Male and Female... why???

Ge 1:27 - So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (NIV)

Right up there with "Why do I exist?" There is the question "Why did God make women? (or men)"  Some like to think about why God made mosquitoes, but I guess women are more interesting to me...

Really, it is sort of odd that he made Adam and then said "It is not good for man to be alone."  Did he make a mistake?  All the other times he said "It was good."  It seems to me that God had not completed his work with Adam.  Oops.. now I am back to why he made me... ah Adam...  It was very early in the bible, but rather late in the creation:  late in the 6th day.  After that even He had to take a rest!

In Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible he notices that God changes from "Let there be..." to "Let us make..."
"In the former he speaks as one having authority, in this as one having affection; for his delights were with the sons  of men, Prov. 8:31. It should seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, "Having at last settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.""

So, if we take Henry's view, God provided all the rest of creation as a setting for his real purpose - to create His image in man... male and female he created them... back to that now... why male and female?  Why did it take 2 creatures to image God?

(NIV)
25. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

As I pondered this last week.  I was thinking about carving... give me a minute...

A while back we took a driving trip up through South Dakota.  It was the first time I saw Rushmore!  We spent a night in Custer and visited the "National Museum of Wood Carving".  That was really cool and contains many amazing works by Dr. H. D. Niblack who worked closely with Disney on many projects.  http://www.blackhills.com/woodcarving/tours.htm.

They had classes about wood carving and one of the pamphlets showed some of the creative "simple" techniques to make a successful image.  Most things have simple keys once you see them.  With carving and sculpting, one way to proceed is to work in 2 dimensions at a time.  Imagine that you have a saw blade and you move the wood long that blade using a jig so that it follows the profile of an existing 3D object - like a face.  Put the original into a holder and a blank into another holder.  Move the jig so that the profile of the 3D face is cut into the blank.  Flip it over and do the back of the head.  It will not make much sense if you look at it from the front or back, but if you look from the side, you will clearly see the figure.  Now, rotate the blocks so that the two sides of the head are cut.  Now look!  It makes sense!  There is a lot of trim work to do, but you have the basic idea.

It is too hard for everyone to have the jigs and power saws, and besides, this is supposed to be carving! So, what they do is have 2 outline pictures of the original one from the side and one from the front.  Mathematically, these are two projections of the 3D object onto a 2D space. The carver first cuts the block to match one profile, then turns it in the hand and works on the other profile.  Unlike the saw technique, they constantly rotate the wood and jump from one projection to the other, but it is the same idea.

Now... back to the Adam/Eve thing... starting to get my thought?  The 2D image of the carving could not contain enough information to image the 3D shape, so they provide 2 different perspectives.  The thing that clicked into my brain last week is that this is one reason why God made both Adam and Eve to display his image!  So, he used 2 images to display himself more completely in our space!

The animals have male and female too, but I was not just thinking about the physical image although the carving example is just physical.  His image is not just the physical aspects but his very nature. There is more to me that just my physical 3D/4D projection in this universe.  Even so, our set of dimensions was incapable of displaying his image.

He says that when we marry we become one flesh.  What an incredible blessing and responsibility it is to bare his image and what a great work it is to ensure that my marriage also displays him in a more complete way.

btw... I use CrossWalk for most of my online bible work.  Check it out!
http://www.crosswalk.com/
http://biblestudy.crosswalk.com/