Carrier
and man became a living being Genesis 2:7
Living Being – Are you a carrier or a producer? In a world where the emphasis is on productive living, we need to take a step backward and ask this question from the biblical point of view. The world’s performance expectation is not what it seems.
The prophet of God is a messenger, not a producer. What he proclaims is not his own creation. In fact, the mark of a false prophet is the proclamation of his own ideas. What is manifested in the prophet comes from God. The prophet gets no credit at all for the content. His role is only the delivery. He carries what is manifested by someone else.
If we apply this small lesson to the idea of the creation of human beings, we learn something important. When God created men and women in His own image, we became carriers of that image. It is not ours. Just like the word happened in the prophets, God’s image happens in us – and we are carriers of His glory for His benefit and His purposes. Our role is to deliver God-embodied messages to the world. The original plan to place human beings as vice-regents in creation, acting on behalf of the Creator, only underscores the fact that the plan doesn’t come from us. We are the vehicles by which God stewards creation. We are not the owners.
If this is true, then the claim that I am the originator of my destiny, the captain of my soul, is a false representation of what it means to be human. That is the equivalent of being a false prophet – the one who claimed that the message was his own. This world loves those who take credit for their production. The father of all lies loves this lie because it cuts right into the heart of what is means to be a bearer of God’s image. If God designed me to be the vehicle for His expressed use, carrying His purposes out in His creation, then anytime I act with disregard toward Him or take credit for myself or imagine that my plans are my own, I align myself with the father of lies.
To be human is to be a carrier of God happening in me. The message is far more important than the carrier. The message is the sovereign rule of the Holy of holies. If I lose sight of my role as carrier, I will be seduced into believing that the package is more important than the contents. I will start to believe that human life is measured in terms of my production – what I accomplish, what I accumulate, what I enjoy and what I influence – rather than how elegantly I carry the image. If true humanity is the manifestation of the image of God in me, then any peripherals that do not contribute directly to the message really don’t count, do they? So, I ask you, how do you measure your humanity? Are you living as a carrier or did you think you were the content?
(Just a fascinating note: The Hebrew words for “living being” are both feminine nouns. So, Man (adam) who comes from adamah (the earth) is manifest as a living (feminine) person (feminine). You can’t make a case based solely on the gender of nouns, but it certainly makes you wonder why “living person” is feminine. That should throw all the male-gender advocates into a tizzy.)
