shall we dance?

“Let us make man in OUR image…and let them have dominion.”  Genesis 1:26

God speaks to someone before creating anyone.  The first pronouns are plural and inclusive, showing that God is never alone.  He is always “us”.  He is all about relationship. 

His triune existence, His dance of love, is extended to his creatures, the human race.  God wants and needs relationship.  He’s in the perfect love relationship in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet He wants more.  And He’s not just looking for adoring subjects.  He’s willing to take the risk of creating autonomous beings of free will. 

Because we are in the image of God, we too often want the knowledge and self-determinism of God.  Unfortunately, we lack God’s selflessness.  There is no envy or grasping in the love dance of the Trinity…no hurt feelings in their love.  And we want that, but we also want the control.  The power or desire for power always corrupts perfect love.  We confuse dominion with domination.

Words are important.  God promises “dominion” to his people.  Dominion is a job to do, to care for and nurture every living thing.  Domination is insistent, coercive—it may be generous as seen in benevolent despots, but it usually devolves into oppressiveness in some shape or form. 

All of life is meant to be about our striving for that which we’ve already been given.  We should want to be worthy of what we’ve already gratefully received—our lives reclaimed and redeemed.  Our ability to love rightly is part of the gift, gratefully received, strenuously worked at.

While God blessed the human race and said to us, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”, Walter Wangerin Jr. writes, “Those who are blessed must bless…SUBDUE emphatically does NOT mean that humankind gets to do with creation whatever it wants to do:  take charge, dominate, act as if it were the world’s taskmaster.  It means to do best by God’s creation, to take care of it.”

The triune god is dancing.  Shall we dance, too?

Love, Liz

“Self-sufficiency causes spiritual insensitivity.”  G.K. Beale

Photo by Kimberly McFadzean