In Dichotomy Do, Dichotomy Don’t I discussed how in Genesis God in the act of Creating the world separated many things. Some of those things are completely removed from the final image we see in Revelation, they are separated out and allowed to remain during this period where God is working, but when we enter His Day of Rest where everything is complete, those things will be removed completely. In this post, I would like to carry that meditation a little further.
While some things are separated in the beginning and then the unhelpful part is discarded when the work is complete, other things are only separated for this period of creation and then they are brought back together.
They are sculpted individually and then put back together as parts of a Singular Whole. Male and Female, in Genesis 1, are defined as distinct parts of the image of God, but made to Rule and Subdue the earth as One Regent bringing the Wisdom of heaven to earth.
In Genesis 2, we see God literally divide Adam into two and then bring the two back together in the first marriage. Revelation 22 completes this union by bringing the Church to the Marriage of Christ. One Man and the Woman born out of His body. Jesus, the Man born of woman, promised to Eve in Genesis 3, in Whom is the Life of the Bride – The Woman Who is the Co-Regent of a New Heaven and a New Earth are finally at the end of the age brought back together Complete – One Human.
Their marriage makes possible the marriage of Heaven and Earth. These two become distinct parts of one complete Kingdom.
I see a kind of larger Law or Precept taking shape here. Wisdom would seem to be calling our attention to the fact that some things are removed because they are not part of the whole, and some things are only removed to give clarity and understanding to the parts of the whole. Those will be restored to each other One Day.
At the Tower of Babel, God sees humanity working as one to build a tower. God’s response is to divide humanity into nations each with its own unique language.
So, how do we judge this division? Is it the kind of separation that is permanent, or is it the kind of separation intended to bring greater understanding of the parts before reunification?
Well, God sets apart one nation for Himself as His portion or inheritance in the earth. So, it would appear that one nation will be kept, the others discarded when God is finished.
But from God’s earliest days of shaping His nation He promises Abraham that the nation that will arise from Him will be a blessing to all nations. Israel becomes a kind of Adam, in whose adamah is planted a Tree of Life that calls all the nations back to it. The nations come, eat of the tree of life, and are reunited with Life.
When you graft branches into a tree, the different branches continue to bear fruit in the flavor and variety that they are. I believe they all have to be of a “kind” with each other, orange branches can’t be grafted into apple trees, but you can have an apple tree that bears apples of different colors and flavors all fed from the same root.
Revelation follows up on this idea of a reunified humanity. Every nation and every tongue gathered at one Throne. However, the tongues remain. They do not become homogeneous, but they do all seem to share an understanding.
Humanity is divided at Babel to allow many voices and “flavors” of life to be revealed. At the throne of Christ, the various tongues will remain. Much of that uniqueness will be preserved, but all sustained by One Shepherd/Gardener.
There are a couple of directions that application could take.
On the one hand, there are things that should be separated out and left out. Each individual needs to search himself or herself for things that come from Sea and Darkness. Attitudes, behaviors that arise out of Chaos, which is lawlessness, the restless will to destroy and overthrow order, must be removed. Attitudes and behaviors that sit in the darkness of Ignorance and Fear, that resist understanding and are lazy in the face of hearing a new voice, learning a new language, these must be removed.
The call to personal purity, to abstain from immorality, pride, anger and lust is repeated over and over in scripture. Not because God is no fun, but because these things are part of “Sea” and “Night,” and they threaten to destroy “Land” and “Day” which is the realm of Human life.
On the other hand, it implies that there are insights and perspectives to be shared and added to the human narrative from every nation. Just as both the Male and Female voices are needed to complete the Image of God in the earth, so all the tongues of the nations are needed to fully express the praises and worship of the Christ on the day that the Church marries the Son of Man.
What would the world look like if every nation thought more about how to be a blessing to the world than about protecting its interests? How would we all grow and learn from each other if every culture looked at itself and said, which parts of what we are doing are a gift of light and beauty to the world, and which parts of our way of doing things should we discard all together? What parts of me taste good, and what parts of us taste bitter?
