Genesis 2 and Some Notes on the Fall of Man

I am heartbroken today over the Christian community's lack of concern for the men, women, and children around the world who are crying, starving for some litle morsel of truth, love, and hope. Why is the church in the United States, for example, more content with guns, bombs, and soldiers making their way to the Middle East, when what the peoples of the region need, more than anything else, is a drop of Christian love? Why is it that conservative Christians, who talk so forcefully about the need for America to return to Christian values, cannot find it in their hearts to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and (maybe) reach out to the Osama bin Ladens, Nasrallahs, and Ahmadinejads of the world?

Jesus said (as quoted in Matthew 24) that in the last days, the love of men would "grow cold." In an age when Christians would rather turn on their TV sets, watch "Praise the Lord," and vote Republican than address the very real spiritual decay that is occuring both around the world and within our own borders, perhaps we have moved even beyond coldness . . . to a complete lack of interest in love itself. When we have lost the ability even to allow our hearts to soften in the face of the suffering, the lonely, and the afraid, we have lost any semblance of what it means to have Christ inside of us--the same Christ who touched lepers, the same Christ who was mobbed by beggars, sickly people, and disreputable vagabonds and criminals and said not a word of exasperation or disdain.

We should all be on our knees, begging the God whose name we invoke whenever we lie, steal, or covet not to cast our souls into the abyss . . . quaking with fear before the Christ whose sacrifice we demean by using it as our personal escape clause.

That is the point of this blog entry--to highlight the fact that, in spite of 6000 years of recorded history, in spite of the Bible's record of a God who is trying--and failing--to get a humanity interested in its own desires to wake up and allow itself to become mature in its relationship to its Creator, and yes, in spite of all our technological advances, we are no better today than the people recorded in Genesis 2 and 3 were. In our ignorance, we look at the story of Genesis 2-3 and wonder why the first man and woman could have walked away from God in their hearts, when we are busily hungering after the same fruit they ate, and the same promise of elevation to godhood.

If it is one thing that the Bible shows us, it is that we are fools. We may try to avoid this ugly truth about ourselves by taking verses out of context or even dismissing the Bible altogether, but its message--and that message's implications--still stand. As we look over Genesis 2, 3, and 4, may we also examine ourselves, and see how deep and how wide and how monstrously undeserved is the love of the Christ we invoke so frivolously.