I have come to face the reality that I am not much of a designer. I’ve designed a sermon or two but that’s about it. There no are hot fashion items with my name printed, stamped, or embroidered on them.
My daughter Carrie is pretty good at it though. She designs works of art, from gifts to decorations to gourmet meals. She works hard at it. She conceptualizes what she wants to create. She searches for ideas. She makes a plan. She sometimes sketches or makes a template or model. Then she creates. It is amazing to see her finished work. She is a designer.
Design, whether it is a mass-produced consumer good or a work of art or a solution to a problem is an act of creativity. It begins with something in mind, a well thought out concept or idea. It moves to plan and process and finally to the end product.
I think we all like to design something or other. We like to create things and we like to change things, to improve on the design. The Japanese, it is said, are expert at that. Improving on design. I guess that is okay sometimes, but if we don’t have a clue what the original designer had in mind we can really mess it up. Some things are really best left to the original design. When it comes to God’s designs for life we mess up more than we improve because we don’t completely understand what God had in mind when he designed and created. When God designed the world he had something in mind, deliberated and carried out the plan, and created. We thought we were improving things when we did our own thing in the garden, but only made things worse. A lot worse.
The Pharisees in today’s Scripture text thought they were improving on God’s design for marriage and family. They wanted quickie divorces. They even had an endorsement from Moses, they thought. Surely uncontested divorces would improve the design.
When they asked Jesus about it he referred to the design. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning God made them male and female? Did you notice that man leaves father and mother and joins together with wife and they become one?”
Then he said, “Humans must not pull apart what God has put together.” We cannot go tinkering with the original design because we cannot improve on it. We can only complicate it. We can only make things difficult. That is because God had something definite in mind when he created us the way he did, and he gave more thought and effort to creating us than anything else in the creation. He created us in his image and he created us to live in families. From the beginning.
Families today are in trouble because we found it too easy to tinker with the design not knowing why it was designed that way to begin with. Like the Pharisees we thought we could improve on the design. We’ve only made things complicated and painful.
Jesus pointed to Genesis chapter 1 to note that God made us male and female to live in committed married relationships. This alone should answer all challenges about “gay” relationships and marriage. Jesus pointed to Genesis chapter 2 to describe the process God used in carrying out his design and his purpose for doing so. The emphasis on life-long committed partnership between man and woman to bear children to populate the earth is clear. If we don’t study, follow, and appreciate God’s design it will cause trouble because we cannot improve it. God had something in mind, made a plan and processed it, and created something beautiful.
Our series “In the Family Way” the next few weeks will begin to look at the design God has for family, beginning with marriage. The number one threat to our society and a number one problem in our community comes from ignoring or trying to improve on God’s design. That is because we were created, hard-wired, to live in family with a specific structure and a specific order.
In our made-to-order world we are accustomed to having things made just for us. We want it customized, tailored to our specifications. We want it our way. That is unfortunate, especially when we, like those hard-hearted Pharisees, want to customize family. We cannot improve on God’s design. Our attempts to do so have only created heartbreak and misery for our children and ourselves.
So what do we do? The first thing to do is repent. Quit trying to customize what God has created. Then seek out and discover God’s design and make the changes necessary to live that way. Find out what God had in mind, what he planned for us, and restore what he created.
Matthew 19:1-6
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