06.28.05 Desire
After Man’s aspirations to trump God’s I.Q. tripped him into mortality, God mercifully spared him and Woman but left them forever changed. Cursed. Man’s work became a tiresome burden and Woman writhed with agony as she pushed life from her body. Those were their yokes to bear alone. But they shared a curse as well; the curse of ambition and desire.
Genesis 3:16 God said to Woman, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Her desire to overthrow man is punishment for trying to overthrow God. This appetite for dominance paces like a lion within her, a bent lust for control born reaching out in attempts to subdue and undermine, to lure and drag around by the mind or heart. But instead of ruling she is ruled.
She is even ruled by theologians today who’ve argued that these words from God describe His ideal for the relationship today between Man and Woman - her under his thumb, him snapping his fingers to bend her will to his own. He is the ruler. She is the subject. “God said so.”
But we are to “aim for perfection” today, for relationships and living resembling the days before the bite was taken and the heart of God broken (2 Corinthians 13:11). Man and Woman honored, loved, cared for, partnered with each other. Equals. Ambition is the puddle Man and Woman both fell into but don’t have to stay in. Yet Go was right, the feud for superiority continues. It is the creature devouring both sexes, all cultures, from within.
“Your DESIRE,” God says.
Man and Woman feel rejected, shamed, blamed and tricked. And the seed of destructive desire, desire to be valued over the other is born. The seed grows in the heart and is passed down to the flesh of brothers. One accepted by God. The other ignored.
GENESIS 4:6 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
Cain is warned that there inside him prowls a ravenous desire ready to take him over if given the chance. The same desire that wars in his parents while fighting with one another over remote controls and household chores undone, over credit card statements and sexual stalemates, over in-laws and dreams unfilled. It’s in him. The same wild poison. Growing, feasting on his brotherly envy. His need to rule over another now rules him.
It fans anger into action.
GENESIS 4:8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
It whispers guidance on covering tracks.
GENESIS 4:9b “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
It dooms him to repeat the fall of his father. The same trajectory. He’s cursed and mercifully spared all at once, a walking symbol of Yaweh’s judgment and compassion for stumbling man, unable to leash the beast within.
More tonight at IKON from Chapter 4 of Genesis.
According to the Associated Press a unanimous decision has been reached by the Supreme Court in the case Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer -vs- Grokster. The justices say file sharing services like Grokster may be held responsible for illegal activities using their service. In other words, Grokster and other like services may now be sued by the entertainment companies for piracy perpetrated using their services.
We got to sleep in this morning, leaving our hotel in Columbia, SC at noon headed to Greensboro, NC. Too many Carolinas. In fact I was so turned around that at the show in Greensboro I told the crowd it was great to be with the nice folks of South Carolina. When that happens in the first few minutes of a show it’s tantamount to picking up a girl for a first date and calling her by your ex’s name. Not good. I had to work hard tonight to win them back.
They’ve never hosted a concert before. I love working with people who are new at the concert business. They often make mistakes because of their lack of experience, though the guys tonight made none, but new promoters are also the kindest most attentive and hard-working promoters we partner with as well. They’re the most likely to give us great food instead of a bowl of chili and a row of Saltines (true story). They’re the most likely to hire a great sound company instead of running my guitar and microphone through a set of computer speakers (also true). And they never under-promote a show, assuming a few posters around the church and an announcement in the Sunday service will draw hundreds of people. These guys gave us amazing food, which makes a huge difference on the road when often all we get is fast food, and they put posters everywhere for miles, mailed stuff out to churches, called churches, bought radio ads and much more. The gave us the best sound system we’ve played through in a while and staffed it with gentle and patient men who knew what they were doing. Everyone involved worked very hard. Thanks to you all.
But no one, no matter how great of a promoter they are, can stop the crazies from tainting things. For instance, representing the great state of North Carolina well, Harmonica Hannah serenaded me using her miniature instrument and her nose. And then there was the gnome. You know gnomes, not content with sitting on a theatre seat like everyone else, always hungry for the limelight, pushy little suckers. This one made himself at home at my feet, the little guy lounged there in the warmth of the cable clutter all night. I wouldn’t have even noticed him if he didn’t keep shouting “WELCOME GNOME! PLAY WELCOME GNOME!”
And on a random note, as if that wasn’t, Brian, not content with his, um, condition began his Rogaine treatments today. Wow, that stuff really works! Hey, Rogaine guys! you know Brian works for a huge soft-rock star. What better advertising opportunity could you dream up? I’m talking endorsement deal, before and after shots on bus stops and billboards, commercials, radio, TV, sponsorship of my world tour.
