.
God’s
Motif.
by Michael Shaughnessy
“In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
The beginning of the book of Genesis lays
out some important
themes. But the
motifs
in Genesis 1 also tell us something
important.
Definition:
Theme:
a subject or topic.
Motif:
a recurring distinctive feature. |
Two of the main themes
of the early part of Genesis are 1) that God
is the creator of all things and 2) that the
devil is an active force at enmity with man.
But there are also two significant motifs
in Genesis 1. The first motif is the
separating out of “this from that”: light
and darkness, day and night, sea and land,
sun and moon, plants and animals… God gives
all things their form and distinctiveness.
The second motif comes at the end
of each day with God calling what he created
good.
These motifs build to a climax as God
repeats them. In the final stage of creation
he creates man in his own image. His
final act of separation is to make man
male and female.
Genesis 1 ends with the second motif
crescendoing as God replace good with very
good!
Enter the Devil…
The second theme of Genesis, the origin of
evil, follows hot on the trail of the first.
The evil one opposes the purposes of God.
Commonly, the fall of Lucifer is ascribed to
his disgust that the image of God is
imprinted on man’s face not his. Thus it is
no surprise that his tactic is to deface
that image. Satan does that in a few very
specific ways. The first is to dehumanize
the race.
Suicide Squad
The plot of last August’s biggest movie, Suicide
Squad, is simple. An American
intelligence officer decides to assemble a
team of dangerous, imprisoned villains for a
top-secret mission, figuring they're all
expendable. It’s the bad guys against the
worse guys with the bad guys doing evil to
effect not much good.
The movie’s promotional strategy included
making news headlines during its filming.
The actors were sent live rats, bullets, a
dead pig, and were personally abused. What
force is behind this dehumanization?
In the movie Margo Robbie plays the female
lead, Harley Quinn. Robbie descibes Quinn as
“manipulative and deranged.” Quinn’s
relationship with her villain lover, the
Joker, “is incredibly dysfunctional, really
unhealthy, …addictive.” Quinn fell for the
Joker when she was working at an asylum as a
psychiatrist. She became fascinated with him
when he was a patient. She tried to cure him
but he totally unhinged her instead.
A second strategy for
defacing God’s image is to attack its two
distinct forms: male and female. The enemy
of man can blurr the image of God by
blending the sexes, erasing the distinction.
Make the boys into girls and the girls into
boys. (Note: gender identity issues are
complex and need a pastoral approach, as
they have since forever. But the principle
that we reflect the image of God in two
separate and distinct forms remains.)
Satan’s third strategy is to distort
maleness and femaleness into anything but
what they are meant to be. For most girls,
that means a hyper-sexualized look. Even
worse, today, how well she does at that
determines a huge part of her identity.
[This article originally
appeared in the Kairos Youth Culture
Newsletter, September 2019.]
by Mary Rose Jordan
It’s hard to be a young woman today but you
know that. You may have seen it in your
daughter’s eyes, or in the eyes of your
granddaughter or niece: rejection at the
hands of supposed friends, anxiety over
schoolwork, or one’s appearance, or both.The
tears, the angst, the worry… It’s a
challenging time of self-discovery, social,
and hopefully, faith development.
I am a youth worker. I have a heart for
young women. I look at these critical
developmental
times and I want to help. That is in part
because I had women, when I was younger, who
came alongside me. They carried the torch in
front of me, they blazed a trail for me to
follow. They pointed me to God and to godly
femininity. I want every young woman to have
that.
Unfortunately, we live in an age that
promotes transgendered teens like Jazz
Jennings or supersexualized ones like Kylie
and Kendall Jenner. The social media “like”
button determines your sef worth. Your
number of requests to sext confirmatio your
desirability. Even older pop icons like
Fergie still create songs and videos that
showcase sexual objectification as good.
Women are enslaved by distortions. Good
luck, girls. But as powerful as the lies
are, so golden is
the opportunity for us to rise and impact
young women with truth. I want every young
girl to have the opportunity to see a
Christcentered, virtue-seeking,
Gospel-inspired role model. I want every
young girl to know the freedom that comes
with a life lived in Christ. Kylie Jenner
can have an audience of tens of thousands at
her fingertips and sell them her kit for the
perfect puffy, pouty ‘Kylie Lip’, but we
have a better product and Kairos is using
the internet to inspire, encourage, and
convert a new generation of young women.
We started
The
Lovely Commission to carry a torch and
run, proclaiming the goodness of
God and godly femininity, inspiring women to
take on their birthright as daughters of
God.
[This article originally
appeared in the Kairos Youth Culture
Newsletter, September 2019.]
