Did God Really Say?
In the Beginning:
My favourite verse is John 1:1 (I will include vv 2-5 for context)
John 1:1-5 (ESV)
“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
In the beginning. Seems like a good place to start for my initial post. Everything needs a beginning. Your world view is inherently shaped by your view of the beginning of things. Perhaps you haven’t given it much thought, you sat through your science classes, darwin’s theory of evolution was presented as accepted and established ‘science’ and that was that. Millions or billions of years, single cell, tadpole, grew legs and crawled up on land, budda boom budda bing hey baby come to my cave, I make fire for you!
Dig a little deeper and you soon realize that even staunch proponents of evolution will have to concede that there needed to be a beginning. An ultimate start of something, A BIG BANG as it were. Being the intransigent pia that I’m known as I would then ask, so what made the big bang?
(Full disclosure, I’ve staked my life on 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work.” I accept the Bible, all 66 books, as the inerrant and infallible Word of God. How I interpret specific scriptures and apply them, well, that IS the purpose of these writings..)
Let’s go back to Genesis (not the band, save that for later!) 1:1,2,26-31 (ESV):
“1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
God said that this was good. It was perfect. But, He didn’t want slaves, He wanted individuals to freely choose to trust Him, to love Him, to be in relationship with Him. Freedom. Scary thought.
In order for there to be freedom there has to be the opportunity to choose.
Genesis 2:15-17 (ESV):
“15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 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.”
An interesting rabbit trail for another time, the concept of work, of purpose, even in paradise, however today we will look at Adam’s ability to choose.
The next verses describe how God took a rib from Adam, lots of symbolism there, and created Eve, a helpmeet for him, someone to complement him, not someone for Adam to rule over, but someone who could walk alongside him and together fulfill the purpose that God had created them for. Verse 24-25:
“24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
Are you starting to see how your understanding of the beginning of things will affect your world view?
The next chapter of Genesis, chapter 3 details how the serpent posed the eternal question to Eve: “Did God really say…..” and to this day, the picture of a red apple has become the symbol for temptation.
Genesis 3:1-24 (ESV):”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to
your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
With one bite of the forbidden fruit sin entered into perfection. Before the bite of the forbidden fruit we see a life of purpose and perfect relationship. Adam was no longer alone, he had purpose in looking after the garden, and we see a beautiful picture of God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening looking for His creation, seeking them out to have a conversation, to be with them face to face.
(Just a side note, when you try to wrap your head around the origin of the species, at what point did consciousness evolve? At what point did humans become self-aware?)
After the forbidden fruit, Adam and his wife are banished from the garden, the ground is cursed, their relationship is cursed, and the story of salvation and redemption, God reconciling man to Himself, begins. It starts with God killing some animals for their skin to clothe Adam and Eve. Extremely significant, in order to cover their nakedness, that is, to make them acceptable, blood had to be shed, a life had to be given. Their attempt at covering themselves, the fig leaves, was not acceptable.
A nice rabbit trail for another time is the whole animal rights/vegan discussion. Fur is murder and all that. Prior to the fall the diet was plant based, there was no death, not even the animals. Here God sets the stage that man has supremacy over creation, is to rule it, have dominion over it, and that God has created everything in this world to sustain human life. Man in turn, was created to be in fellowship with God, to worship the Creator, not the created.
We are discussing the foundation for a worldview and how one’s worldview greatly impacts their understanding of events around them.
Romans 5:12 (ESV): “12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men
because all sinned—”
Sin. The inherent depravity of man. A sinful nature. A bent toward what is forbidden. A tendency to do wrong. This was something that up until recently, was just understood. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, man is sinful. Simple. Somewhere along the way, the concept of innate goodness was brought forward. That avoids the need for a Saviour. If you are inherently good there is nothing to save you from. Little Johnny just needs some support, some counselling, the right environment and he will make good choices and not pull Susie’s hair. How is that working out? Do safe injection sites reduce the problem of drug addiction, misery and death? As a parent, does rewarding bad behaviour increase good behaviour? When devising public policy, if your world view is one where you see man as innately good or innately evil, how will that impact your policy development. “Innately evil” you scoff. “Who are you calling evil??”. Not so much me, God does. Human history does. Good takes work. Good behaviour is not natural. Well, Rod, societies very quickly learn to cooperate and work together so this proves that not EVERYONE is evil. So self-interest causes one to realize that if I help my neighbour and he helps me then we both have a better life? As soon as an infant begins to develop his or her own personality, after the cooing mama dada phase, what’s the first word that they say? NO!!! Yeah, goodness has to be taught.
This has huge implications for our current situation. Why go back to my job when CERB covers my rent, food, and Netflix? Universal Basic Income sounds good. And if we were all inherently good we would use all of our free time, now that we no longer need to work for a living, we would use all of our free time to work for world peace, world happiness and the betterment of our fellow man.
Yep. That will happen.