulfilled, made full. Genesis is the empty 40 gallon vat. And it all fits in the there.

As part of that form, there is a funny little story in Genesis 12:10-20. Most interpreters pick up on the Exodus parallels.  Going into Egypt because of a famine.  Plagues. The plunder when leaving. All of which are fulfilled.  But in the midst of that I think there is something better to ponder with Abram. In the immediate prior verses, God has made his covenant with Abram.  And it is that covenant of pure grace and promise.  “Go…I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3).”  If the covenant with Noah was the promise of temporal providence – “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease (Gen 8:22)”  – this is the promise of eternal providence.

And immediately comes the test. “Now there was famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt. (Gen 12:10).” Now one of the things we have to understand about Abram is that he is a very rich man.  He has a full household.  He has herds and flocks and slaves and everything.  So when Abram goes to Egypt, a symbol for the world, he is dealt with by Pharoah as an equal. So does Abram deal with Pharoah out of faith in the providence of God, or does Abram try and deal with Pharoah on worldly terms?  If you know the story, or if you just know human nature, you know Abram immediately defaults to worldly terms.  He tells his wife Sarai to say she is his sister.  He passes Sarai over to Pharoah as part of a treaty. And Abram, already a rich man, receives everything that world can give. “And for her sake [Pharoah] dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.”

It’s a repeating pattern with Abram.  He believes the promise, but he’s always trying to figure out how he can speed God up, or how he can help God fulfill the promise. It’s a repeating pattern with us. It is not that we don’t believe God’s providence.  We just have trouble seeing His time and His ways. And living in the midst of the Egypt – in the midst of the world – we are always trying to cut deals to help God out.  The problem is that our deals with the world are the equivalent of giving our wife to Pharoah’s harem. We hand over the one through whom the offspring is promised to those who would mistreat her. We might get everything the world offers, but we’ve given up the pearl of great price.

The good news is that with signs and wonders – the plagues here, eventually the God-man who takes the plague of the cross upon himself – God still provides.  His covenant with us in Jesus doesn’t depend upon our perfection.  It is not upon us to make it full. God fulfills it. He has fulfilled it in Jesus, and he is at work fulfilling it in you.

The next time we find ourselves deep in negotiation with the world, pause for a second. Do we need what the world is offering? What are we giving in exchange for it? Has not God promised us “everything we need to support this body and life?” It might feel like a famine, even to a rich man with herds like Abram. But is our deliverance truly in Egypt?