Dear Friends,
In last week’s column, I discussed God creating the world, the universe with humanity as the pinnacle of that creation. I mentioned how God created everything for us, out of a superabundance of love for us, so that we may share in His life. When asking the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, the answer simply is because God wanted us to share in His life. Why did God create everything? For you. I believe I mentioned the harmony enjoyed in the garden: man and woman walked in easy friendship with God. There was also harmony between man and woman, harmony between humanity and the rest of creation, and harmony within a person.
It doesn’t take much observation to notice and recognize that such harmony does not exist now. There isn’t harmony between God and humanity; there isn’t harmony among humans; there isn’t harmony between humanity and creation; even within each one of us, we lack harmony. We hear of the goodness of creation, how God created out of love for you and for all, and I assume we’re left with two questions: “What happened?” and “Why is everything so terribly messed up?” I’ll try to address both of those questions.
What happened? Simply stated, in the garden, man and woman—Adam and Eve—disobeyed God’s singular command in the negative: not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent tricked them, telling them they would become gods by eating from the tree, something that God was withholding from them. One thing is worth noting here (there’s more to discuss, but so much to say, so little space) from the passage, which again is conveying truth. The first is that the woman (and by extension, the man too) engages in conversation with the serpent, the most subtle of all creatures; man and woman needed to reject the words of the serpent outright, without any conversation. For us, we enter into dialogue with temptation, and instead of rejecting the temptation outright, we try to rationalize sin and usually commit sin. Don’t engage in conversation with temptation and sin! It only leads down a bad path.
As a result of man and woman’s disobedience to God, along with them making excuses and passing the blame to others for their actions, the consequences are multitudinous. Firstly, the harmony enjoyed in the Garden is gone. Man and woman have put themselves at opposition of God, no longer in friendship with Him; there is strife between man and woman and in human relationships; creation is no longer ordered as it had been or was supposed to be. Humanity, remaining good, is now wounded and fallen. A person’s intellect is clouded and darkened; the will has been weakened. This leads to us recognizing good things as bad and bad things as good. It leads to us doing what we don’t want to do and failing to do what we want to do. We are inclined toward selfishness. Work now becomes toilsome, and childbirth is painful. All of the descendants of Adam and Eve inherit and are marked with Original Sin.
Yes, man and woman failed to trust God and disobeyed God, and they should not have made excuses about their disobedience. Nevertheless, they had been deceived by the serpent. It needs to be stated clearly: we have an enemy who wants to disrupt God’s plan and wants to steal us, enslave us, and destroy us—all of this because we are precious to God. Our opponent is the devil and his wicked minions who seek our destruction and seek our eternal alienation from God and from each other. With man and woman’s disobedience, which we call the Fall, the world falls into the dominion of the devil.
Above all and to repeat it again, humanity no longer lives in union with God. Our ultimate purpose and destiny has been disrupted, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do to repair the damage. It would seem as though we are without hope, but thanks be to God, there is a promise of a redeemer. There is hope; God will rescue His people.
We are saints under construction, battling under the banner of our King, Jesus Christ, against evil. Have a great week!
In Christ,
Fr. Matt