Apprenticeship 101: From Whence

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Take a fresh look, please, at this familiar Bible passage:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).

     What do you make of it? Did anything new and exciting leap at you from this reading? No? That’s OK; most of your fellow readers will not have been amazed either. Familiarity is perhaps this passage’s worst enemy. Let’s draw from it, then, two essential phrases – “let us make” and “let them have” – and see if we can find some amazement.

     Let us make: Who’s doing the making? Did Adam’s consciousness loom out of the dust of the ground and make the making happen? Did he first form a finger, with which he tapped God on the shoulder to call attention to the unfinished project? Was it Adam’s idea to fall into a deep sleep and have a rib extracted… by whom… for what reason? Of course not. Mankind has no plausible explanation for his existence aside from God’s thoughtful and utterly precise action in creation.

     Let them have: God, in absolute sovereignty, conferred authority on mankind. If he hadn’t given it, we wouldn’t have it. From the first two humans onward, the collective imago Dei were to exercise dominion over creation on behalf of Dei. All the while, The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1). Though man claims ownership, he has never proven it outright in the court of the universe.

     Those two phrases – let us make and let them have – establish a Master/apprentice relationship, a fact as unassailable on earth as it is in heaven. Grit your teeth and strain real hard, trying to make this planet spend twenty-five hours per revolution instead of twenty-four: not gonna happen. The old song goes, “Stop the world and let me off”: good luck with that. The opening verse of Psalm 2 asks, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? Beats me. And yet, being subject to anyone, even the Almighty, is precisely what imago Dei of every tribe and tongue simply cannot abide.

    Smack in the middle of our “Real Life” teaching series, the looming giant we’re facing is the idea that mankind is master rather than apprentice, answerable to no one but himself. As long as the giant persists, conversations on gender, marriage, sexuality, stewardship – pretty much anything that involves humans interacting with one another and with creation – will be wonky. We can’t get it right if we don’t know who is Master and who is not. I’m calling us together to slay the giant.

     If anyone should be able to rightly understand the Master/apprentice arrangement, it would be we who have regenerate souls and the mind of Christ. Ours is the secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory… these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit (1Corinthians 2:7, 10). Own it; it’s yours, Christian. And with that secret and hidden wisdom, please do this: faithfully serve your apprenticeship to the Master.

     The unsaved world doesn’t need to see you as special, only different. The difference will draw in the unsaved. Our willingness to acknowledge the Master as Higher and Other will bring peace to a world all a-jitter with the illusion of self-importance. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus said, “my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). As saved people, you and I are peace merchants on behalf of the supplier, distributors of a commodity much in need.

     I want to write more to you on this topic, Church, next week. The basic concept of apprenticeship is all but lost in this age in which the individual reigns (except he doesn’t, and neither does she). It may take a few tries to get it back. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a simple prayer exercise: Upon waking tomorrow, say to the Lord,

     “It’s all yours, Papa. What would you like me to do with it?” Then listen for the next bit of secret and hidden wisdom.

 

Grace and Peace (for all the Master’s apprentices),

 

John