We sometimes forget that the Bible starts with Genesis 1. That is, with the account of a loving Creator bringing into existence a complete, beautiful, good world. We know that the story of the Creation is followed quickly by the story of the Fall. Human beings, endowed with the God-like capacity to chart their own course, choose their way rather than God’s. A rift is forged between humanity and God. Having chosen to go it alone, people begin to desperately grab and hoard whatever resources they can for survival and security. The strong dominate; the weak suffer. The good world degenerates.
We’re now so far removed from that original goodness that we can’t even imagine it. Our fantasies of peace and comfort and plenty are tragically limited by our experience. Everything we’ve seen and known has been within the context of a fallen world; has been perceived through corrupted faculties. The best we can imagine is simply the least of possible evils. The perfect world, as we envision it, is still fallen.
This means we spend our lives settling. Instead of striving for being good, we strive for feeling good. Instead of striving to bring goodness into the broken places of our world, we strive to create pockets of goodness into which we hide from the brokenness. We constantly stop short of embracing the work God wants to do in us and our world because we can’t imagine that it can get better. We are in the business of retreating. But God is in the business of restoring.
In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis puts our predicament this way:
“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Being a worshiper of God and a disciple of Christ means refusing to settle. It means leaving our safe retreats and bringing restoration to the most broken people and places. It means forsaking the consolation prizes that make us feel good in order to be good. In order to bring the original goodness for which God created us. To be restored, and become restorers. God’s story doesn’t start or end at Genesis 3. It begins with Creation; it ends with re-Creation:
…I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:3-5a)
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