Form And Content
Genesis 2:18–24; Mark 10: 2-16
Form and Content
What we find in the creation accounts of Genesis is not blueprints, exact scientific reports on exactly how God created. If we read and treat what we read as such, we will miss many beautiful moments. We will also miss the point. The creation accounts are much more interested in the question of why God created than in the question how God created. That does not mean the how question does not have a place. Science study that how question and their findings are often fascinating and helpful even when they are not conclusive. But to people living in Babylonian exile, confronted by many different gods and creation accounts, people struggling with the question of who they were, the how question was less important than the why question. When everything you know is ripped out from under you, you need the why more than the how.
The creation accounts do give us a game plan though, even though they do not give a blueprint. They lay down some ground rules of our existence. Important ones that have been embraced by many people throughout history, sometimes even by nonbelievers. It teaches us for instance that God created for His glory. That the formless mass that God turned into consistent forms were preceded by a wonderful relationship between Father, Son and Spirit. They say form follows content. Well Genesis then says that the form creation took was preceded by a relational being we call God.
It also tells us that God created with purpose and intent. That He created mankind in his image or likeness and gave him authority no other species can claim. In Genesis 2 God created sufficient forms. Plants, animals and man. But then God identified a relational need of man. For companionship, relationship and likeness. He said it is not good that man should be alone. And so He put this content, the potential for companionship, relationship and likeness, in a new form, one the writer first refers to as “Helper” and Adam called “Woman”. There is something crucial in all this we shouldn’t miss.
The first thing is the word Helper. We are inclined to think of a helper as kind of the lesser of two person’s as in a servant. But the Hebrew Word “EZER” wasn’t referring to such a kind of helper. Case in point God is often referred to as Israel’s “Helper or Ezer” elsewhere in the Old Testament. A mentor of mine suggested that a better translation for the word “EZER” would be “Life-saver”. I agree with him. Your EZER was the one you looked up to with gratitude , the one that came into your life at just the right time. Your partner and co-worker. A “what-would-I-do-without-her” kind of person. Any person that sees in this creation account that the woman is lesser than the man (and many have) does not read this passage correctly.
Secondly, we should also not miss that when God brings the woman to Adam, he does something he has not done when God brought the animals to him. He breaks out in poetry. For all we know what Adam said when he saw Eve for the first time was said in a song! You see, God brought the three groups of animals to him; Birds, wild beasts and domesticated working kind of animals. And similar to how God spoke creation into being, He lets Adam mimic Him in the small by giving him the chance to name the animals. Adam got to study these animal’s essence and name them accordingly. God let Him partake in his ongoing creation in this way. To see those animals for the first time must have been astonishing. I mean it still gives us a thrill to visit the zoo and look at them even though we have seen them many times. Just think how it felt when God revealed them to Adam for the first time!
But even though he found in each their essence, he did not find in one of them an essence that matched his own. God created man in His likeness and therefore God shared an intimacy with man greater than He did with animals. Because man had the likeness of his relational essence. And in Eve God gave Adam that joy (also vica versa). If that is not enough to have a man break out in poetry what is?!
Mark 10: 2-16
We love occupying ourselves with what is wrong. We love piling up verses and passages that condemn people for sin, usually the ones about sins we happen to avoid. And this passage in Mark 10 I think is a popular one for this reason. It clearly shows that divorce is wrong and undesirable to God. But although Jesus does state that divorce should not be taken lightly, He says what He says not to condemn divorced people. He says it to protect woman…let me explain.
In Jesus’s time it was extremely easy for a man to divorce a woman. Even not liking her cooking was seen as a perfectly legitimate reason to call it quits. At the same time, it was extremely difficult, near impossible for a woman to divorce a man. Death for a woman was the most realistic escape from an abusive marriage.
As you can imagine, this gave men immense power over woman. If a woman did anything they dislike, they just threatened to leave. That assured that everything went according to the way they liked it, but it did not ensure a healthy marriage that honored God. Best of all, they could stand on this right as being a godly ordained right. The Pharisee that put this question to Jesus, does so to make Him unpopular because he knows men like this law Moses made and will label Jesus blasphemous if He speaks out against it. So, Jesus does not deny that that law exists, but He frames it differently. Not as God’s will but as an allowance that is a compromise because of human error. Jesus says if you really want to solve your marital problems, don’t harness your power, soften your heart. If you remove the bitterness and hardness of your heart and that does not work, you will know it is the right thing to divorce. If you divorce just because she is not your puppet, you might end up getting rid of a wonderful wife. You might end up all alone…and God said at the beginning that it is not good for man to be alone.
It is like Jesus takes them back to God’s intent and reminds them that their wives are their helpers not their puppets, not their enemies. I want you to imagine a few women listening in on this. Some of them trapped in abusive relationships, others bankrupted by men who dumped them like a sack of potatoes. I see these women smiling and seeing in Jesus the most real man they have seen in their life!
I find it fascinating that countries where women are oppressed and discriminated against are doing the worst economically, educationally and health wise. Countries where women are being acknowledged for the EZERS they are lead the world in wealth, health and education. Canada, Iceland, Sweden and to an extent even Rwanda recently. Compare that to countries like Afghanistan and African countries with child bride and women circumcision practices. Where people honor what God said about other people, that they have value and that they are indispensable, societies flourish.
A marriage has a form and a marriage has content. The form is the official legal document, the ceremony and the wedding bands among other things. To this day most wedding ceremonies mimic what we read in Genesis 2. The wife is veiled and then revealed. She is brought to the groom just as God brought Eve to Adam. There is music and poetry and beauty just like the scene described in Genesis 2. This is form. It is not unimportant.
But a marriage also has content. That content is love, understanding, service, encouragement. forgiveness and grace. The source of these things is a heart open to God. Close such a heart up and it is unable to produce this content. It becomes hardened. The marriage runs dry of love. Even if you manage to retain the form and “not get divorced” it is an empty shell. If we aim to just “not get divorced’ it doesn’t make for anything inspirational. That is focusing on the form at the expense of the even more important content. But if we aim to always seek to forgive and love each other, that is dealing with the content and that is what saves a marriage. Form is not unimportant, but content is what it is all about! Form follows content, it does not ensure or produce good content.
This brings me to another important point. Often when I preach on a passage about marriage, I am worried that people who are widowed, divorced or single will shut off or worse yet feel accused and hurt. But you know what is wonderful, even for whatever reason the form of an official marriage is not available to you right now, the content of a marriage comes to you through other relationships. Especially your relationship with God. He is after all the source of grace, forgiveness, intimacy, security etc. The church is called the bride of Christ. The Bible doesn’t call the church the bride of Christ because it wants to point out how important it is to be married. No, God gave us the form of marriage between a man and a woman to point out and underline to us how ultimately Jesus loves us. Jesus said elsewhere we are not going to be married in heaven to each other as on earth, but we are all going to be married to Him (and in unity with each other). The form of marriage between a man and a women will be no more. The content will be ever present.
Close
Maybe you are happily married. Maybe you know much better what and how Wonderful an EZER is than when you first got married as a young person. Good for you. Be thankful and never stop attending to the content of the wonderful covenant you enjoy. Maybe you are divorced and the pain of that lingers. May God’s love heal you in a way even the best spouse’s love could not. May you get the strength from God to forgive and move on. Maybe you feel the pain in another way. As a longing as a divorced or single person who yearns for companionship and someone to come home to. May God bless you with friends that ease that pain until you are sent the right person. May you also know that because you belong to Jesus, you are never as alone as you might feel at times. Maybe you are married but in the “not divorced” way. Maybe your heart is full of anger and bitterness about things you wanted in your marriage and don’t get. May God open you and your partners heart once more.
For the happily married and the not so happily married. For the divorced and the single, the hope is not in fairy tales but in the greatest and most true love story of all time. It goes like this.
Jesus loves you.
Jesus pursues you.
He is relentless.
He saves your life.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman
October 2021
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