Living, Creating, Ruling

A few years ago I was in a terrific women's Bible study, taught by my friend Chris(tine) Crist. This woman is incredibly gifted at teaching and it was a season of deep lessons I will never forget.

(Here's a picture of us on the last night of our study, before she moved back to Ohio and I left for Brasil. I bawled unashamedly that night.)

One of the big principles we spent time on was exercising our dominion. The "dominion mandate" (ie: "Rule over the earth and subdue it") works out in all aspects of life. It was commissioned in the Garden, and again after the Flood. And everywhere we look, we see humanity walking it out. It happens as we get mastery in our jobs, in music, in gardening, in creating art, in cleaning up mess and creating beauty in our homes, in restraining evil in the world. I saw it rather vividly at the beach a couple of weeks ago, as a bunch of random kids from different families gathered around a spring to create a channel for the water to flow to the shore. They were little engineers, mastering how to make it flow faster and longer, how to dam it up in places, and how to keep the gathered water from breaking "levees" and flooding the nearby volleyball court (and causing the pins for the net to pull out!).

Dominion can also be used to get power and control in an oppressive way, but that's definitely not the idea... it's fallen warping of a good gift.

What Chris taught us that was so valuable to me was that spiritually and emotionally, we have dominion too. We are not helpless victims. We have a dominion mandate and we are backed by the authority of Christ Himself and His sacrifice on the cross. So when we're getting pounded by warfare in life, we have the right and responsibility to push back. We are overcomers. We are victors because Christ is the Victor. We are "more than conquerors through Him who loved us." That's not to say we won't suffer and at times fall. But Paul writes that we are "hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; struck down, but not destroyed."

John Eldredge dug up a quote from Hebrew commentator Robert Alter (whom I studied in seminary and really enjoyed for his quality insights and eloquence), and it was a good encouragement as I struggle through my schoolwork and the daily battle against fear.

God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

And let them rule. God appoints us as the governors of his domain. We were created to be the kings and queens of the earth (small k, small q). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter says the idea of rule means “a fierce exercise of mastery.” It is active, engaged, passionate. It is fierce.
(Waking the Dead , 165–66)

So, one more example of fierce, engaged, passionate mastery: I was reading Thomas Friedman's column today and was inspired by this quote:

The most important competition is between you and your own imagination, because energetic, innovative and connected individuals can now act on their imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before. Those countries and companies that empower their individuals to imagine and act quickly on their imagination are going to thrive....a culture that nurtures and rewards individual imagination - one with no respect for limits or hierarchies, or fear of failure.

Go, baby!