Replacement Fillers (Gen 29:16-35)

Replacement Fillers (Genesis 29:16-35)

Being Human Series

Collin Leong. 16/6/2017

1. Introduction

Singapore has made the "5 'C's" world famous. I read with amusement to read this in Wikipedia: "Five Cs of Singapore" namely, [C]ash, [C]ar, [C]redit card, [C]ondominium and [C]ountry club membership." We have been stereo-typed as a people pursuing materialism in an "effort to impress others." But to be fair, I think this is a general description of most of the human kind, regardless of which nationality you are.  

What is the cause of man's incessant drive to strive for security, significance and satisfaction in material things and human praise, to the extent that all spiritual and moral bounds are pushed aside?

We recall in our study of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve chose to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong by taking the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Man learned to be "independent" and drifted away from God. Man's dependency on their own conscience were a dramatic failure, starting with the murder of Abel by Cain, and ending with God wiping out man-kind except for Noah's family. Unfortunately, the seed of sin is in man, and we began again the whole cycle of sin. 

Man's image was originally identified with God. But overtime, his image became identified with achievements and accomplishments. Not that worldly success is unnatural or sinful, but the problem is that we have replaced the Creator with the created things as the source of all security and significance in our lives. 

If you are a Christian, you probably think it is natural for pre-believers to behave like that, for they do not have God in their lives to give them the anchor and therefore they need to find something else as a leverage.  However, if we think deeper, many of us are also like this to a certain extent. While we claim God is sufficient, we continued to put Him aside while we pursue after achievements, success, and the acceptance and the praise of men. We look at our kids and we can see the same mis-placed hunger. 

Our study this week is to remind us the chains the world has on us due to the root of the sin passed down to us. Many of us do not even realise we had been in this trap - either in the past or even now. The ultimate question we ask ourselves is "Is God Enough?

2. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who developed the "hierarchy of needs" model back in the 1950s.  It was an observation that, generally speaking, people are motivated to seek for higher aspirations once basic needs are met. These include belonging (acceptance), prestige, and self-fulfillment experiences. In later models, Cognitive (knowledge seeking) and Aesthetic (creative fulfillment - eg, music and art) needs were inserted below the Self-Actualization layer.

In the age of consumerism, we are frequently drawn to products and services that are designed to fulfill these needs. We work hard to buy big houses and big cars in order to fulfill the "Ego Needs."  Some people will manipulate others in order to be popular. Businesses understand these basic desires and use creative marketing to make us buy their products, as illustrate above.

Satan, the master marketeer, use the same temptation techniques on Jesus in Matthew 4:

• Appeal to basic needs: “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
• Appeal to security and "proof of loyalty": "He will command His angels concerning You, and they will lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone."
• Appeal to Ego and Self-Actualization: "All this I will give You, if You will fall down and worship me.”

Jesus knew that the things that Satan offered will never provide permanent security, significance nor satisfaction. There is another way to everlasting life and everlasting peace, which we will explore later.

3. Compensating For Lack of Security, Significance and Satisfaction

Leah was the older sister that could not be married off except by her father's trickery. As the older sibling she probably carried heavier responsibilities in the family. It is also possible that she had a visible "defect" related to her "weak" eyes. Her sister Rachel, on the other hand, could have been the father's favorite and often praised for her beauty. Leah probably felt life had been unfair to her. This time, she will not settle for second. 

Activity #1:  List a few things you don’t like about yourself, i.e. things that caused feelings of insecurity, insignificance, or dissastisfaction in your life. Eg:

• Your physical profile or “handicaps” (your look, size, height, etc)
• Your family profile – up-bringing or current circumstances (parents, siblings, spouse, financial lacketc)
• Your social profile – propularity or social awkwardness (friends, collegues, bosses, etc)
• Your abilities – what you wish you can be better compared to others (talents, sports, career, etc)

In those days, to be barren was a considered a curse whilst children are considered a blessing to the husband. Husbands may marry another person if the wife could not give him children. Wives would even give their husbands their female servants to bear children on their behalf. (See Genesis 30.) Leah and Rachel went on a child-bearing marathon using their female servants as relay runners. Their objective: to see who can have more of Jacob's affection. 

Activity #2: Have you tried to compensate for your lack of security/ significance/satisfaction through achievements, material acquisitions,  or affection of others?

• Competiveness (academic, career, etc) or Withdrawal (giving up)
• Over-pleasing for acceptance (family members, friends, boy/girl friends, spouses, colleagues, bosses, etc)
• Attachment to status symbols (property, cars, clubs, etc)
• Overly defensive or sensitive to criticism
• Putting ourselves in the limelight, or putting others down

4. God Sees

"When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren."   (Gen 29:32)

God was not blind to Leah's disadvantages in life. God sees how we were treated, the circumstances we were in, and believe it or not, He pitied us even when we did not know Him and had no thought of Him. 

This reminds me of the sherpa in my Nepal trek in 2017.  He came from a remote village and lived a hard life helping his father in farming since very young. He had 5 other siblings, all of whom did not survive the harsh life. He escaped his home when he was 13 years old and ended up in Kathmandu, with no money and no skills. Somehow, he survived and is now running a trekking service company in Kathmandu. I spoke to him about Christ, and I told him that God was the one who looked after him all his life so that he can hear the gospel. Unfortunately, he was (politely) insistent that his success was from his hard work. 

Despite God's hand in Leah's pregnancy, the first thing she said when Reuben was born was:

“Now my husband will love me” (Gen 29:33). Leah's view of God is just the genie who grants wishes and expect nothing more. Even her wish for children was just a means to a greater need: the need of belonging, the need of acceptance and the need for affection from her husband. God didn't really matter.

Similarly, Rachel said to Jacob: “Give me children, or I shall die!” (Gen 30:1).  Rachel already had  the affection of Jacob, so this was not what she was after. Instead she was after the need of ego. She just cannot be second to her sister, even in child bearing. Both God and her husband are just not enough for her. 

In contrast, we see the difference in the case of Abraham and Hannah, when God granted their prayers for children:

• Abraham: “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."  (Gen 22:12)
• Hannah: "For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD.” (1 Sam 1:27-28)

To Leah and Rachel, the gift of children were a means to their own purpose - a means to achieve affection and ego, to be better than the other person. For Abraham and Hannah, though they desperately wanted a child, they understood that the children do not belong to them, and that the children was given for God's own purpose. 

Do we recognize how God had "compensated" us with blessings? Do we use those blessings for our own purpose, or do we use them to honor and glorify Him?

Activity #3: Reflect how have God blessed you to “compensate” for the “disadvantages” in your life circumstances? (This can be circumstances, achievements, things or people He brought into your life.)

5. A Christian's Perspective of the Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is an observation of how the world strive for achievements to meet their human needs. Satan himself uses this human hunger to tempt us. However, God has a different approach for us in meeting these needs. We have to invert Maslow's triangle like so:

The key principles are as follows:

• First. The fulfillment of the needs come not from pursuing them, but by pursuing His Kingdom (by reading and obeying His Word).  It is a promise of God that He will fulfill our needs if we seek Him.  How often do we do this, or do we continue to "compensate" with our own strengths?

• Second. Each of these needs have promises in the Bible that give us a godly perspective. The diagram mentioned a few verses linked to each of the six needs. You may think of other promises relevant to yourself. 

• Third. God does not necessarily have to fulfill all aspects of the needs in our lives. He can give and he can take away. In many cases, God withholds the fulfillment in order to train our faith or to discipline us.

• Fourth. Some physiologists have said that Maslow's Self-Actualization cannot be achieved before we achieve Self-Transcendence. This means the ability for us to de-link security, significance and satisfaction with the fulfillment of the needs. The bible calls it self-denial. The outcome is precisely what Paul has said in Phil. 4:11-12. In other words, fulfillment of those needs no longer matter. What matters is the Giver, not the gifts. 

Activity #4: Evaluate your response to God's blessings that you identified in Activity #3. If they were taken away, will you lose your balance? Are you more dependent on God or on the “replacement fillers” in your life?  

6. Conclusion

The four activities above attempt to help us understand the following:

• Activity 1: Much of our feelings of insecurity, insignificance and dissatisfaction comes from the circumstances in our lives in the fallen world. This can be from the way we were brought up, the lack of parental love/attention, financial difficulties, self-esteem issues, or simply the pressure by the world to perform and to conform.

• Activity 2: As a reaction to these unfortunate circumstances or pressures, we took on a natural tendency to perform or to please in order to achieve the higher aspirations in Maslow's triangle. We see this in our children when they hunger for acceptance or cling to their friends or habits. We may have such tendencies and may not realise it until we open ourselves to God's evaluation.

• Activity 3: At the same time, we must realise God is neither ignorant nor care-less about our plights. Through our lives (and our children's lives), he has compensated for our lack and disadvantages.

• Activity 4: Unfortunately, we often use the blessings of God to fulfill our own purposes - just like Leah and Rachel did. Sometimes, we don't even realise that it was God who made things work out for us, and we credited it to our own ingenuity and strength. 

The final activity we should ask our self is the following: what is the one thing we are most afraid to lose? Is it affection or presence of our spouse or children? For the un-married - is it our boy/girl friend? Is it our peers' opinion of us?  Is it our wealth? Is it our career? 

If the answer is other than "The Pleasure of God", then it means that God is Not Enough. Bring whatever that thing may be before God and surrender it to him.

"One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple." 

(Psalms 27:4)