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Day 1500 – Be Humble – Wisdom Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1500 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Be Humble – Wisdom Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1500 of our Trek, and it is time for our 3-minute mini trek called Wisdom Unplugged. This short nugget of wisdom includes an inspirational quote with a little bit of additional content for today’s trek. Consider this your vitamin supplement of wisdom for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s nugget:

Today’s quote is from  Mother Teresa, and it is:    If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.  

Be Humble

Humility is such a difficult character trait for everyone. I certainly know it is for me. Pride stems back to the original creation, where Adam and Eve followed the evil one’s advice, whom himself turned from God because of his pride. True humility before God and our fellow humans is the purest of all character traits. It is the realization that we are dependent and thankful for our creator’s grace towards us. It will allow us to excel and succeed where otherwise we would not be able to. Nothing will be able to touch us at our core—neither praise, not disgrace. When we are humble, we can move through life with full confidence of who and what we are before God and others. We can know that we have the best interest of others in our hearts and mind. We will be genuine and pure in all that we do. Humility acknowledges all that we have and ever hope to be is because of God’s overflowing grace through our lives. The Apostle Peter, one of Jesus’s closest disciples, also had an issue with pride, but later in life, he understood how destructive pride could be. He learned humility through many difficult lessons in life. It is wise that we take Peter’s advice.

1 Peter 5:6

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time, he will lift you up in honor.

That’s a wrap for today’s Wisdom Unplugged quote. If you would like free access to my database of over 11,000 inspirational quotes, the link is available on the main page of Wisdom-Trek.com. Just as you enjoy these nuggets of wisdom, encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1499 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Worldview Wednesday!

Day 1499 – Bible Study – Use of Common Language – Meditation Monday

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Welcome to Day 1499 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Bible Study – Use of Common Language – Meditation Monday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1499 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind. 

We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on what the Bible is. Today let us meditate on:

Bible Study – Use of Common Language

·      Insight Twenty-Nine: There Is No Such Thing as “Holy Ghost Greek”

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Like every language. Greek changes over time in script, word meanings, and grammar. Contemporary spoken and written English has significant differences from English of prior eras. This is most easily seen in vocabulary. Fifty years ago, words like “blog.” “‘Facebook,’ and “chatroom’ didn’t exist in English. There are also differences, for example, between British and American English. So it should come as no surprise that the Greek of the New Testament is different than Greek of other periods.

These differences, along with the nature of the New Testament, led many people, including scholars, to suppose that the New Testament’s Greek was unique, perhaps even created by divine providence specifically to communicate the truth of the gospel. People took this idea seriously into the late 1800s. Today, it’s known to be a complete falsehood.

This belief’s mythical nature was exposed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by archaeological discoveries of previously unknown Greek manuscripts. For example, toward the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of papyrus fragments written in Greek were discovered in Egypt in garbage dumps. Greek scholars quickly discerned that the Greek of these fragments was the same type of Greek found in the New Testament and the early church fathers, a stage of the language known as “common Greek, or koinë Greek (pronounced, koinay).”

Koine Greek is a byproduct of Alexander the Great’s conquest. Although Alexander’s soldiers were Greeks, they spoke different versions of the Greek language. There were numerous dialects. A common form of the language was created and spread to communicate with each other effectively. As Alexander’s armies swept east across the Mediterranean, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Mesopotamia, and India, this common Greek spread throughout his empire. This common (koine) Greek is the language of the New Testament.

There is no such thing as “Holy Ghost Greek.” We ought not to assign any special status to it when we’re doing word studies in our study of Scripture. Doing so leads to a flawed interpretation. Fortunately, the Greek of the New Testament wasn’t unique. It was the Greek spoken and read throughout the known world. Consequently, the message of the New Testament was understood everywhere.

·      Insight Thirty: Learn About Hebrew Poetic Parallelism

Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you that you need to learn Hebrew to do Bible study. (Although Dr. Heiser is admittedly biased in that direction).

 

There’s a lot of poetry in the Old Testament. Hebrew poetry doesn’t work like poetry as we think of it. The kind of poetry we’re exposed to in school or maybe on greeting cards rhymes in sound:

Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

Hebrew poetry, on the other hand, rhymes in thought. That is, the second (or successive) line in Hebrew poetry will echo the first in some way. That’s very handy to know for Bible study in books like Psalms and Proverbs. Modern English translations do an excellent job of aligning Hebrew poetry so that the English reader can tell what lines immediately relate to one another. If we can discern that interpretation can proceed to how the lines are echoing each other with the eye. Scholars typically express this phenomenon with the advice, “Line A is explained more with Line B. Line A says something; then line B elaborates.” The only trick is that the thought-rhyming can be accomplished in a wide range of ways. Some examples will illustrate this.

Psalm 119:105 (A and B are synonymous thoughts)

A—Your word is a lamp to my feet,

B—and a light to my path.

Psalm 1:6 (B echoes A, but in opposite terms)

My son,

A—The Lord knows the way of the righteous,

B—but the way of the wicked ‘sill perish.

There are over a dozen options for understanding the relationships between lines of Hebrew poetry. The lines reinforce each other in thought. Parallelism helps us to see elements that are meant to be understood in tandem. Sometimes that’s handy for word study—parallelism is a context for a word’s usage. Having an eye for line relationships in poetry helps Bible students understand the biblical writer’s intended idea and weed out unintended interpretations.

Joshua 1:8

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.That is a wrap for today’s Meditation. Next week we will continue our trek on Meditation Monday as we take time to reflect on what is most important in creating our living legacy. On tomorrow’s trek, we will explore another wisdom quote. This 3-minute wisdom supplement will assist you in becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise each day. Thank you for joining me on this trek called life. Encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of the past 1498 daily treks or read the daily Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and Journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow!

Day 1498 – Transforming Sick Care Into Well Care – Ask Gramps

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Welcome to Day 1498 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. 

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Transforming Sick Care Into Well Care – Ask Gramps

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1498 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.

To keep with our theme of “Ask Gramps,” I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. This week’s question is, Hey Gramps, last week you shared about slowing the aging process, but many people are getting sick and dying due to poor life choices. How can this be resolved?

Transforming Sick Care Into Well Care

Last week we explored how pre-mature aging was actually a pandemic that could be prevented with new technologies. This week, I want to focus on turning sick care into healthcare. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”

The U.S. healthcare industry is in for significant disruption in the decade ahead. It is so broken that it’s horrifying. As can be seen with the current global pandemic, we need to start focusing on our health, not just caring for the sick.

U.S. healthcare spending hit a total of $3.6 trillion in 2019. During 2020 with the additional burden of Covid-19 and its related illnesses, last year will pale in comparison.

Fear of liability prompts U.S. doctors to spend $210 billion per year on procedures patients don’t need. Of every 5,000 new drugs introduced, 5 make it to human testing, and only one is ultimately approved. Yet even then, the average pharmaceutical product takes 12 YEARS to get from lab to patient, costing upwards of $2.5 billion. While the rush to market for a Covid-19 vaccine will accelerate this somewhat, we have to ask, at what cost?

There is hope on the horizon. A new generation of AI-enabled, data-driven companies, will transform what is today “sick care” into healthcare.

Today we’ll look at a new generation of diagnostics that enable you to become the CEO of your own health. You are responsible for your own health; it is not the medical practitioner’s responsibility. Let’s explore how you can catch diseases at “stage-0” before it becomes life-threatening.

Continuous DIY Diagnostics

Let us look at one plausible future scenario. On a wintery Wednesday in January 2026, you’re being watched, carefully watched. Technically, you’re asleep in your bed, but Google’s home assistant knows your schedule. Thanks to your Oura ring, it also knows you’ve just completed a REM cycle and are now entering Stage 1 sleep—making it the perfect time to wake you up.A gentle increase in the room’s lighting simulates the sunrise, while optimized light wavelengths maximize wakefulness and improve your mood. Once you are fully awake, you ask: “Hey Google, how’s my health this morning?” “One moment,” says your digital assistant. It takes thirty seconds for the full diagnostic to run, which is pretty good considering the system deploys dozens of sensors capturing gigabytes of data.

Smart sensors in toothbrush and toilet, wearables in bedding and clothing, implantables inside your body provides you with a mobile health suite with a 360-degree view of your system. “Your microbiome looks perfect,” Google tells you. “Also, blood glucose levels are good, vitamin levels fine…” Google is already developing a full range of internal and external sensors that monitor everything from blood sugar to blood chemistry.

That’s just one company, Google. The list of once multimillion-dollar medical machines could fill a notebook. As with all technological breakthroughs, these machines with AI-Driven software are being dematerialized, demonetized, democratized, and delocalized. They are being made into portable and even wearable sensors.

Let us look at just a few examples of what is soon to be available to most of us.

Ultrasound machines used to fill a small room, but now there’s Exo’s AI-enabled, cheap, handheld ultrasound 3D imager. You will soon be able to track anything from wound-healing to fetus growth from the comfort of your home.

Another example comes from Google X project leader Mary Lou Jepsen’s startup, Openwater, which uses red laser holography to create a portable MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), turning what is today a multimillion-dollar machine into a wearable consumer electronics device. With the successful rollout, products like that of Openwater could soon give three-quarters of the world access to medical imaging they currently lack. Yet simpler developments might be more revolutionary.

In less than two decades, wearables have gone from first-generation step-counting self-trackers to Apple’s sixth-generation iWatch, including a blood oxygen tracker, an FDA-approved ECG scanner capable of real-time cardiac monitoring, and a sleep monitor.

Another example is Final Frontier Medical Devices’ DxtER (winner of the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE): a collection of easy-to-use, noninvasive medical sensors, and a diagnostic AI, accessible via an app. Already, DxtER reliably detects over fifty common ailments. In convergence, these developments point towards a future of always-on health monitoring and cheap, easy diagnostics.

This shift’s technical term is “mobile health,” a field predicted to explode into a $102 billion market by 2022. Step aside, WebMD. The idea here is to put a virtual doctor, on-demand, in your back pocket. We have seen as a result of Covid-19 in 2020 that this trend has exploded.

Riding the convergence of networks, sensors, and computing, AI-backed medical chatbots are now flooding the market. These apps can diagnose everything from a rash to retinopathy.

It’s not just physical ailments. Woebot is now taking on mental health, delivering cognitive behavioral therapy via Facebook Messenger to patients suffering from depression.

Proactive Healthcare

So, where are these trends headed?

Take Human Longevity Inc., a company Peter Diamandis co-founded in 2013. It’s key offering, the “Health Nucleus,” is an annual, three-hour health scan consisting of whole-genome sequencing, whole-body MRI, heart, and lung CT, echocardiogram, and a slew of clinical blood tests—essentially the most complete picture of health currently available.

This picture is important for two reasons. The first is early disease detection.

In 2018, Human Longevity published stats on its first 1,190 clients. Nine percent of its patients uncovered previously undetected coronary artery disease (the number one killer in the world), 2.5 percent found aneurysms (the number two killer in the world), 2 percent saw tumors—and so forth. In total, a staggering 14.4 percent had significant issues requiring immediate intervention, while 40 percent found a condition that needed long-term monitoring.

The second reason this is important? Everything Human Longevity is measuring and tracking via half-day annual visits will soon come to you on demand. Thanks to always-on, always-watching sensors, your smartphone, combined with a smart wearable, is about to become your doctor.

From Damage Control to Prevention

Skyrocketing AI capabilities, dematerializing sensors, and next-gen computing power, are on the verge of embedding themselves in your wearables, home, future AR devices, and—one day—implantables.

In success, today’s era of lengthy, expensive, and reactive ‘sick care’—mediated by insurance middlemen—is giving way to continuous, ultra-cheap, personalized, and proactive healthcare.

Soon we will own our (technological) doctors (not to mention our health data); we will no longer correct for risk once losses are incurred. Instead, we’ll be minimizing risk 24/7, at extraordinarily low cost, without even thinking about it. The change from “sick care” to “healthcare” will also radically change the health insurance industry.  The insurance companies will soon be covering the cost of healthcare and these new technologies, which will be much less expensive for them.

As Christ-followers, we must do all that we can to practice a lifestyle that promotes good health. The new technologies that are becoming available will make it even easier to do.  Maintaining good health is part of our testimony as God’s temple for today.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

That is a wrap for today’s question. Join us again next Futuristic Friday as we look at another exciting exponential technology area on our ‘Ask Gramps’ episode. Our next trek is Meditation Monday, where we will help you reflect on what is most important in life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along on Monday for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of the past 1497 daily treks or read the associated journals, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, but most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you on Monday!

Day 1497 – A New Calf – Humor Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1497 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

A New Calf – Humor Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your Captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1497 of our Trek, and time for a 3-minute mini-trek called Humor Unplugged. Our Thursday podcast will provide a short and clean funny story to help you lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. Something to cheer you and give a bit a levity in your life. We are told in Proverbs 15:30 A cheerful look brings joy to the heart; good news makes for good health. We are also encouraged in Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.  Consider this your vitamin supplement of cheer for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s funny which is titled:

A New Calf

Little six-year-old Danny was so excited that he was going to the farm to spend the weekend with his granddad, who he called PaPa. He loved being with PaPa and really loved being at the farm so he could be PaPa’s big helper. PaPa and Danny worked at completing their chores as they invested all day together on Saturday. As usual, when Danny visited PaPa, they were up bright and early on Sunday morning to milk the ten milk cows before heading off to church. As PaPa was milking the cows, Danny wandered through the barn as he so loved to do. He came across one cow in a pen all by itself, and she looked enormous. Danny said, hey PaPa, what is this one cow doing all by itself, and why it is so fat. PaPa chuckled a bit and said, that’s old daisy; she is due any day now. Danny wasn’t sure what that all meant, but he was really concerned that Daisy wasn’t doing very well. They headed off to church, but it was hard for Danny to sit still as he kept thinking of poor old Daisy.

When they arrive back at the farm after church, Danny jumped out of the truck and headed to the barn. He soon came running back out with wide eyes and shouted, hey PaPa, it looks like Daisy is not doing well; she is lying down and keeps mooing. PaPa said, well, let’s get out of our Sunday go-to-meeting clothes and put on our work close, then we can check on Daisy. When they finally got back to the barn, PaPa could see that indeed, Daisy was having trouble calving. He didn’t know how little Danny would take in the whole process, but had no option but to get on with the job of assisting the birth.

PaPa got in the pen with Daisy and proceeded to stick his hand and arm in to assist as he pulled the calf free from the birth canal. Danny stood there, watching with eye ready to pop out of his head. Soon Daisy was happily cleaning it up. PaPa turned to Danny and said, well, “Danny, do you have any questions about what you just saw?”

At first, Danny was speechless and seemed overwhelmed by the experience, but finally asked, “Just how fast was that calf going when it hit the Daisy’s behind?”

I hope that brought a smile to your face today. If it did pass your smile onto some else, we all could use a kind smile each day. Our Thursday thought is, As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the good or bad deeds of a man follow him.”

Here is our verse for today:

Isaiah 11:6

In that day, the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all.

Just as you enjoy these nuggets of humor, please encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1496 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com.  I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Futuristic Friday!

Day 1496 – Imaging After the Fall and New Testament Application – Worldview Wednesday

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Welcome to Day 1496 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Imaging After The Fall and New Testament Application – Worldview Wednesday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1496 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, on our Worldview Wednesday episode, we will continue our study based on a course I recently completed taught by Dr. Michael Heiser. Our study is titled “Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny” Throughout this multi-week course, we will demonstrate that, in the Old Testament, “sons of God” and “holy ones” refers to supernatural beings whose Father is God and who work with God to carry out His will and that this divine family was present before humanity. By fully engaging with biblical texts such as Psalm 82; Psalm 89, and Deuteronomy 32:8–9, our study will show that this divine family functions as a template for God’s human family. God desires of humans, as His imagers, to participate in His council. This study addresses issues such as polytheism, the nature of the (little ‘g’) “gods,” and Yahweh’s uniqueness. This study will apply insights to the New Testament texts and show how the metaphor of being in God’s family informs our sense of identity and mission as believers.

Imaging After The Fall and New Testament Application

·      Segment 26: Imaging After the Fall

Image Remains After The Fall

If the image of God is about us being representatives of God, the fall, the entrance of evil into the world, is certainly a factor in our understanding. Our understanding is that we continue with our purpose. I’ve met Christians that believe that after the fall, the imaging idea was totally lost. Those Christians surmise the only people who image God now are Christians or believers because they’ve been brought back to a relationship with God through redemption. I don’t believe that. I think that’s an inferior understanding of the text and leads to some dangerous theology.

For instance, in Genesis 9:6-7, which, of course, is after the fall, it’s after the flood—we read this, If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image. Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth.” This is an obvious reference to Eden with the Edenic commands repeated. The commands that were originally given to Adam and Eve, the original imagers. The idea here is that the death penalty, taking the life of a person, is legitimized somehow, and we’re going to find out in the rest of the Torah when that situation might be the case. That idea is legitimized because God cannot tolerate the unlawful, unwarranted taking of any human life. After all, those humans are created in His own image. When you kill a person, it’s like killing God in effigy.

If the image were linked only to Christians or only believers, then this verse would, in effect, be saying, “Well, it’s only a crime if you kill someone who’s a Christian. You can kill other people, and God is not going to care about it, but only if you kill His children, then we’re in trouble.” That’s an absurdity, but this is where some thinking goes. We don’t want to go there. We want to be consistent.

The image of God is something that remains intact even after the fall. It’s important to God because we are His representation; we are His representatives—every human being is at every stage. By definition, if you are human, you are an imager of God, and this is what the biblical mindset is.

Humans Never Co-Rulers in Mesopotamian Religion

This concept is quite a bit different than ancient Near Eastern thinking about humans. Humanity as a collective in other religions—like Mesopotamian religion, even Egyptian religion. Some of these ancient Near Eastern cultures—humanity is never described as having this destiny of being with God or the gods, ruling with them in a positive co-rulership kind of relationship. No. Only the king in many of these cultures ever gets referred to as a particular god’s image. Genesis, of course, specifically Genesis 1:26 with the whole idea that all humanity images God, widens this considerably. Human beings in biblical theology are all equally God’s imagers, not just one person, not just someone with royal blood, but everyone.

God’s Program to Restore

Biblical theology dramatically democratizes the idea. After the fall, we have a problem. We need to bring back the estranged children, humans, back into God’s family. They don’t lose the image; they don’t lose the status of being His representative, but they’re in rebellion. So, something has to be done about that. After the fall, God’s program is to restore Eden, which means restoring His presence on earth, restoring His rule to earth, and the mechanism for doing that is people.

We know the biblical story. Genesis 3 is just the first in a series of rebellions. In this entire course, we focus on the rebellions both in the human and the supernatural world. The Bible covers three rebellions in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Genesis 3 – the fall of humanity; Genesis 6 – the corruption with supernatural entities; and Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel event. After that, we have the whole problem with Israel and the wilderness wanderings. We have the period of the judges. We have the divided monarchy, idolatry. It’s a long, long road, a long, long story of rebellion. At each phase of this, though, God is trying to restore Eden.

Role of Israel and the Messiah

When we get to the Israelites, this is probably the most straightforward example to see. God has called out for Himself from nothing a new people, the people allotted to Him. His own inheritance is Israel after dispersing all of the other people into nations, assigning them to lesser gods that we talked about earlier.

Here, the story takes one people group that God creates out of nothing miraculously through Abraham and Sarah to reinstall what was lost in Eden. He’s going to dwell with them. They’re going to occupy a specific place. There’s going to be eventually, altars, tabernacles, and temples. God is going to live there. They will be His people. Back in Genesis 12, God told Abraham that “it’s through your seed that all of the nations will be blessed.” They will be brought back into a relationship. It takes a long time for this to work out, and ultimately, it only works out because of the Messiah, because God Himself, becomes a man to ratify and fulfill all of His own covenants to bring all of this about.

So the biblical story here as it relates to human imagers’ issue is that God is committed to working with people, with humans, and it is a long, arduous task. They have to be redeemed; nations have to be reunited; sin and rebellion must be rolled back; the kingdom has to be restored to earth. It is a long, terrible, but also a glorious process. This is the biblical story; it’s the biblical epic of how this is happening.

The Messiah is the key, the linchpin here. He’s both human and divine. He has an atoning death that fixes the problem of Genesis 3. We have a resurrection that ultimately fixes the problem of sinful flesh: getting new bodies, the reclaiming of the nations because the resurrection, in Paul’s thinking, is also key to the defeat of the principalities and powers. All of these things are interconnected and equally important. They all roll around, revolve around, God’s commitment to using people and not exempting them or destroying them.

Humanity’s Freedom Means No Plan B

Now, think about it. God made humanity His imager. They sin. They use one of the attributes that He has shared with them (His freedom of choice) to rebel. God is omniscient; He knows this is going to happen. But He allows it to happen. Why? Because He hasn’t created us as robots. Without an attribute like freedom, without God sharing His characteristics with us, we wouldn’t represent Him. The fact that freedom is one of those attributes means, again, that without it, if we weren’t free in some sense to make decisions to obey or not, we wouldn’t be like Him; we couldn’t be spoken of as His imager because He is not a robot. He is free.

So God is willing to work with humanity in this way; we can say to take this risk. With God, it’s not a risk because He knows the end from the beginning. But this is the biblical story. There is no plan B. God is committed to humanity, to making humanity an intimate, participatory part of everything He wants to do on this planet. There is no plan B.

This is why we have evil; it’s why evil ultimately is going to be redeemed, because God is committed to it. So we are His imagers. We are His means of turning evil into good. We are His means of restoring Eden. We have a status as His family members; we are His children.

Humanity’s Genuine Role

If we are estranged from God, we need to go back into that right relationship again through the work of Christ, and as we do, we can see why we are here, why we are members of His family. We’re able to see that this was God’s original desire, and it should be normal. Once we get that realization, we can have a sense that we have not just a contrived, pretend, artificial role in accomplishing God’s will as though everything was preprogrammed. It’s not. Our role is genuine, and God is committed to making us part of what He wants to do. All of these thoughts are present in the New Testament, but they derive from the material that we’ve been talking about: our status as family members, the concept of imaging. It gives us status, a calling, and, ultimately, a destiny.

·      Segment 27: New Testament Application of These Ideas

Introduction

We’ve covered a lot of ground in the Old Testament about the sons of God—this divine family language that we run across in the Old Testament and how humans were included in that family. We went to Genesis 1 for that, and that also took us into the matter of the image of God. We talked about how the plural and singular language interplay in Genesis 1:26–27 sort of fused or united or at least created a strong association between God and His heavenly family and His earthly family and why that was intentional. It was really about imaging God. Both God’s divine family and God’s human family, of course, have the same creator, the same Father, as it were, and that Father tasks us and tasks them in specific ways in their spheres of influence, spiritual world, or the physical world.

Introducing Christ as the Ultimate Imager of God

We want to transition now to how the New Testament repurposes this kind of language. We’re going to talk about Jesus—how He is cast as the ultimate imager of God. Remember that we talked about the image being really kind of a verbal idea rather than a thing put in a person or a quality. It’s a status and the status of representing God. Well, Jesus is the ultimate example of that, and there are New Testament passages that testify to that fact and help solidify our understanding of what imaging means.

Introducing New Testament Vocabulary Regarding Believers

We’re also going to be looking at New Testament vocabulary for believers as children of God. Some passages will be familiar; some may not be so familiar. We will learn how the children of God need to be conformed to the image of the ultimate imager, conformed to the image of Christ. He is our model for how we represent God as family members and really as His siblings.

We’re going to be talking about glorification as well. Glorification is the endpoint for sanctification. We typically talk about the word sanctification: that is, being made divine. It’s being made like Jesus and, of course, being made like a spiritual being, a spiritual family member, but still being embodied. Jesus, even after the resurrection, gets a body, and as we learned in 1 Corinthians 15, our body post-resurrection will be like the body that Jesus had after the resurrection.

Summary

This is all intentional to put us all in the same group with Him as family members, which is the way it was intended to be. Had there never been a fall, this is what we would have been looking like—sort of a jet start, a jump to glorification, solidifying our status as people, embodied beings, humans that belong in God’s family, in His direct presence. Of course, we’ve had this long interval (the biblical story) about how things were fixed after the fall, how God never gave up on that plan.

Ultimately, of course, we’re going to re-inherit all of that as believers, working our way back to Eden, moving forward into the past, as it were. We’ll discuss a little bit about our inheritance of a new Eden that brings all of this together. So that’s where we’re headed in the rest of the course, building on this language, these concepts, that we’ve seen in the Old Testament.[1]

 

That will finish our study for this week’s Worldview Wednesday. Next week we will cover “Believers as Family, Participants.”  Tomorrow we will enjoy our 3-minute Humor nugget that will provide you with a bit of cheer, which will help you to lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along with us tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’

If you would like to listen to any of our past 1495 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you Tomorrow!

[1] Heiser, M. S. (2019). Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.