Saturday, September 15, 2012

Our Good Creation and Evil Break with God (Genesis 1 and 3)

In a previous essay, I talked about the Trinity. I did that to emphasis that truth, freedom, love, and life are essential aspects of the core identity of God. In the next essay, I talked about how creation was a special expression of just these essential aspects of God. In this essay, I will talk a little bit about our break with God and its consequences.

According to the first story of creation in the Bible (Genesis 1:1-25), God chose freely in love to create the perfect place for us humans to enjoy a relationship of truth, freedom, love, and vitality with him. That perfect place had three special qualities: it was very good, well-ordered and had vital limits.

God then created Adam and Eve, the first two humans, in his image (Genesis 1:26-27). That meant he created us humans as creatures capable of enjoying a relationship of truth, freedom, love, and vitality with him. God the Father and God the Son enjoyed just such a relationship through the dynamic love of God the Spirit.

Unfortunately, with Adam and Eve, we humans did not long enjoy that convivial relationship with God in that perfect context. Instead, we foolishly chose to judge God’s truth, freedom, love, and vitality by eating fruit that lay outside the vital limits set by God for our benefit (Genesis 3:1-6).

By doing so, we destroyed the perfect relationship that we had been created to enjoy with God, one another, and the rest of God’s good creation (Genesis 3:7-24). This had consequences that were vast, profound, destructive, and irreversible.

Into this break in our relationships rushed powers of evil which God had rejected on our behalf as part of his perfect creation (Genesis 1:2). Sadly, while God was able to consider and then reject them, we weren’t. Instead, we gave them the space they needed to invade God’s good creation. Once in that space, they easily came to dominate and corrupt us. In just this way, we became the inescapable victims of the six false gods of Olympianity and then their unavoidable collaborators.

Copyright © 2012 by Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.