Ok, the course I have followed so far has gone something like this:
The heart of being a man is readiness (willingness and capacity) to take on responsibility. And this responsibility has a two-fold shape to it: responsibility for task and responsibility for people.
These aspects are of course related:
Taking responsibility for people will involve any number of tasks, and taking responsibility for tasks may involve a whole lot of people. However it remains that our responsibilities will almost inevitably take the shape of:
- A number of ‘jobs’ (whether paid or volunteer)
- A number of people (perhaps a wife and children, an extended family as
well as a few others in the church and community)
I went on to suggest that taking responsibility for task (or ‘jobs’) had its own
two-fold shape, summed up in firstly the Creation Mandate (Genesis 1:28) and
secondly The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). The temptation is to see
these as competitors to each other, or to see the second eradicating the first. This
is to confuse ‘new age’ with ‘new creation’. The resurrection has indeed brought
about a new age, but the old creation remains for the moment, and with it, its
mandates.
Secondly it fails to adequately draw the connections between the two. The call of Genesis was to bring order and create life, the fall wreaked disorder, death and destruction; Jesus brings new life and new order. Fulfilling the Great Commission will inevitably have implications for the people we take responsibility for, but it will also mean that we will make one or more of our ‘jobs’ something that contributes specifically to the cause of ‘making disciples’, the cause of advancing the name of Jesus.
