Our God Given Privilege

There is nothing like Christmas to remind me how truly privileged I am, especially this year. I may be away from my parents, siblings, and blood family, but they are alive and I have this amazing community, my family, my son, a warm house, enough food, and a mostly safe country. I know it goes far beyond this. I know I am very privileged. I could complain about the struggles like we all could, but I have been gifted with so much that I don’t deserve. I hope you too realize how privileged you are. There has been a lot of conversation about privilege over the last few years. Conversations that have often made us feel guilty about privilege. This privilege is usually given to us naturally, through our birth, our situation, and our genetics - though we still have to work at it. It is important in the midst of all of this conversation that we make sure we see it from a Godly and biblical perspective. That’s what we will be doing over the next seven weeks. You might be surprised, but the bible actually says a lot about privilege, especially telling us what we should do with our privilege.

Today we start with a simple and important fact, we are all privileged by God. Of course, we are all privileged in different ways, but our fundamental and greatest privilege is common to all humanity because as we heard, we were made to be a little lower than the angels. That’s what we see within the first few pages of the bible in Genesis too. Here is humanity, we haven’t even been created. We haven’t had the chance to live up to or deserve anything, but what does God do? He gives humanity more than we could ever deserve. Talk about being born into privilege.

Let's look a little closer. God starts by discussing that he wants to make us in His image, in His likeness. What exactly God’s image means is up for debate, but what we can say for sure is that God gives us a large part of who He is and entrusts us to use it and live up to it. At this point in the story of the Bible, we have seen a few huge things about who God is. He is beyond creation as he created everything, he is the creator, he is diverse and creative in that creating, he intelligently organizes and orders to create life, he shares responsibility as he blesses creatures to be fruitful and multiply, he is giving as he gives the land and spheres to animals, he empowers, he calms and limits the chaos, and more. This is the image of God we have seen only within these first few verses and so we can know that the image we have been given should have a lot to do with this capability and work of organizing, creating life, giving, empowering, and more.

This privilege of God’s image comes with a lot of power and capability, we can look at one another and see great potential for this creative ordering, but the interesting thing is that just by watching what God does with His power shows us that this privilege has a purpose. The privilege of this power is meant to be directed towards life.

It shouldn’t actually be surprising when we hear the next privilege is about having dominion. The idea of having dominion is that we have the privilege to rule over something. This may confuse you at first. None of us are kings or queens, very few of us are even great community leaders, so do we actually have dominion? Yes, every single one of us has a lot of authority over every relationship we have and every situation we are in. It might not always feel like it, because we give into peer pressure, or we aren’t as confident, or we lean too much on human authority structures, but each of us has leadership over our own relationships. This can actually have a grand effect and purpose. You have been privileged with the ability to have a huge effect on the people and things around you. Only watch as someone does something negative or positive for you and what that does to you. In that, you already begin to see that everyone has dominion, whether we use it well or poorly.

The next time we hear about our dominion is in the context of God’s new privilege that equips us to be fruitful and multiply. Again, this should not be surprising as God’s work and image have shown us that he is very fruitful, so we should be too. When God pares our dominion with being fruitful and multiplying, what we should see is that we are meant to be fruitful in those relationships as well, in that leadership. This privilege of multiplication and fruitfulness is not just for us as individuals, it is the gift to be able to help others and even created things to become more fruitful as well.

Next, we hear that we have the privilege to subdue, to take control. Too often people have misused this privilege as an invitation to take control and use creation in whatever way they want. Subdue is meant to fit into our already-discovered privileges and purpose. Relating it first to God’s image, what did he do to the waters? He subdued it. He separated it and created boundaries so that there was a sky, rivers, and land. What did he do with the darkness? He subdued it, so that there would be both light and darkness and special beautiful lights to shine at all times. We know that we can subdue things to help them to become fruitful and multiply and in the context of tending the garden, which comes only in a few verses, we know separating, trimming, and replanting plants, which is subduing, can create greater and more abundant life. Our God-given privilege to subdue animals and plants is meant to support and uplift them in creation, not for us to misuse them.

We must be careful to understand how this subduing relates to one another, to other humans. We must remember a few ideas. First, our privilege here is over animals and plants, not one another. Second, what we have already begun to see is that we are meant to be partners with God in this work - we do it in his image, not our own. Third, when Eve is created, we see that our ideal relationship with other humans is one of partnership, where we work together and are a kind of divine helper to one another. These are the ideals.

This ideal relationship between people becomes a little more complicated when people are trying to force their leadership when people aren’t listening to God, and when they don’t want partnership - ultimately ideal human relationship becomes impossible when people are pursuing subjugation to create chaos rather than order. We know with children that we have to direct their ways, we have to put up gates and limit what they eat, and what situations we let them get into. Even though this is a kind of subjugation, we are doing this to empower our children and teach them how to become godly gracious partners. In some ways, we should look at people in our life the same way. To begin with, we limit people in our own relationships when we see them to be irresponsible or unthoughtful with their privilege, but we also empower them as we see their life-giving potential well used; remembering always that mercy here is greater than justice - God does the same thing, but in an even grander way, which we will get to shortly.

The grandeur of all of this privilege is not lost on our Psalmist today as he says: “What is man that you should be mindful of him?” What are we that God should give us so much? He has given us all of this earth, he has given us all of these relationships, he has given us a huge amount of himself, he has given us leadership and potential. Why? We never deserved it. All of this is pure and undeserving grace and privilege. It is no wonder that Satan is often depicted as jealous of humanity. God has given us so much. He has made us a little lower than the angels. He has given us glory. Looking at the great grandeur of creation, its beauty and elegance, and the wisdom that goes into it, humanity is but a speck, and yet God gives us a speck so much. God is so gracious. He trusts us with so much, hoping that we will do right by it.

That finally brings us to our gospel reading. Here we see God’s graciousness at work. Our privileged time on earth is as if we are servants and our master has gone on a grand journey and left us with responsibility over what is his. This privilege and responsibility is a grand opportunity - though we could see it as a test. A talent in the story is more money than almost all people would see in their lifetime, so even one talent is a generous act, so it is like God’s immense gift of creation. Notice that none of the servants think this talent is theirs alone. They do not think they have earned it. They know full well that this is a privilege that ultimately belongs to their master, but they do get to use it and have possession over it for a time. It is a privilege as it has always been and whatever privilege he gives each of us to take care of, it is grand.

The thing we see in the gospel is that God will judge if we have done right by this privilege. Will we show ourselves to be good, faithful, and diligent servants, or will we show ourselves to be mistrusting and lazy servants? We can be like the first two servants who are overjoyed at both the generous responsibility but also the success of what they can give back to their master, or we can be like the judgemental and unappreciative servant that makes God out to be a greedy tyrant. The result is that God will trust us more, or less - and so will entrust us with more or less.

You see God gives us privilege in grand ways, but that privilege always comes with a purpose and responsibility. Whatever our privilege is, God has a purpose for it to bear his image so it should be ordering, life-giving, and fruitful. The truth and difficulty of this privilege is that we can decide how we use it. He has and is giving you so much, but how are you using it? Are you upholding his goodness? Are you creating order from the chaos? Are you partnering with others to empower them and make them fruitful? Are you using your dominion and leadership to create God’s Kingdom? We have seen people too often use their privilege in ways that hurt, but we know now that God has given us our privilege with a purpose. Today, we have seen that the primary purpose of our privilege is to be like him, so we can look to Jesus. So we should hold our dominion in a way that uplifts everyone and everything to make them fruitful. We are meant to hold ourselves in all of our relationships in a way that shows God’s image. We have been given a lot. We are privileged. Now let's use that to create life and give God glory. AMEN