and human conflict at every level since that day. God’s great dream of a world of harmony, love and unity was thus in great peril.
When God turned to the woman and asked her, ‘What is this you have done?’ She responded by blaming the snake: ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’15 Again this is a typical human reaction and sounds like the murderer in the courtroom who says, ‘The devil made me do it.’
A fourth consequence then was the demise of God’s great dream for his world. God’s dream is not just about individuals living in relationship with God and one another, but of humanity building God’s world with all his creativity in love and harmony. It is a ‘utopian’ picture of all facets of existence including the arts, sciences, literature, music, sport and more, with each individual contributing in a unique way to building up God’s world; all of this in a place of unity, love, joy and peace. The Fall or Rupture shattered this. Each person became marred and flawed, unable to fully express their innate God-inspired brilliance because of their brokenness. Selfishness and personal ambition corrupted all humanity. Contention and domination became par for the course. God’s world would now never be what God intended, unless it is restored.
The result of Adam and Eve’s actions was the judgement of God on all. The snake was cursed to slide along the ground, probably meaning that he would contend on earth with humanity until ultimately defeated.16 The woman was told that she would forever experience great pain in childbearing and live in constant conflict with man throughout human history and be subject to him. This represents the truth that patriarchy and family fragmentation will be a problem for all of time. This subjection is not God’s ideal but a consequence of sin.17
The man was told he would spend his days slaving to produce food, contending with thorns and weeds. Finally he was told he would die, ‘for dust you are and to dust you will return’.18 Adam and Eve were banished from God’s presence. Here we have humanity afflicted with pain and suffering, hunger and famine, conflict, contention with creation itself, separation from God and the introduction of our greatest enemy, death.
The Fall was a cosmic cataclysmic event affecting all of the created order. I sometimes imagine that as Eve and Adam ate that fruit in the garden, there was a sudden change in the weather, there was thunder and lightning, there were earthquakes and eruptions – the whole of the earth reacted to this terrible moment of disobedience. The world would never be as God intended it unless it could somehow be restored. Creation groaned as it was fragmented and subjected to decay.19 Heaven itself was shaken in that moment.
All Corrupted by Sin
At the point of the Fall then, evil was let loose to affect God’s creation. Corruption entered world history. Death, sickness, pain, war, and natural disasters were released. It was as if a virus was introduced into the cosmos, corrupting the whole earth – like a virulent strain of HIV, bird flu or Ebola infecting God’s perfect creation; like a rot infecting a beautiful piece of fruit; like rust destroying iron… eating it away. No longer was creation ‘very good’ as God had first described it,20 now – while it was still good in many ways – it was fatally flawed.
This corruption became part of the DNA of the whole living kingdom, death was released,21 life was driven back, and the whole of the world became a war zone between life and death. The greatest manifestation of this ‘disease’ is that people say, ‘I don’t need God.’ In so doing they deny their ‘createdness’ and the glory that stands behind the wonders of this world. Put another way, God has been usurped with the mantra, ‘I am lord of my own destiny.’ Every future descendent of Adam and Eve was corrupted from birth. Later in the Bible, King David said as much in the Psalms as he repented for taking Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, committing adultery with her, and then sending Uriah to his death.22 As an adulterer and a murderer he admits to God: ‘surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.’23 Even in his mother’s womb he was corrupted. Solomon said the same when he consecrated the temple to God and prayed for the people: ‘there is no one who does not sin.’24 Jesus’ words to the rich ruler, ‘no one is good except God alone’, imply the same.25 The Apostle Paul speaks of universal human sinfulness when he says, ‘Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin … there is no one righteous, not even one… all have turned away… there is no one who does good, not even one: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’26
This all goes back to the Fall. Paul goes on to say, ‘therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, in this way death came to all people… because all sinned.’27 The last clause is important because here Paul explains that death remains not just because of Adam and Eve; that would be unjust. Death remains because ‘all sinned’ – that is, we are all separated from God because of our own individual sin, not because of Adam and Eve. We are all prone to sin but we are also all responsible for it before God.
It is not that there is no good left in the world; after all, there obviously is! What is meant is that everything that exists is marred and no longer fully what God intended it to be. This applies to us individually. It also applies to human society, which is broken in every part. Human creativity, while remaining extraordinary, has become misguided – not concerned for human good and the careful management of the ecosystem but focussed on self-glorification and greed. Human society became stratified between the ‘have’s’ and ‘have not’s’; between the powerful and the powerless. Racism, ageism, sexism, socio-economic inequality, war and other terrible inequalities are all a consequence of this essential corruption.
Creation itself has been marred by the influence of evil and corruption. Paul tells us that creation has been subjected to frustration, awaiting its liberation from bondage to decay. He uses the metaphor of creation groaning like a woman in labour as it yearns for release from the oppressions of evil.28 Thus natural disasters may even be a result of this cataclysmic event.
The Real Problem: Evil
You may have heard Christians talking about the fact that sin is the main problem in the world, and in a sense it very much is. Sins are attitudes and behaviours that are contrary to God’s ideals and goodness. Sin begins in the heart with attitudes and thoughts that violate goodness. Where behaviour is concerned, sin includes not only actions that actively violate God, other people, his world and ourselves, but also includes false attitudes and the failure to act when we should (‘sins of omission’). That being said, while sin is a fair description of the human condition, the problem caused by the Fall goes a lot deeper than just human sin. The problem is in reality ‘evil’ – the antithesis of God who is ‘Good’.
When God created the earth, it was ‘very good’.29 At the Fall, evil was let loose. As noted above, evil was permitted before the Fall in the person of Satan, in the physical form of a snake. However, until the Fall, Satan, while evil, was restrained, unable to directly infiltrate creation. Adam and Eve were in a perfect, innocent relationship with God. If they had remained in that state, they and creation could not have been distorted by evil. Satan however, was lurking, waiting and looking for his opportunity to corrupt humanity and creation, like a thief looking for an entry point.30
He got his opportunity when God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the fruit. Satan spoke to Eve and, through her misinterpretation of God’s word, was able to seduce her to disobey God. At that moment, when they ate the fruit and God withdrew, Satan got his chance. He and his minions (demons, evil spirits) were let loose. He was able to find a foothold and began corrupting every dimension of the earth, distorting humanity and all of creation. This corruption is seen in natural disasters and death in the natural world. In humanity it is also seen in death, disease, pain, male dominance over women, racism, suffering, war, violence, oppression and greed leading to poverty.31
Satan has gained such a hold over the world that by the time of Christ, when Jesus went into the wilderness to face Satan, the devil was bold enough to offer him the kingdoms of the world if he would bow down to him.32 Unlike Eve and Adam, who failed in the garden, Jesus resisted the temptation, refusing to bow down to Satan.
So the real problem God and humanity have to deal with is evil.