4. Roleplaying
One of the protocols of sheikhs is giving their adoptees a new “name” — actually more like a title. In the eyes of God, our primary role in His service is shepherd of His sheep. Everything else we do, we must never forget to promote the welfare of His flock, which is His Kingdom.
Thus, the glory if His Name is actually a matter of His role in our lives. The Bible is full of titles for which God is worthy. Stop thinking in terms of what you are and what you do; it’s always a question of who you are. To be more precise, it’s who you are to the people in the context. Context is everything in Hebrew thinking. We view reality on multiple levels at once, but the ultimate reality is who God says we are.
But on the other levels, in each situation we may play a different role. It all rests on the sense of conviction God burns into our hearts. When we pay more attention to that, we can discern what dominion and how much dominion the Lord has granted us for that moment in His name. This is fundamental to Biblical Law.
One of the most critical issues in this is recognizing that God has a heavy vested interest in gender roles. If we fail to seize the role God handed us at birth, we forfeit all the protections of from Satan granted in Biblical Law. Sexual ambivalence is a grave sin, a genuine threat to the shalom God offers. Play the hand God deals you in biology; fighting Him is a losing battle.
Rather, embrace that role with full ardor. Nothing can possibly bless you more than playing the role God assigned for you. Strive to make yourself a signature of what it means to be a man or woman. Strive to understand the underlying Biblical Law principles behind your natural born gender.
Men are assigned the task of moral guardians. They are equipped by God to see moral threats instinctively, and to react in various ways based on their individual calling in Christ. Adam was being lazy in the Garden by not insuring Eve didn’t face temptation alone. He was being lazy when he allowed Eve to choose something contrary to God’s command. He didn’t guard his own treasure from God.
Women are designed to support their men. They are flexible on some moral issues because they have to follow someone who is supposed to be strong. For this reason, the New Testament says Eve was genuinely confused and deceived about the moral question of the Forbidden Fruit. In her passion for nurture, she took what seemed to her the best path. Adam was not deceived about it.
There are a whole host of implications from this, but we won’t get bogged down here. Men tend to be lazy, since the role of household shepherd is assigned by God in His timing, typically contrary to what the man had planned for himself. No good man ever wants to be responsible for a herd of sheep, but a good man will embrace the role when it falls on him and serve his Master with ardor. No good woman wants the moral responsibility for deciding certain things that affect the flock. Only a very foolish woman wants to rule, when God says she is utterly unable. Yet every child of God can recognize certain kinds of moral threat, and will strive to find some way to guard against it.
There are whole range of goofy alternatives to this image Satan offers. Women misapply their nurturing instinct and try to rule, demanding things be nothing but nurturing, and laboring under a very perverted view of what is nurturing. Men want to abandon the flock and go off on adventures that serve no good purpose. Both become blinded to what their sexual roles actually demand, from themselves and among their own kind, but also what those roles require with the opposite sex. Each demands things for their own convenience. Thus, society serves the purposes of Satan in keeping everyone in his service where he can profit by capturing all the blessings God meant for them.
Once again, a core issue is not falling into the trap of how Western society defines these roles, but as the Bible does. The differences are hard to miss once you bother to understand them. Western society at its root is in some ways matriarchal, or at the very least, matrilineal. That is, it’s a heathen mythology that venerates women as morally superior to men. Meanwhile, men are pictured as oversized immature boys. The Bible posits that both are fallen, and both can be redeemed, but men must rule on God’s behalf.
We should hardly be surprised when everyone around us gets everything backwards. Nor should we be surprised when the world persists in this perversion, even when we reveal God’s Word on the matter. The best we can hope for in our fallen world is to demonstrate the blessings of embracing Biblical Law. If they cannot see the beauty of God’s revelation, they are blind indeed, and there is nothing else we can do for them.
