Genesis drops an interesting hint, that it’s in the husband recognizing and valuing his wife as his ezer kenegdo (see previous blog) that he will find the ever-present, powerful and perfectly equipped help he needs in a world that often threatens to overwhelm him. 

That’s because God chose the man as the one to bring order to the world and keep the opposition at bay – a huge responsibility – but right beside him he would have his ezer kenegdo “help meet” to keep him valiantly hacking away at the dragons, and picking him up when he’s down. Because it’s in this kind of relationship together that husbands and wives are living the secret to successful human rulership of this planet. 

And Paul saw that too, because he compares this relationship of husband and wife to the relationship of Christ and the church. Which fits, because it’s in the relationship of Christ and the church that the successful rulership of this planet is being established right now too. And it’s in Genesis we see how it works.

In Genesis, the man had the job of looking after the garden in Eden, an amazing job because this was where God dwelt. But God made sure the man couldn’t do the job on his own. He could only do it with the help of his wife. It was only by combining what God had equipped each of them with that the job could be done.

To Paul it was the perfect picture of Christ and the church, because it was to Christ that the Father had given the responsibility of setting up his kingdom on Earth, the same job he’d given to Adam. But Adam had let evil take over instead.  

Jesus then corrected that by defeating evil. But that was just the first step. Jesus would then lead the charge to free the whole planet from evil forever. How? Through his church. So Jesus is not doing this alone either, any more than God left Adam to do the job alone. The Father has supplied Jesus with his very own perfectly equipped ezer kenegdo church too – which, just like Eve was to Adam, is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh – and she’s right here in the trenches giving her all in service to him. 

And what a formidable team, Jesus and his Spirit-filled church bringing in the kingdom of God so that one day the Earth will be a pure place for the Father to dwell in and all opposition will have been defeated. 

And it was all there in Genesis as to how it would be done – through a God-equipped team, pictured first of all by the God-equipped team of husband and wife, and now by the formidable God-equipped team of Christ and his church. 

I wonder how many girls have grown up in Christian homes and Christian churches who’ve never quite known what being a “help meet” means. 

I say that, because when I found out what it meant it gave me quite a shock, having grown up with the traditional, rather soppy Christian view of “help meet” in Genesis 2:20. In Hebrew, however, the words for “help meet” are ezer kenegdo, that make it very clear why a wife’s role is so crucial to God. Because ezer means a wife is a lifesaver to her husband, and kenegdo means she is totally his equal. 

The example in scripture that jumped out at me of such an ezer kenegdo wife was Zipporah (Zee-porah), the Midianite wife of Moses. And if anyone should have been the typical meek, submissive “little wifey back home” of Christian tradition, it was Zipporah. She was the wife of a mighty Egyptian prince, a man brought up in the high society of Pharaoh’s palace and now the top man in Israel, the one nation on the planet that God had personally chosen to work his plan through. And Zipporah wasn’t even an Israelite either, so she could be excused for staying in the shadows and not saying a peep.

But when God threatened to take her husband’s life, out came the ezer in Zipporah. Here was God himself in the room with them, but when she saw her husband in conversation with God, and she knew her man was in deep trouble, she came out flying to save him. 

She knew Moses deserved a jolly good slap, because he’d been shirking his duties toward their son, by putting off having him circumcised, a total no-no for the leader of Israel when the sign of God’s personal dealings with Israel was circumcision. But no cowering in the corner and whimpering from her. Right there and then she grabbed their son and sliced off his foreskin and deposited it at Moses’ feet. “You’re a husband of blood to me,” she cried, referring to the circumcision (Exodus 4:24-26). But in standing up to him she also saved his life (ezer means saviour, rescuer, protector). But what a shocker that must be to Christian tradition that God didn’t correct her or “put her in her place.” Instead, he, the mighty God himself, let go of Moses and did not go through with killing him. 

Why? Because Zipporah was being the powerhouse ezer kenegdo God had created wives to be. She stepped in when her husband was totally out of line, she did what he was supposed to have done, and while Moses stood there like a wet mop, she saved his life. And I wonder how many other husbands would readily and thankfully admit that’s what their wives have done for them too. Just as God meant it to be.   

Christian tradition still likes the idea (a lot) that the first woman was made from the first man’s rib. Unfortunately, that tradition is much closer to an ancient Sumerian myth than it is to the correct Hebrew meaning of ‘rib’ in Genesis 2:21.

In the Sumerian myth the goddess Ninhursag creates a beautiful garden paradise and charges her half brother, the god Enki, to tend the garden and control the wild animals. When Enki then eats several forbidden plants in the garden, Ninhursag blows a gasket and curses eight of Enki’s body parts, including a rib. 

Enki is now near to death, so a strong appeal is made to Ninhursag to spare his life. In response, she creates several new gods and goddesses, one of whom is Ninti who heals Enki’s rib. The name Ninti is a clever Sumerian pun, meaning both “Lady of the rib” and “Lady who makes live,” since in healing Enki’s rib she also helped save his life.

There are several parallels between this story and present Christian tradition, because in Christian tradition Eve takes on both Ninti’s titles. In Genesis 3:20, for instance, Eve is called the “Mother of all living,” and in Christian tradition she’s also become the “Lady of the rib,” based on the English translation of the Hebrew word tsela (say-la)in Genesis 2:21 as “rib.” Which is unfortunate, because tsela is not translated as a human rib anywhere else in the Old Testament.

In Genesis and Exodus tsela always refers to a “side,” not a rib, suggesting that God divided the man into two equal sides (the splitting of the Adam!) – with one side being crafted into a woman, and in the space she left behind God then filled with new flesh to make the man whole again. It certainly gets the concept across a whole lot better that woman is man’s equal from top to toe, rather than just a rib.

And Philo Judeaus, the great Jewish philosopher alive at the time of Jesus, would agree with that, because in his description of Genesis 2:21 he wrote: “The letter of this statement is plain enough; for it is expressed according to the symbol of the part, a half of the whole, each party, the man and the woman, being as sections of nature co-equal for the production of that genus which is called man.”

Whether God literally anesthetized the man and surgically sliced him in two to create a woman, or it was simply a vivid vision Adam had – either way the point is made clear in Adam’s joyous cry in Genesis 2:23, “she’s bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” that, anatomically and structurally, she was the same as him. 

She was his co-equal, in other words, NOT just a rib.

Some Christians believe that God decides how long we live, and we can’t change it. “Our lives belong to God,” they say, so we are totally subject to his will. If he wills the day we die, then so be it, our days are numbered according to however many days God wills for us.

To other Christians, however, the idea that God decides the day we die creates all kinds of problems and neuroses. It’s scary, for a start, knowing we could drop dead at any second for no other reason than “God decided it.” 

It could make us careless too, because what’s the point of looking after ourselves and making right choices if our actions and choices don’t have any effect on how and when we die? If tomorrow we die because God decided it, and not because of anything we do, then we might as well eat, drink and be merry. We can do whatever we like because there aren’t any consequences, and that surely can’t be right.

So, what really decides the day we die? Is it God or us? Does God simply allot a fixed number of days for us to live, or does he adjust the time of our death according to our choices and actions? If a Christian decides to fight in a war, for instance, and he’s killed, is that because God willed it to happen, or because he allows us the freedom to choose? Does God base our death on the consequences of our actions, or on some predetermined plan of his?

Well, in Scripture, the day we die is a total non-issue, because we’re already dead. “For you died,” Paul writes in Colossians 3:3. And when did that happen? We “died with Christ,” Romans 6:8. “Don’t you know,” verse 3, “that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” When Christ died, we died. But God then “raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms,” Ephesians 2:6, so not only are we already dead, we’ve also been raised from the dead too, and right now our lives are “hidden with Christ in God,” Colossians 3:3.

When it dawned on Paul that “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,” Galatians 2:20, it got his mind off death entirely. And when he realized that Christ was now living HIS life in him, then death really did become a non-issue because Christ never dies. 

Instead of worrying about how and when he was going to die, then, Paul could concentrate on this new life he’d been given – that would last and grow forever.

We could also ask the question: “Why does God let bad people die so old?” It doesn’t seem fair, for instance, that a man still alive at 113 years old attributes his longevity to ‘Cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women,’ while Job, who was “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8) was reduced to a pitiful wreck of a man, having lost all his children and his livelihood to a deal Satan made with God. Or that Jesus, who obeyed and trusted God perfectly, was sent to an early death by conniving, power-hungry, religious hypocrites.

Surely good people deserve to live to a ripe old age as proof that God rewards people for living good lives. It’s hardly good advertising on God’s part, then, to let good people suffer from persecution, accidents, all the usual diseases everyone else gets, and premature death, because why would anyone be attracted to Christianity when it clearly doesn’t guarantee immunity from all the things that take humans to an early grave?

So if God isn’t interested in guaranteeing a long life, what is he interested in instead? 

One answer Jesus gave in John 3:21 was this: “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” So that’s what life is for. No matter how short or how long a person’s life is, the purpose of it is to make it plain to anyone watching what a human life is like when God is the one shaping and moulding it. 

And what makes that so noticeable is the contrast to those in verse 20 who “will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” Some people spend their entire lives hiding from God, and don’t want him involved in their lives at all. But others, like David, willingly opened their lives to God: “Investigate my life, O God,” he wrote in Psalm 139:23-24 (The Message), “find out everything about me. Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about; see for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong – then guide me on the road to eternal life.”

David knew there was more going on in his life than trying to extend it for as long as possible. His focus, instead, was on what God could create in him while he was alive, to prepare him expertly for the life David would be living after he died. 

And who knows at what age that preparation is complete? Obviously God does, so if he lets a good person die young…

Wouldn’t it be great having nothing to worry about? – your health’s good, no family issues, stacks of money, lots of friends, great neighbourhood, safe city and secure job. 

But where on this planet is life actually like that? There’s always something gumming up the works wherever you go. If you build your house on a hill, for instance, it’s exposed to hurricanes. Build it on lowland instead, and it’s vulnerable to floods. Throw in earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, ice storms and forest fires, plus accidents, pandemics and terrorism, and truth is: life’s an eggshell. It’s fragile.

It’s not an easy truth to accept. Adam and Eve didn’t accept it either, which made it very easy for the serpent to lie to them. “You won’t die,” he said, “you’ll be fine.” A worry-free life was an easy sell. It is today, too. We shell out huge amounts of cash on insurance, warranties, home security, investments, pills and religion to worry-free ourselves. Safety and security are big business. Does any of it actually work, though? Well, no, because in the end we do actually die. Everything isn’t fine. The serpent was lying.

So how on earth could Paul say in Philippians 4:6, “There’s no need to worry about anything,” when there are tons of things to worry about? Because, he replies, we can take all our troubles to God and in return God gives us peace, verse 7. 

But how does that work in real life, pray tell? What about a father who’s lost his entire business in an earthquake, or a mother who’s given birth to a deeply handicapped baby? How can they not be worried about the future? Let’s be practical.

But God’s no stranger to our world and the awful things that happen, because he lived this life himself. He saturated himself in our suffering and death, vividly felt its pain, and he too cried buckets of tears at the hopelessness of it all. But Jesus did one thing differently: he never viewed God negatively when bad things happened. He didn’t blame God for being distant, uninvolved and uncaring. He didn’t ditch God for help from other sources, like Adam and Eve did.

And why didn’t he? Because one day, as the ever-present Jesus, he’d be able to live his attitude to God in us, so we could trust God like he did. Result? We’d discover the same secret Paul discovered: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…I can do everything through him who gives me strength,” verses 12-13. Including not worry? Seems so. But Paul did admit it took a while to learn it.

I wonder how many people would agree with the Bible’s assessment that we’re not really in control of our lives at all. According to Paul in Romans 8, our lives are controlled by either one of two spirits – the spirit of fear or the Spirit of sonship. In verse 15 he writes, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.”

That’s an enlightening statement, because Paul is saying it’s only after we receive the Spirit of sonship that the spirit of fear loses its control over us. Up to that point, therefore, he’s saying we were totally controlled by fear. Were we really, though? Did fear really dominate our thinking? 

Well, if it isn’t fear of spiders, or fear of the dark wreaking havoc in our heads, it’s fear of what we look like, what people think of us, what’s going to happen to us as we age, or what will happen if the world has another pandemic or financial meltdown. Our lives are filled with phobias, worries and anxiousness about our families, our health, our finances, or becoming helpless in our old age. 

Even Christians can revert back to being fearful, as the Galatians did, thinking their eternal life depended on their own efforts (Galatians 3:1-5). But isn’t that the fear in all religions, that our future forever is determined by our efforts now? But what if we aren’t good enough now? Panic. We might go to hell, forever, say several religions. No wonder religious people can end up feeling like hunted animals. 

So what does the Spirit of sonship do in our heads instead? According to Romans 8:16, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” According to Paul, then, the Spirit cuts through the fog of fear enveloping us, by helping us realize who we are. We’re God’s children, and being his children he’s always close and we’re never without him. 

And the Spirit helps us sense that, just like Lucy sensed the presence of Aslan the lion in Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). She couldn’t see Aslan but she could sense he was there, close by and watching over them. So when scary things happened to them on their journey through Narnia, she knew Aslan was always in control of the outcome and she didn’t panic.  

And when, at last, all four children on their journey through Narnia cottoned on to that, they lost their fear too. Sensing his presence was a great gift. And according to Paul, the Holy Spirit has given us the same gift, so that on our scary journey in this world we too have a constant antidote to fear. 

All it takes is a few deaths in a flu outbreak and panic sets in. Commentators write alarming columns in newspapers about potential pandemic, TV feeds the panic around the clock, and suddenly the line ups for flu injections are huge. But when fear takes hold, it’s just like a virus too; it’s highly contagious, it spreads like wildfire, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.  

And that creates even more fear in those whose job it is to protect our health, because underrating the danger could backfire badly if the flu turns out to be a really bad one, but exaggerating the danger could get them hammered later for creating a lot of unnecessary fuss and disruption, and a “Cry Wolf” situation in the future. So now the authorities are fearful too, of either not creating enough fear to get people to protect themselves, or creating too much fear that then makes people batten down hatches, stay home and stop buying, creating more fear in those responsible for keeping the economy functioning. So now fear is spreading further and wider and faster than the flu virus itself. 

But that’s the world we live in; we are never far away from a crisis or the unstoppable fear pandemic that always follows a crisis, and we live on that knife edge all the time. 

What a horrible way to have to live, but, as Paul explained, there’s a “spirit” in this world that made us “slaves to fear” (Romans 8:15). That’s why we’re so easily frightened; it’s because there are powers beyond our own that MAKE us fearful, and they’re able to create a culture where fear is so ingrained that we cannot escape its grip. And to make things even worse, God has allowed those powers to rule us, subjecting us on purpose to a life of “futility” (Romans 8:20, RSV). A flu outbreak soon illustrates that, because what’s the point of it? Nothing good comes from it. It’s all completely futile.

But God offers an antidote, an injection of his own (so to speak) to protect us against this awful virus of fear and futility we’re enslaved to. It’s an injection of a far more powerful Spirit, the Spirit of “sonship” (verses 14-16), that reaches down deep inside us where the fear virus is and neutralizes it with a withering blast of who we are to God. We are his children, and a flu outbreak doesn’t change that. No crisis in this life changes that. But only the Spirit can make that real. It’s only the Spirit, therefore, that can stop fear when it threatens to get the better of us.

Jesus’ disciples got told off by Jesus on several occasions for their rather pathetic display of trusting him. It was such a disappointment to him, because what was their problem, when it was obvious, surely, that he could meet every need – calm raging storms, feed thousands from pitifully short supplies, heal the most horrible diseases, and send evil packing.

None of those things, however, had made trusting him any easier. His disciples marvelled at his power, but in the middle of a raging storm with Jesus on board their boat, all trust in his power went out the window.  

It must have been slightly embarrassing, then, when a non-Jewish, Greek lady trusted him. She was born in the area of south Lebanon today, which back then was Phoenicia and very much Gentile country. Jesus had travelled up there for a private meeting, hoping to keep it private, but even that far north, in Tyre and Sidon country, people got wind of his arrival (Mark 7:24).

And among them was this Greek lady, whose little daughter was being severely stressed by an evil spirit. Somehow her mother knew of Jesus and his exploits, and she’d hurried down to beg him to heal her daughter, even referring to Jesus as “Lord” and “Son of David,” an amazing understanding and acceptance that Jesus was the promised healing Messiah predicted in Scripture (Matthew 15:22).

But even when she followed him around begging for his help, Jesus totally ignored her. Exasperated, the disciples urged him to get rid of her (verse 23). To which he replied in verse 24, that he’d only been sent to the “lost sheep of Israel,” not Gentiles. And “lost” fitted in here, because most of Israel hadn’t accepted him as the Messiah, whereas this Greek lady had. So a bit of a dig here, that Israel had difficulty trusting him, but this Gentile lady did not.

And she wasn’t giving up either. This time she threw herself at Jesus’ feet, crying out, “Lord, help me.” To which he replied, “Hey, let the children eat first, not throw their food to the dogs.” “Dog” here meant a household pet, so it wasn’t meant as an insult, but as a reminder to her that he’d been sent as the Deliverer of Israel, not Gentiles.  

“Ah, but,“ she says, “the dogs get to eat the children’s crumbs, don’t they?” In other words, I know what you’re really all about; you’re not limited to just healing salvation for Israel, you were sent to be the healing Saviour of us all.    

Jesus was ecstatic: “You wonderful woman,” verse 28, “great is your faith.” In other words, when we understand what Jesus was sent for, as this Greek lady did, trust comes easy, right?

What if the disciples had said that when their boat was being tossed around in the storm? “Hey, Jesus is with us, so what’s the problem?” And he was asleep too, not the least bit phased by the wind howling and the waves crashing against the sides of the boat, and water sloshing around at their feet. 

But they didn’t say that. Instead, they were terrified that the boat would capsize and they’d all drown, including Jesus. So they shook him awake, accused him of not being concerned, to which Jesus replies, “Why are you so scared? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40).

You mean, if they did have faith they wouldn’t have been afraid at all, and maybe even enjoyed being thrown around, knowing whatever the weather chucked at them they’d be fine? And as far as Jesus was concerned, yes, that’s exactly what they could be experiencing because he was with them. But they hadn’t reached that point yet, because in his words they still didn’t have faith.

And it sounded like a disappointment to him, because what else did he need to do to get them to trust him? In Capernaum, for instance, back in Mark 1:23-26, he’d told an evil spirit to shut up and leave the man it had possessed, which the spirit did with a horrible shriek. Then in verses 30-31, he totally healed Simon’s mother-in-law, bedridden with a nasty fever. Then in verse 32, people with all kinds of physical and demonic sicknesses were lined up at his door, and he healed “many” of them (verse 34). Then in verses 40-42 he healed a man with the dreaded leprosy. I mean what else did the disciples need as proof of Jesus’ power?

And so many people came to Jesus for healing that the four friends of a paralytic had to rip the tiles off the roof and lower the man down to Jesus, who, again, totally healed him (Mark 2:11-12), also witnessed by his disciples. They saw him heal a man’s shrivelled hand too in chapter 3, so by the time they got to chapter 4 and their boat was near to capsizing, they had all kinds of evidence that the man snoozing in the stern had amazing power over things both physical and demonic. So enjoy the ride, because he was with them. Another crashing wave, whee, bring on another. 

So in answer to the question in the last blog, as to why God doesn’t do something about the scary weather we’re having nowadays, could he ask of us too, “What are you so frightened about? You know what I can do, so why don’t you trust me?”

Yeah but, he’s not with us like he was with them, is he? Well, yes he is, because in his own words he said to anyone who loves and obeys him, “I will love him and make myself real to him,” John 14:21, because, verse 23, both he and his Father “will come to him and make our home with him.” So he’s with us all right, and even closer than he was with his disciples too. 

In Paul’s words too, in Philippians 4:5-6, “The Lord is near” so “don’t be anxious about anything.” In other words, “So long as he’s with us, we’re fine.”