The Big Story: Humanity Rebels against God


This past week, we had yet another reminder of our broken world: the shooting at Parkland, Florida.  We wonder how someone could take an AK-15 and murder 17 high school students.  The story of the shooter and his motivations is still being discovered, but we're sickened by this repeated theme in our nation.  

But there are much broader evils in our world.  Wars, acts of terror, murders, and other inhuman acts take human lives every day.  Why is it here?

Genesis 3 provides the broad reason for the human condition.  We've rebelled against God.  Because of that, our relationships with God and each other are broken.

Evil appears in the form of a serpent.  Just as God appears with no back story in Genesis 1, evil appears in Genesis 3 with no explanation.  Most of us have heard the story that Satan was a great angel, whose pride led him to rebel against God.  While that may have happened, that story isn't in the Bible.  The Bible itself presents evil as a brute fact in God's universe that God deals with in the end.

The serpent approaches Eve slyly, and offers her an opportunity to be like God and know everything, including good and evil.  Eve deliberates and rationalizes rebelling against God.  She eats the forbidden fruit. Then she offers some to Adam, who also eats.  

What profound intellectual insight do they gain?  They learn they're naked!  That's it.  Typically, evil delivers far less than it promises!  

Adam and Eve's rebellion ruptures their relationships with God and each other.  God judges them and the serpent.  Realizing that Adam and Eve might live forever in their broken state, God drives them out of the garden with its access to the tree of life.  Separated from God, the source of life, they immediately experience spiritual deaths, which leads ultimately to their physical deaths.

While our instinct is to blame Adam and Eve for the mess the world is in, the story is more complicated than that.  This is more than the story of the first sin.  It's the story of what we all do.  We all eat the forbidden fruit.  We all rebel against God.

This is the reason why God went on his mission to save the world.  It's still in process, but one day he will overcome evil and establish his kingdom on earth.  Through faith in Christ, we'll have access to the tree of life again in that kingdom.  

In the meantime, we work with God on his mission, seeking to receive his mending of our brokenness and sharing the opportunity for mending with others.

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