Mark 1: 7-8 John the Baptist: It's Okay to Be Different. . .Icky Feet. . .God's Certainty. . .and Baptism: Water vs. Holy Spirit

I was told by a friend that when I colored these three sections--verses, paraphrase, and thoughts--I had made them very straining on the eyes, so. . .in an effort to make my posts more readable, I am just going to make the three sections different fonts. Maybe one day, I'll get this system down!




The Verses:(NIV)

7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with[e] water, but he will baptize you with[f] the Holy Spirit.”

My paraphrase:

7 This was his gospel: "The Messiah is coming and He is far greater than I am. 
8 I can baptize you with only water, but His baptism is the Holy Spirit."


My thoughts:

This verse completes the whole strange picture (You can scroll down to the former entry if you are wondering what strange picture I'm talking about). So here's this guy. He's in the middle of the desert. If you want to go see him, you're gonna have to stop your regular life and leave your comfort zone--by the way, it's the desert. When you get there, you see he's dressed like Fred Flintstone and yelling at you to give up being selfish and turn to God. By the way, this God he keeps yelling about hasn't actually talked to your or anyone you know and the last recording of His human interaction was over 400 years ago. Then, this same guy urges you to believe in a promised Messiah that no one has seen since the beginning of time. 

Then, to top it all off, this weirdo dunks you in a nasty river!

It's just like God to draw people to His message in the last way you'd ever expect!

It does make me wonder, though, if John--mid-dunking someone--ever had a self-aware moment going, "Wait. . .What in the world am I doing?. . .And why am I dressed like this?" Obviously, the fact that Mark bothers to describe him--when he's not a detail-oriented writer--proves that John is a little different.

What this means to me: If God had a plan for John to be different, then it's okay if God gives me a different plan from everyone else's. Sometimes, I feel like the crowd of believers around me has been called to a certain task. Should I join them just because it is a good thing? What if I haven't been called to join them? What if I have been called to study the book of Mark a little every day, for instance? I should probably do what I've been called to do and not what I haven't--even if it's a good thing. This doesn't mean I should find a sense of superiority in my given task, and it doesn't mean that I can only do one task and shun the others. It just means that God wants us to be a body of believers (eyes, ears, arms, etc.) not cookie-cutters, and that's okay. If I am using my task as an excuse to get out of doing another task, that is also not right, obviously. That's not my point. My point is John was different, so I can be different, and I don't need to feel guilty about being different.


Part of Verse 7 again: "I'm not worthy to untie his sandals." 

Dealing with a master's feet was the lowest job of a servant, and for logical reason. Feet are dirty and disgusting. They were back then, and they still are today. (Yes, I'm probably a bit of a germophobe. . .However. . .) Your feet gather all kinds of germs--from sludge, to fecal matter, to disease--and the gathering is completely unavoidable as walking is our general mode of daily transportation. 

John describes here that even if he were to perform the lowest act of servanthood for Jesus--something only the lowest of the low was expected to perform--that he would consider this humble act as infinitely disrespectful due to the superiority and divinity of Christ. This is no small thought, and we really should stop and think about it rather than gloss over it. Think again about it, this is John the Baptist we're talking about. Jesus Himself said that John was the greatest prophet ever to have lived! Yet, John considered himself unworthy even to touch Jesus' feet. This is a humbling thought. If you don't feel humbled, then ask yourself: Has Jesus ever called me the greatest prophet ever to have lived? My guess is, no, since that superlative description has already been designated to John. Furthermore, it should be even more humbling to think about how later in His ministry, Jesus Himself deigned to wash His disciples' feet. What pure humility is that? Unfathomable.


Another John thought:

The fact that God used John to prepare the way for Jesus shows me two things: (1) John had to appear because he was fulfilling prophecy, and (2) God always prepares his people for messages they should hear. John was immediate preparation for God's people to be ready to hear from His Messiah. Jesus wasn't out-of-the-blue. His coming was calculated and well-groomed. God never leaves us high and dry--expecting us just to guess His plans. He told His people in Isaiah and Malachi that a prophet would come to prepare the way, and that's exactly what happened. This shows us that God loves us. We may not know everything, but we always get to know exactly what we need to know, and we get to know it at just the right time. 

Contrast this with the total uncertainty of literally ANY other faith, religion, or belief system.


Regarding verse 8 (The part about baptizing with water vs. the Holy Spirit): 

John makes the point that he baptizes with water, but Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I imagine this sounded very nice, but also very cryptic to the hearers. "Baptize with the Holy Spirit?" What could that have meant to them? Up to that point, the Holy Spirit was something outside of themselves. He was a Spirit that would indwell those chosen followers who seemed to be elite--think of David or Moses or even King Saul at times--(Although they really weren't elite at all. They were literally just people like you and me, but you know how the enemy will get in your head and tell you that God has "special people" and that you might not be one of them?) I'm not saying that the hearers did think this way, I'm just asking the question, "How could people have possibly understood this statement?" Obviously, they did understand what they needed, because look how many people John reached. "The entire countryside of Judea and the city of Jerusalem." Look how many people repented as a result of his "cryptic" preaching. 

This shows me that God is far more awesome than the credit we give Him. He says things that can make a certain type of sense to the hearers of the time, but then the same statements mean a totally different--or maybe just deeper--type of sense to hearers afterwards.

Anyways, of all human beings, John had, arguably, the most right to feel full of himself. He could look at himself and his ministry and pat himself on the back. But he didn't. John made the observation that while he could preach and reach many many people--in the end, all he was doing was merely just "water." Water is good. Water is symbolic. Water can clean. Water is necessary for life. Water is, like...what? 75% of our bodies or something. However (and therefore), water is human. 

"But," as John says, "Stay tuned! There is one coming who will fulfill and explain all the symbolism and tradition and mysterious messages in Scripture! There is one coming after me who will cleanse you in a way that no dirt, grime, or filth can ever defile again! There is one coming who will slake your thirst once and for all! He comes with the Holy Spirit, and this is real power. Yes, repentance is the first step, but when He comes, you are going to want to repent! The life He will bring you will be such that there will be no going back, nor the desire to go back to who you used to be! What He brings you is eternal. It is pure. It is true. It is far greater than anything I could ever give you. It is divine. It is God Himself."

The Bible: Chauvinist Propaganda Pt. 5 (Conclusion)

5. The hint of the Messiah.

My hope with this conclusion is to help others to see just how and where chauvinism probably eventuated. Part of the reason I didn't write all five of these the same week was so that I could give the my thoughts time to germinate. Not that my thinking about something for a long time makes it right, but also I didn't want to answer hastily. There's barely any wisdom in my head as it is, and there is absolutely no wisdom in hastiness.

Before I get to my real point though, I want to point out something else. Feminists like to say that the word "mankind" is chauvinistic. Well. . .maybe it is and maybe it isn't--I think it depends on who says it--but...at least in the Bible, I think we can come to the conclusion that the word "mankind" means both men and women. This point is very clear in Genesis 1:26:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (NASV)

Notice the wording here. God says He will make "man" in His image, but then He says to let "them" rule. This leads me to believe that from the very beginning, "mankind" was just a term for all peoples: men and women.

Now...I am not a Hebrew scholar, but it's a good thing Hebrew scholars have put interlinear helps online for people like me. Hebrew and English are not the same and so when we look at the English translation, we have to realize that we can't just take the pronouns at face value b/c a lot of other languages don't use pronouns nearly as much as we do and/or they don't have the exact shade of meaning. I say all this to preface this point: in English the Bible says "let THEM rule over the [earth]. . .." But we can't just say "oh that means men and women" are included, b/c a few translations say, "let HIM rule." So the pronoun must have either been added when it was translated into English or the Hebrew word used means more than one thing. So we need more information.

First of all, the Hebrew word for "man" in that particular verse comes from the word that most often means "humans" in the Hebrew Scriptures. Well, that's a good start towards getting some understanding; however, if it could mean just the masculine humans, then we are going to need something stronger still. Fortunately for women, it's not a point of us forcing the wording, because the point is already made. Look at the following verse:

27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

So that is how we know that the words "man" and "them" in verse 26 mean both men and women, b/c if it just meant men, then verse 27 wouldn't make any sense. If you have an interlinear Bible you can see for yourself that the first word for man in verse 27 is the same word in verse 26 for "mankind" or "humans" and the words "male" and "female" mean exactly that: "male" and "female." So "mankind" means both men and women equally. Plus, BOTH were supposed to rule over the earth. You know? It wasn't just the men to whom God gave this awesome task.

So . . . why has there always been this concept of male-domination throughout history? Well, I don't want to rehash everything that's been said to this point, but basically. . .I believe "male-dominance" as we know it today was not a Biblical concept, but rather a man-made one.

It couldn't have been from Adam b/c he saw Eve as "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"--totally equal to him. It couldn't have been God, b/c He made them both as co-rulers of the earth. We don't know all God's reasons for doing things, but we can at least see why He made woman the way He did. The picture of Christ and the church. The companionship. The glory of man. However, before God we are not male and female, but rather simply beings in His image.

Something interesting to note before detailing the curses in Genesis 3:15-19 . These curses seem extreme, especially when we focus on the curses themselves and not why the curses had to happen in the first place. But notice that God simply punishes Adam and Eve. He promises far more to Satan:

Gen 3:15 "And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."

A blow to the head is far more detrimental than a blow to the heel. The concept here is that even though Christ would die for sin that Satan affected, Christ would eventually destroy him and all his evil.

God loved Adam and Eve and so He made provision for them, whereas Satan will be destroyed (for specifics, see Revelation). I suppose we could get into an argument about whether or not God loves/loved Satan...and that will make a very interesting future blog, but...it's too far off the topic for this one.

So let's look at the curses individually. The woman's is in verse 16:

To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you."

Basically, the woman now has (1) pain in childbirth, (2) her desire will be for her husband, and (3) she will be under man's rule.

Now let's look at the mans' curse:

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (NIV)

So the man's curse is basically (1) that the entire earth is cursed b/c of him, (2) he will have pain when he works, (3) the amount of work he does will significantly outweigh his profit, and (4) he will do this till he dies.

If you look at these curses as what will happen to our accomplishments, you see that actually the man may arguably have it worse off than the woman. Women were to simply have pain in childbirth. Man was to have pain all his life. The counterargument being, "Yes, but women work nowadays, and we suffer just as much pain in the work place--if not more--as the men PLUS the child birth aspect." Well, think about it...who do we have to thank for that? Feminism. Feminism would actually multiply pain to women. Think on't.

In regards to the second part of the woman's curse "your desire will be for your husband (NIV)." If the word "desire" means "longing" or "craving" (which it does) then . . . that's not actually so bad either. I don't mean that women are codependent. But there is a sense of accomplishment for women when we can make a man happy. The verse doesn't mean that we are supposed to be dust mops. We are just told that we need to make men happy. Well . . . Shouldn't we? Isn't that something we should already do? I mean . . . can't we just try to make the world a better place to live in? Isn't being nice a far better answer than fighting for our "rights" that actually put us in a harder position than where we were originally? (I know it's hard. I'm not only writing this...I'm also a member.)

And the last part of the woman's curse: the fact that Adam would rule over Eve . . . that's kinda for Eve's benefit too. I mean, have you ever lead anything? It's not easy. You have to prepare. You have to think of others. I mean, women have to think of men in that they need to desire to meet men's needs. But men have to think of how to take care of women, so it's a give and take thing. The "male-dominance" is dominance--yes--but the reason we fight that word tooth and nail is b/c of what it's become today! Ruling is supposed to be like Christ. The way Christ rules over us is to give Himself for us. That's leadership for the good of the followers.

Okay, so over time, man has taken this curse as a blessing so he can domineer over women, but that's nothing new. We take curses as blessings all the time. Think of clothing. Clothing was actually a curse. We were supposed to be naked, but look at fashion today. We don't just take it as a blessing, we glory in it! Also, look at the pain of working. God told us that work would be hard from now on. Look what we do with that as well. Work is no more a means for sustenance and survival. It has become a way of advancing ourselves. A means of "keeping up with the Joneses"! Another way we glory in our infirmities--as my dad pointed out to me one day--look at the Grand Canyon. We "Oooh" and "Aaah" over it when it was because of the Flood. This world-wide deluge being the direct result of man reaching an alarmingly depraved state. I'm not saying fashionable clothes, bettering yourself, or natural treasures are evil, I'm just saying look what we make of them. We can't just see them for what they are, instead we take pride in them. No wonder we are so unhappy.

Anyways, the curses for men and women were actually quite equal in impact. I mean, yes . . . as a woman, I agree it sucks to have to be "under" someone, but . . . just imagine having the responsibility to be "over" someone when you yourself are a fallen selfish creature? That's tough. The curses were both horrible. But, both were punished according to the way each sinned. Eve's sin was buying into a lie, and so she was cursed with not having leadership. Adam's sin was being a pansy and listening to his wife when he knew she was wrong, and so he was cursed with leadership.

So now we come to the actual point. Why were men ever considered better or greater if the curses were equal? Personally, I think it's b/c of verse 15. Let's look at it again:

And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel. (NASV)

The prophecy says that the end of Satan would come through a "Him" who would be born of a woman. Basically, the coming Messiah would be male. And like everything, we humans get a prophecy like that and what do we do with it? We take it to an extreme, so that over time girl babies are counted as literally nothing more than factories with the potential of making more male babies, in hopes that one of them might be the Messiah. But that wasn't God's intent, b/c of verses like Genesis 1:27 all the way to verses like Galatians 3:28.

If we assume that God isn't lying when He says He created the world. If He tells us this in the Bible. If we then realize that all religions are based off this first religion, then of course male domination will become a world-wide concept. I mean are there any cultures that prize girl babies over boy babies? And furthermore, the farther from God humans get, the more sinful this extreme becomes, the more male-dominated it becomes. Conversely, the female-dominated concept arises out of a desire to counteract this first problem, thus creating a whole new set of problems, both of which are not God's original plan. If we would just work together . . .

The Messiah being male is the best answer for the origin of chauvinism, b/c while all the other Biblical arguments can be accounted for after using our brains, you can't get rid of this one. There is no promise of a female Saviour, so human minds sacrifice the common sense of equality between the sexes for the "safe" answer of men being somehow more important. Listen to what we did: we decided to draw conclusions on the importance of all males and non-importance of all females from a provision that God made to pay for our sin. Great job, human race!

But what about all the laws and regulations that seem so much heavier for women than men in the Torah? . . . Well, for one thing, that's all a matter of perspective, b/c you could easily argue that men had even tougher laws. God gave laws b/c people weren't getting it on their own. I mean . . . look how much time went by from the beginning till God started "ordering people around" --a couple thousand years at least, so I don't think you can say that God wasn't being fair. After time, people harden their hearts, turn from God, and lead themselves into destruction, so God wants to put a stop to it, so He starts spelling E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G out in order that we would see His holiness and follow Him. So if we are stupid, then God has to use stupid words to (hopefully) make us smarter.

Plus, do you expect a holy God to just forgo His holiness? I mean, we need that holy standard. Look what we do with the "goodness" that we have? Imagine if there was no concept of holiness whereby we could measure wrong. This world is bad enough, but I would NOT want to exist in a world where there was no concept of goodness.

Women would really get screwed over in a place like that.