2022/02/28

28. The Fictional Gates

In the divorce debate with the Pharisees, Jesus said quoting Genesis: "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate" (Matthew 19:4-6). People keep the reproductive activity of being joined by intercourse which is common to many other creatures. At this point, the sperm and egg become a fertilised egg, that is, one flesh. This process is common to humans and other living things. However, Jesus repeatedly emphasised its "oneness" because a particular event only for human beings is after the process. As Genesis 2 describes, other creatures become the living by spontaneously repeating the process by which God formed living things from the earth for the first time. But, for the human fertilised egg, unlikely any other living thing, God breathes the breath of life into it at conception, and it finally becomes a human. For humans to become the likeness of God, God, woman, and man give each other their lives. This fact is the true meaning of "what God has joined together," and it gives gravity to his command: "no human being must separate." And it is the starting point from which all people share the truth that God is Father and Mother to man. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark insert a scene where, after this dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees, people bring their children to Jesus to ask him to lay his hands on them and pray. For adults who have forgotten they used to be a child, the truth that God is the father and mother to man is a matter of far away. So, the disciples, when looking at the children approaching, found a contradiction within themselves because they clearly saw the reality that they were separating themselves from God. To cover it up, they shared the fiction that children were unworthy to come to Jesus and rebuked the people who had brought their children. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Mark 10:14). Jesus made them face the reality of God so that they might become awakened from their fiction. People see many gates in the fiction they made. But none of them can lead them to reality. Only the Word of God can break through their fiction and bring them to the reality of God.

Maria K. M.