Читать книгу What God’s Up To on Planet Earth? - Mark J. Keown - Страница 7

In chapter one we discussed the idea that humanity was created by God for a love-based relationship with the creator of the universe, with each other and with the world. This chapter introduces the second R of the Christian message, ‘Rupture’. Here we will discuss how God’s plan has been disrupted. We will find that, just as a cataclysmic earthquake splits the earth, so the relationships between God and his created people, between people themselves, and between humankind and the world itself have been torn apart and are in need of restoration.

Most people recognise intuitively that things are not what they could be, so here we will discuss how the Bible explains the problem. If chapter one answered the question ‘Why am I here?’ This chapter answers the question, ‘What’s wrong with the world?’

The Fall

The ‘Rupture’ refers to the rupturing of the intended relationship between God, humanity and the world. This came about at what Christians call ‘the fall of humankind’ (or ‘the Fall’).1

After God prohibited Adam and Eve (the first humans) from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, the snake (Satan),2 enticed Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He came to Eve and asked her a simple question: ‘Did God really say, “you must not eat from any tree in the garden?”’ Eve responded by misquoting God, failing to recall his words accurately: ‘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”.’ This was a distortion and an amplification of God’s words. He had said ‘do not eat it’; she reported that he said ‘do not touch it’.3

Then the snake responded, ‘You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’4 This involved an out and out lie followed by a half-truth. The lie was suggesting that ‘you will not surely die’ which directly contradicted God’s explicit warning.5 The half-truth was that their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil. That their eyes would be opened was true in a sense – like God, they would realise the difference between good and evil. However, in other ways they would be less like God. They would be separated from him and they would no longer be a pure reflection of his image. They would no longer be sustained by the tree of life and the image of God in humanity would be damaged. Unlike God, they would no longer be good. Neither would they be anything like God in power, as he alone is all-powerful.

The story says that Eve, seduced not only by the attractiveness of the fruit and its apparent gourmet qualities, was also drawn in by Satan’s words that it would make her like God. She interpreted this as meaning that she would have the wisdom of God, and she ate the fruit. She then gave some to her husband who was with her at the time and he too ate it.6 Adam’s presence mentioned here indicates that while Eve took the initiative, Adam was equally culpable of disobedience (‘sin’). As a result, their relationship with God was ruptured.7

As soon as they had eaten, all ‘hell’ broke loose. First, their relationship with their inner self was shattered. Instantly they realised they were naked and experienced shame, guilt and self-deprecation for the first time.8 This outcome points to the initial shattering of self-esteem and the introduction of fear, guilt and shame into human experience. Psychologically, the image of God, while still intact to a degree, had been badly broken.

Secondly, their relationship with God was fractured. The story goes on to tell us that God came looking for them, so that he could walk with them in the garden in the cool of the day.9 Imagine what that would have been like, to wander through a garden with the creator of the universe. But instead of finding his ‘kids’ happily playing in the garden, they were terrified because of their fear and shame when they heard him coming, and they hid (3:8).

So God called Adam, ‘Where are you?’ Adam was at least honest in responding, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’10 This revealed that they had sinned against God and the relationship between God and humanity was forever ruptured.

Why did such a seemingly small event lead to a rupture in the relationship? The answer is found in one particular attribute of God mentioned in chapter one – his perfect purity or holiness. God is pure and will not dwell with evil, unless it is dealt with, since it is repugnant to him. Hence, at the moment when humans disobeyed, rejected and rebelled against God, corruption was etched into human existence. Adam and Eve were the parents of all humanity and they passed this status down to their descendants through the ages.

Because of this, God was no longer able to dwell with humanity in this intimate, free relationship due to the impurity that violated his sense and being. He thus expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and barred them from having a direct relationship with him.11 Access to the tree of life was also barred and so humanity became subject to death and decay.12 If God had allowed them to remain in the garden and eat of the tree of life, they in their fallenness would have gained eternal existence and the universe would be forever blighted with the presence of evil.

The third consequence was that their relationship with one another was ruptured. When we read on we see that Adam and Eve instantly began to fight, seeking to blame someone else for their indiscretion.

First, Adam tried to blame Eve. When God asked them, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’13 Adam’s response was to implicate Eve and, indirectly, God himself: ‘The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’14 Yet, as noted above, he was with her at the time of eating and was equally culpable. Here we have the first marital breakdown and family conflict. The basic unit of society was fractured. As many of us have experienced, human history has been dogged with broken families and human conflict at every level since that day. God’s great dream of a world of harmony, love and unity was thus in great peril.

When God turned to the woman and asked her, ‘What is this you have done?’ She responded by blaming the snake: ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’15 Again this is a typical human reaction and sounds like the murderer in the courtroom who says, ‘The devil made me do it.’

A fourth consequence then was the demise of God’s great dream for his world. God’s dream is not just about individuals living in relationship with God and one another, but of humanity building God’s world with all his creativity in love and harmony. It is a ‘utopian’ picture of all facets of existence including the arts, sciences, literature, music, sport and more, with each individual contributing in a unique way to building up God’s world; all of this in a place of unity, love, joy and peace. The Fall or Rupture shattered this. Each person became marred and flawed, unable to fully express their innate God-inspired brilliance because of their brokenness. Selfishness and personal ambition corrupted all humanity. Contention and domination became par for the course. God’s world would now never be what God intended, unless it is restored.

The result of Adam and Eve’s actions was the judgement of God on all. The snake was cursed to slide along the ground, probably meaning that he would contend on earth with humanity until ultimately defeated.16 The woman was told that she would forever experience great pain in childbearing and live in constant conflict with man throughout human history and be subject to him. This represents the truth that patriarchy and family fragmentation will be a problem for all of time. This subjection is not God’s ideal but a consequence of sin.17

The man was told he would spend his days slaving to produce food, contending with thorns and weeds. Finally he was told he would die, ‘for dust you are and to dust you will return’.18 Adam and Eve were banished from God’s presence. Here we have humanity afflicted with pain and suffering, hunger and famine, conflict, contention with creation itself, separation from God and the introduction of our greatest enemy, death.

The Fall was a cosmic cataclysmic event affecting all of the created order. I sometimes imagine that as Eve and Adam ate that fruit in the garden, there was a sudden change in the weather, there was thunder and lightning, there were earthquakes and eruptions – the whole of the earth reacted to this terrible moment of disobedience. The world would never be as God intended it unless it could somehow be restored. Creation groaned as it was fragmented and subjected to decay.19 Heaven itself was shaken in that moment.

All Corrupted by Sin

At the point of the Fall then, evil was let loose to affect God’s creation. Corruption entered world history. Death, sickness, pain, war, and natural disasters were released. It was as if a virus was introduced into the cosmos, corrupting the whole earth – like a virulent strain of HIV, bird flu or Ebola infecting God’s perfect creation; like a rot infecting a beautiful piece of fruit; like rust destroying iron… eating it away. No longer was creation ‘very good’ as God had first described it,20 now – while it was still good in many ways – it was fatally flawed.

This corruption became part of the DNA of the whole living kingdom, death was released,21 life was driven back, and the whole of the world became a war zone between life and death. The greatest manifestation of this ‘disease’ is that people say, ‘I don’t need God.’ In so doing they deny their ‘createdness’ and the glory that stands behind the wonders of this world. Put another way, God has been usurped with the mantra, ‘I am lord of my own destiny.’ Every future descendent of Adam and Eve was corrupted from birth. Later in the Bible, King David said as much in the Psalms as he repented for taking Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, committing adultery with her, and then sending Uriah to his death.22 As an adulterer and a murderer he admits to God: ‘surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.’23 Even in his mother’s womb he was corrupted. Solomon said the same when he consecrated the temple to God and prayed for the people: ‘there is no one who does not sin.’24 Jesus’ words to the rich ruler, ‘no one is good except God alone’, imply the same.25 The Apostle Paul speaks of universal human sinfulness when he says, ‘Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin … there is no one righteous, not even one… all have turned away… there is no one who does good, not even one: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’26

This all goes back to the Fall. Paul goes on to say, ‘therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, in this way death came to all people… because all sinned.’27 The last clause is important because here Paul explains that death remains not just because of Adam and Eve; that would be unjust. Death remains because ‘all sinned’ – that is, we are all separated from God because of our own individual sin, not because of Adam and Eve. We are all prone to sin but we are also all responsible for it before God.

It is not that there is no good left in the world; after all, there obviously is! What is meant is that everything that exists is marred and no longer fully what God intended it to be. This applies to us individually. It also applies to human society, which is broken in every part. Human creativity, while remaining extraordinary, has become misguided – not concerned for human good and the careful management of the ecosystem but focussed on self-glorification and greed. Human society became stratified between the ‘have’s’ and ‘have not’s’; between the powerful and the powerless. Racism, ageism, sexism, socio-economic inequality, war and other terrible inequalities are all a consequence of this essential corruption.

Creation itself has been marred by the influence of evil and corruption. Paul tells us that creation has been subjected to frustration, awaiting its liberation from bondage to decay. He uses the metaphor of creation groaning like a woman in labour as it yearns for release from the oppressions of evil.28 Thus natural disasters may even be a result of this cataclysmic event.

The Real Problem: Evil

You may have heard Christians talking about the fact that sin is the main problem in the world, and in a sense it very much is. Sins are attitudes and behaviours that are contrary to God’s ideals and goodness. Sin begins in the heart with attitudes and thoughts that violate goodness. Where behaviour is concerned, sin includes not only actions that actively violate God, other people, his world and ourselves, but also includes false attitudes and the failure to act when we should (‘sins of omission’). That being said, while sin is a fair description of the human condition, the problem caused by the Fall goes a lot deeper than just human sin. The problem is in reality ‘evil’ – the antithesis of God who is ‘Good’.

When God created the earth, it was ‘very good’.29 At the Fall, evil was let loose. As noted above, evil was permitted before the Fall in the person of Satan, in the physical form of a snake. However, until the Fall, Satan, while evil, was restrained, unable to directly infiltrate creation. Adam and Eve were in a perfect, innocent relationship with God. If they had remained in that state, they and creation could not have been distorted by evil. Satan however, was lurking, waiting and looking for his opportunity to corrupt humanity and creation, like a thief looking for an entry point.30

He got his opportunity when God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the fruit. Satan spoke to Eve and, through her misinterpretation of God’s word, was able to seduce her to disobey God. At that moment, when they ate the fruit and God withdrew, Satan got his chance. He and his minions (demons, evil spirits) were let loose. He was able to find a foothold and began corrupting every dimension of the earth, distorting humanity and all of creation. This corruption is seen in natural disasters and death in the natural world. In humanity it is also seen in death, disease, pain, male dominance over women, racism, suffering, war, violence, oppression and greed leading to poverty.31

Satan has gained such a hold over the world that by the time of Christ, when Jesus went into the wilderness to face Satan, the devil was bold enough to offer him the kingdoms of the world if he would bow down to him.32 Unlike Eve and Adam, who failed in the garden, Jesus resisted the temptation, refusing to bow down to Satan.

So the real problem God and humanity have to deal with is evil. At its heart, evil is found in the form of the person of Satan and his demons seeking to steal, kill and destroy God’s world and humanity.33 However, it would be wrong to blame Satan entirely. We humans are responsible for our own actions. Sin is seen in an individual way with each person doing wrong. It is reflected corporately in structures and institutions which are corrupted. One example is the Nazi movement in the mid-20th century. Sin here is structural and its influence is horrendous. Sin in all its individual and corporate forms is a microcosm of the macro problem of evil. It is evil expressed through fallen humanity.

Some people tend to use the word sin in a light and fluffy way. They can see the problem with extreme examples of evil such as the Holocaust, genocide or infanticide. But, they might ask, what is wrong with a few personal ‘mistakes’? What’s the big deal? But what is at stake here cannot be trivialised. When we understand the cosmic dimensions of good and evil, sin can no longer be seen in a frivolous way – sin is evil, evil is disgusting; it stands against God, humanity, love, creation and all that is good. It is a violation of the cosmic goals of God in his world, his dream and project. So while God loves us infinitely and wants us to live forever in a loving relationship with him, the cosmic problem of evil stands in the way.

We are all capable of good, but we are also all more than capable of evil – we are a mixture of good and evil and our motives are never fully pure. We are all sinners before a pure and holy God. We are all guilty of failing to keep the standards of God.

We have all at some time or other failed to worship God as we should. We have all disobeyed him. We have all blasphemed his name. We have all disobeyed our parents. We have all lied, twisting and distorting the truth for personal gain. We have all stolen something in our life whether actively or passively. Actively, all of us have at some point in our lives taken something that did not belong to us. Passively, we have also participated in evil by failing to share what we have, denying others their inheritance as God’s children, they being poor and we being rich. According to Jesus we have all committed adultery. Jesus said to look with lust at another person is adultery.34 All of us have dehumanised and objectified someone else in this way at some time or another. We have all been guilty of putting others down, of saying something judgemental, of failing to give God the glory he deserves, of failing to honour others as we should. We have all judged others on some basis, whether it is by their looks, race, power, weakness or whatever. We are all, to some degree or another, participants in evil.

At this point you may feel that I am being a bit harsh. One thing you might think is that many of the horrible things humans do is due to the people involved being sinned against. We see this for example when a desperate person, who is a victim of injustice, commits a robbery to feed his or her family. Often violent crime is understandable to a degree if the offender is a victim of crime. This is profoundly true. Not only are we participants in wrongdoing, we are also victims of wrongdoing. In fact, the more we are sinned against, the more we are broken and marred and fall into sin.35 Those that sinned against us are culpable before God. Yet, we too remain responsible for our sinful responses. That this is true actually reinforces the essential point: the world is broken, we are all sinners and not only are we committing sin, we are often sinned against. All this amplifies the problem of evil.

If you are not sure whether you are in fact guilty of sin in this sense you might like to turn now to appendix one (at the back of this book) which asks us to check whether we are in fact guilty of sin against the Old Testament standard of the Ten Commandments or the New Testament standard of the two Great Commandments.

We could continue this discussion looking at a host of ideals that Jesus and other Bible writers have passed on to us and we will see that again and again we are all guilty before God.36 We are all, as the Bible puts it, sinners. We are all participants in and victims of evil, and we are all in need of being saved from this predicament.

We are a product of our sinful world, so much so that, in a sense, we can’t help but sin. Even one of the founding fathers of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, laments his inability to do the good he knows he ought to do.37 This is the universal human experience. We are sinners before a righteous, holy God. We are subject to the power of sin, enslaved under sin’s power,38 the power of evil. There seems to be no way out! ‘For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God!’39

Separation

This being the case, unless the relationship is restored, we are all separated from God. You might be asking at this point why sin separates someone from God. The key concept here is the purity of God. Because he is perfect in purity, he will only dwell with us in purity. As such, he will not dwell with us unless we are sinless or until the sin within us is dealt with. There are only two ways out. One is for humans to rise above sin and evil and live pure and flawless lives, maintaining a perfect evil-free relationship with God. However, due to the power of sin that has infected the very fabric of the world, along with humanity’s universal choice and penchant for doing wrong, this is not something that has been or can be achieved by anyone except Jesus (more on that later).40 The other way out is for God to rescue us.

That being the case, apart from God reaching out to us, we are all destined to die and spend an eternity separated from him. Unless a way is found to deal with the evil that has infected us, there is no hope. We are all separated from a perfect relationship with God.

While we live on earth, this separation means that God does not dwell with us as he originally intended. We will live, but we will not be truly alive. We will face this world captive to corrupt motives and our lives will not be directed by God. We will be subject to the powers of darkness, sin in the world – all infected. There is no way out. We are all, as Paul puts it, ‘prisoners of sin’.41 We are all destined for eternal death. Paul says elsewhere, ‘for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’42 Our state of separation is ultimately eternal if it is not remedied. The New Testament makes clear from the mouths of Jesus, Paul, Peter, Jude and John that all evil will ultimately be dealt with when Jesus returns (more about that later).43 The problem is that in the meantime we are destined for destruction, because evil is fused into the core of our being.

Is It Hopeless?

All this can seem terribly depressing. It seems on the surface that God’s intention has failed. He wants an eternal relationship with each of us and he wants the world to be a glorious place of human creativity and harmony, yet not one of us can live with God forever because of his purity and our sin. Were he to let us live eternally in our flawed state, we would continue to corrupt the world we live in. If we, as impure people, were allowed into eternity then heavenly existence would be worse than earth. Imagine our human corruption combined with eternal life and eternal resources. Eternity would quickly become a scene of unimaginable eternal conflict and devastation!

In a sense then, it is hopeless. We are not capable of saving ourselves. Evil has taken hold of humanity, the world and relationships and there is no way out. The outlook is bleak unless God moves to save us.

In the Meantime

Perhaps you are a bit offended by this description of the state of the world and humanity. Perhaps you consider yourself a good person. In many ways I’m sure you are. Certainly, when we compare ourselves with a despotic megalomaniac like Adolf Hitler we can all appear very good. However, when we line ourselves up beside the standards of God and are truly honest about ourselves, we find that we are all flawed. Christians are no different here. If you have heard Christians claim moral superiority for themselves, I believe they are misguided. They too, like you and me, struggle with their brokenness and wrongdoing. We are not totally evil but we are marred. We are still capable of making good choices, but not with complete consistency. We are people of mixed motives, mixed intentions, and a mixture of good and bad. Hence, even though on the surface many of us are ‘good people’, in fact we all need salvation. Remember, God is totally pure and no evil can stand in his presence. Thus, we all stand outside this ideal relationship with him.

That being the case, I am sorry to say that it is inevitable that the world will continue to be a place in which we see terrible atrocities, natural disasters, war, poverty, oppression, sexism, racism, greed, immorality, hatred and other evils that have blighted human history since the Fall. When you look at the world and wonder why it is so fallen, it is because of the rupture that has corrupted us so that our best efforts still leave us in a perilous state. The Bible predicts an escalation in human evil as history moves towards its climax.44 The last century had more wars and death than any before it. There were world wars, nuclear threats, natural disasters and now the threat of extremists who violate the stability of society.

Self-Realisation

I remember before my conversion to Christianity, when I was searching for God and bemoaning the state of the world – its greed, oppression, pride and spiritual futility – the truth progressively dawned on me that I was part of the problem. I became aware that if the world was to change, it had to start with me, with my attitudes, my actions and words. I realised I was corrupted and needed to be transformed. I recognised that there was only one person in the world I had the power to change, and that was me. This was the beginning of my path to restoration.

This is not to say that we are worthless and unloved. On the contrary, the principles of the first chapter still stand – God loves us absolutely and unconditionally, despite our flawed lives.45 We are made in his image – despite the image being broken and flawed – and he cares for us so deeply that it hurts. He doesn’t enjoy our sinfulness, our bad attitudes, deeds and words, but his love for us is relentless and he is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to spend eternity with us.

Why Did God Allow Such a Tragedy?

Another question you might have is, ‘Why would God create such a world if it would fall?’ The answer is found in the principles outlined in chapter one. The first thing to say is that God created so that he would have a love-based volitional relationship with every person, and although we have fallen, that is not the end of the story. He is not a God who gives up easily. He will pursue the relationship and find a way out (see the next chapter). The second thing to realise is that God, who is all-knowing and has all knowledge across time (omniscient), knew that this fall would occur but still went ahead with his creation.46 He did so because true awareness of freedom requires choice. In a sense, God allowed the possibility of the Fall so that freedom would be real and revealed.

We can go further. God in his omniscience actually knew that some would fall but still went ahead. Why? He did so because of his love and yearning for relationship. God, because of this love and desire to create and give freedom, considered it worthwhile to create for those who would ultimately accept his offer of relationship. God considered it better to create and risk losing some than not to create at all. We can understand this from human relationships – to risk loving is to risk rejection. The alternative is to resist relationships and die lonely. As the saying goes, ‘It is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.’ This is the risk that every parent takes when having a child. One never knows whether the child will choose obedience, love and goodness. Yet humanity continues to have children because it is worth the risk. In the same way, God chose to create us.

Conclusion

The tragedy of human history is that while God longs to have an eternal relationship of love with every human, he will not do this because of his character of purity and our hearts of sin. The answer to the question ‘What is wrong with the world?’ is sin – or, even more accurately, evil. So is there a way out? Is there a way in which the original relationship can be restored? Is there a way to save people and leave them with volition, with their ability to say yes or no to God? Thankfully there is, and to this we now turn.

Questions for Reflection