One of my favorite things about the first few weeks of the school year is getting to read and discuss Genesis 1 with seventh graders. It’s just fun. It reminds me how much I love what I get to do for work.
While there are many things to unpack when it comes to Genesis 1, my favorite idea to discuss with students is in verse 28 where the Lord creates humanity in His image and gives them the command to fill, subdue, and rule the earth. I always ask students to tell me their gut reaction to the words rule and subdue. If you paused for a second and thought about these two words, what would come to your mind?
Most often, students will describe something like an authoritative leader who exercises forceful control over someone or something. In English, these words can carry a negative connotation, but in Hebrew, the command to “rule and subdue” paints a beautiful picture of the type of people we are called to be.
The instruction to rule in Hebrew is not associated with forceful authority, it means something more along the lines of exercising “leadership that enables things to develop in line with their nature.” In a similar vein, the word subdue means “to enact peace out of chaos” or “to cultivate or organize something in such a way that it thrives, grows, and flourishes.” Think of a gardener planting a garden: if the soil is not tilled, the rocks and weeds are not cleared away, and the seeds are randomly scattered, the garden is not able to grow properly. On the other hand, when a garden is carefully planned and tended, it not only flourishes, it also brings forth beauty and life.
The command to “rule and subdue” should remind us that we are called by God to do good work that brings about Good, Beautiful, and True things in the world.
There is certainly chaos, disorder, and brokenness in the world. Our natural response can be to hide and shelter ourselves from the chaos, to critique the people or things we believe are responsible for disorder, or to simply give up – blindly consuming and accepting the broken aspects of the culture we live in. But as Christians, we cannot be the kind of people who hide, critique, or consume. We are called, from the very beginning, to be people who pick up the pieces of all that feels broken and begin to arrange it in a way that reflects the Goodness, Beauty, and Truth of the Kingdom of God.
As an alumna and now as a faculty member, I know that FRCS equips students and families to be culture makers who take part in Christ’s redemptive work of all things. I see this redemptive work take place each and every day as our students ask hard questions in the classroom, include others and build community on the playground, create beautiful things in art classes, perform on the court, field, and stage, speak on Senior Capstone Day, and consider how their choices and things that they love might actually contribute to the flourishing of the Kingdom of God.
In the words of Henri Nouwen, may we be a people and a place that “gives eyes to see the flower breaking through the cracks in the street, ears to hear a word of forgiveness muted by hatred and hostility, and hands to feel new life under the cover of death and destruction.”
