The Fall

I’m currently in week 3 of what I call the first of my core classes towards my degree in Christian Arts with an emphasis in Philosophy.  It’s not actually a core class, it’s more of a university requirement, since I am attending a Christian based school.  Nonetheless, I consider it a part of my degree program due to its content.  The class is Christian Worldview and by far this is the most interesting class I have ever taken.  I already know my worldview, that is a given, but hearing the worldviews of other students and how they see things is quite eye-opening.

This weeks topic is on “The Fall.”  Adam had been created, he was instructed to work the garden, and he got to hang out with God all the time.  How cool is that?  But God knew there was something missing, that all was not good, so he put Adam to sleep and created Eve from one of his ribs.  Now, all was grand.  Adam and Eve.  God.  A perfect paradise.  What could go wrong?

Oh, there was that issue with the snake and that one tree God had told them to not eat from.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had        made.  And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?  The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”                                                                                                                                                    Genesis 3:1-4, NASB

And that’s where things went terribly wrong. What made Eve listen to the snake above what God had told her and Adam?  I know that snake was a slippery, slimy, scheming creature, but what weight did he hold in the garden?  How did he even get in there?

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A simple enough answer is that God gave us free will.  He gave us the ability to choose our actions, and unfortunately with this grand idea, it also gave Adam and Eve the ability to disobey Him.  God didn’t want to force himself upon us.  He wanted a relationship that was built on love, trust, a two-way street kind of thing.  But like most things in life, we had to mess it up.

Have you ever had an option between two things….One you knew was right and the other, well, you knew it wasn’t such a good idea?  Which did you choose?  Do you always make the right call?  I for one have been known to make the wrong choice from time to time…..and the crazy thing is I know it’s the bad choice when I make it.

No, I don’t make the choice to rear-end the guy in traffic who cuts me off or the choice to punch the girl in the face who gets my order wrong when I go out to dinner, but I do make the choice to let my anger get the best of me when the planes just don’t cooperate at work.  And a sin is a sin right?  There is no scale…….and one sin is just as bad as another.

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Back to our “First” family.  God went looking for them in the garden.  They had gone to hide.  God asked, “Where are you?,” like He didn’t know where they were.  But like any parent searching for a child who knows they are in trouble, he gives them the chance to show themselves and fess up.

The ultimate result….Adam and Eve are evicted.  Their relationship with God, as they knew it, was over.  They now knew the evils of the world.  And now we are all sinners.  We are born separate from God.

There is good news though….and that’s the coolest part of this story.  God had a backup plan.  But wait, God knew all and knows all, so was it really a backup plan…..for he knew that once he gave us the gift of “choice,” the backup was now the primary.

So we come to the first prophecy of the Bible…….also known as the (my first big theological word I’ve learned) protoevangelion.  Don’t worry…..all it means is the first gospel.  For God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity between you and the women, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15, NASB).

God told satan, “Yes, you will wreak havoc on the humans for their entire lives, but I will win in the end…..My Son will ultimately defeat you.”

That’s where our time in the garden ends.  We had it all, but we blew it.  But God provided a way for us to return.  So yes, we all sin, we all make mistakes, but those mistakes are washed away when we accept His Son into our lives.

The Genesis account is almost a story from a fairytale that is too good to be true; but it’s not.  From the very beginning God wanted a right relationship with us.  God created us in His image.  God placed us in paradise.  And even when we threw an apple in his plan, He went to extreme measures to make that relationship available anyway.