Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" Genesis3:8-9
One of the best descriptions given to our broken world is given by the Bethel course which describes our current state as one of disharmony.
The reality of our sin has consequences for Adam and Eve and for our lives and results in a tragic loss of harmony in four areas:
1. Instead of enjoying intimacy with God, we, like Adam and Eve, tend to hide from Him and be fearful of Him.
2. Adam moves from relating to Eve as "flesh of his flesh" to blame: "The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." There is disharmony in relationships: we blame, resent and betray each other.
3. Their relationship with creation became discordant. There is now danger and struggle in our relationship with the rest of creation.
These first three areas indicate the brokenness of our world: They explain
- our rampant idolatry,
- our wars and violence,
- and the heartache of natural disasters and birth-defects.
These are not part of God's created purpose, but the horrendous consequences of our sin.
This broken environment is the first factor in our faulty self-images. It results in a tragic loss of purpose.
The fourth area of disharmony is significant:
4. Their sense of self-worth and self-perception takes a massive knock, and now their nakedness is an issue. Interesting question: "Did eating the fruit make them flabby or give them wrinkles? Did _anything_ change about their bodies that caused them to hide?" No, their bodies didn't change, but their self-perceptions became off-key.
This represents the second factor of self-image chaos in that the mirror we use to see ourselves is now twisted and distorted and we can no longer see ourselves the way God has created us.
The hopeful thing about this sad picture is that there is a God who still calls our name and wants to rescue us from our disharmony.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
