“When
a newspaper posed the question, ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ the
Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response:
‘Dear
Sirs:
I
am.
Sincerely Yours,
Sincerely Yours,
G.
K. Chesterton.’
Keep
Chesterton’s humble and wonderful (and accurate) admission in mind as you read
the following passages
And
the LORD God commanded the man,
saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat
of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis
2:15-17
Now
the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD
God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat
from any tree in the garden’?”
The
woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but
God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of
the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
“You
will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows
that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.”
When
the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the
eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also
gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Then
the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they
sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Genesis
3:1-7
16 To
the woman he said,
“I
will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To
Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree
about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is
the ground because
of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”` Genesis 3:16-19
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”` Genesis 3:16-19
You
know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we're in—first sin, then
death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed
relations with God in everything and everyone, . . . . Here it is in a nutshell:
Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and
death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just
getting us out of trouble,( Jesus) got us into life! One man said no to
God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in
the right.
Romans 5:12-19 (MSG)
In
my opinion the three passages above and the quote by G.K. Chesterton contain
some of the most important information every one of us needs to know and to
believe in order to live well.
Whether
we take the trees literally or metaphorically, what we learn is huge.
When
we seek to live “above our pay grade”, above
our capacity (we are the created, not the Creator), when we seek to operate
our lives with the wisdom of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” a
wisdom that is too great for us, a wisdom which, when we seek to exercise it
apart from God, it will destroy us. In
fact it has.
When
Eve (and Adam silently abdicating responsibility and passively doing what Eve
did) decided to “be like God”, that act was an exercise of pride, the choice
of acting independently from God. “Pride
cometh before the fall.” It did
and it still does.
In
Genesis 1:28 we learned that God blessed the first human beings with work.
They were blessed with the image-bearing task of filling the earth with
life and with governing it. The
whole of life is described here. Family/marriage/relationships
and work. It was and still is ruined
by pride and self-defending independence from God and others.
Genesis
three then goes on to describe the dissatisfaction wives will have with their
husbands along with the pain of motherhood.
It describes how men cover their weakness by “ruling over her”, by
seeking a kind of power that is weakness in disguise instead of gentle loving
strength. It is a description
of an inability to say no to things that will harm his wife and family as a
kind of a strong gentle and loving “yes” to them.
Genesis 3 then goes on to describe the joyless toil that will and does
describe so much of our work.
As
the apostle Paul reflects on the Genesis account of how the world went wrong (think
8 billion people pridefully trying to “be like God” and it’s not a stretch
to see what’s wrong with the world), he traces all of our problems back to
the sin of Adam. Whether your
reading of Paul’s words see Adam as an historical person or as a kind of
archetype (a person in whom we see ourselves) or both (my view), it is clear
that he sees no hope for the mess that the world is in without prideful people
who choose to “be like God” admitting our pride, and admitting our need for
God, and resubmitting ourselves to the Grace and mercy of God.
Of
the course the Good News is, The Gospel is, that when we do so, we discover that
God, to our astonishment, has not only forgiven our pride, our sin, but He has
come to dwell in prideful “Adams and Eves” who humble themselves and daily
choose to live in a humble rhythm of receiving forgiveness and courageously
giving to others the forgiveness we have received.
It
is in this that the hope of the world lies.
It is in this that your hope for life, real life, lies as well.
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
No comments:
Post a Comment