"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men: yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Ecc. 3:11)
There is a longstanding debate on whether God intended Adam to live for eternity or whether he had the ability to live for eternity. It's rather a mute discussion in my opinion. The answer is "yes."
Adam was made in the likeness of God. However, in biblical anthropology we tend to bypass the communicable characteristic of the imago Dei (image of God) that deals with His eternality. God is eternal in his being. By created nature and design, we too, are eternal beings. Eternal in the sense that from a given starting point (which differs from God) we will live into eternity.
If you remember the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, they were tempted by Satan, sinned, hid from God, and then cursed.
The consequence of that disobedience was given to Adam by God in Genesis 2:16-17. "In the day that you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die."
Now they ate but they didn't drop over dead. What died at that moment? Healthy relationships. Their relationship with God was broken in the sense that they had ceased imaging God in his perfection and glory. Their relationship with each other was broken. Their relationship with the created world was broken.
The important part of this conversation was a follow-up Trinitarian conversation that is found in Genesis 3:22: "And the LORD said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
Was man created to live for ever? It appears that the means for that was provided in the garden. It was actually a gracious act of God that he kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden for if they would have eaten from the tree of life they would have lived in perpetual brokenness before God.
God did intend for us to have eternal life. Jesus came to reconcile this world to the Father through his own tree of life.
Because of the Fall and because of Jesus every person born has eternal life. But I'll leave you with the words of the prophet Daniel to describe it. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dan. 12:2).
I wonder how this would change our thinking if we truly believed that people will, indeed, live forever? Per the Scriptures, that destination is made in this brief span of life so how does this bring a sense of immediacy to how we view others in our realm of influence?
Thoughts to ponder.
"..the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground..."
I've been musing on biblical anthropology of late because of my interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (all varieties). This passage caught my attention this week.
Most of the time my mind runs to the Ex Nihlo creation (out of nothing). In other words, the power of God's mind, coupled with his word and will brought into existence everything that exists. But with man he chooses a different method. He takes the dirt that he has created, holy and good, and the text tells us that he formed a man.
I never really pondered the care with which God chose to bring humanity into this world. He could have spoken him into existence like the heavens but he chose to use something more personal. In fact, all breathing things were formed out of the ground (Gen. 2:19) with the exception of woman.
The word "formed" in this text is the word used of a potter or a
wood carver. I can't help but think of Michelangelo and the statue of David. One day someone asked him how he took a block of marble and produce something so wonderful. He said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."
The last two weeks I have had some unusual adversity in my life, much of it self-imposed. We bought a home in Newberg and I had the bright idea of taking out all of the upstairs carpet and replacing it with high end lament flooring that looks almost indestinguishable from wood.
I tore through the carpet and padding like a ferocious 20 year old. The next day I felt like a sore 40 year old but determined. A week on my knees and not only did I confess that I was 50 but felt more like 80. I am now heavily invested in muscle creams and am searching for a heating pad that will give me second degree burns.
The floor went down pretty easily but the molding...I know that there is a statue in here and God is chipping away. It hurts. It tests my resolve. It tests my humility. It exposes my pride. It manifests my love. It displays my weaknesses. It went to the core of my deepest fear - not knowing how to do something - feeling stupid.
The Lord brought me back to my seventh grade geometry class. I am so sorry Mrs. Dunkel for not paying attention in class. I am haunted by the phrase, "I'll never use this stuff." Even then I was more concerned about angels than angles.
If I am truly made in the image of God, then perhaps I should consider these times of adversity to be the potter pressing in to my life. His hands are divinely reshaping me into a more accurate picture of who he is and what he wants me to be.
I wonder if it will ever get easier to be thankful and hurt at the same time?
Genesis 1:26-28, "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image,
in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
This week I would like to begin a conversation that surrounds a different evangelical worldview.
A worldview is a way that we are socially fashioned by all the educational elements around us [parents, grandparents, neighbors, other children that we may grow up with, the schools that we attend] that give us an understanding (right or wrong) about how our world works. It is what is assumed.
I'll take a third nation worldview to help us understand this. For example, in some African countries you don't build a house under certain trees because that is where a certain powerful spirit lives. You don't leave your well uncovered at night because evil water spirits come up at night and rob the spirits of those in the village as they sleep and take them down the well.
As Americans we think this non-sense superstition. We ask, "How is that possible?" The answer: From their perspective you are the one who needs to get a reality check. Everyone knows that this is true. There is no asking "why." It just is.
A worldview is the basis for all we think and do. It governs our belief system, our value system, and our actions.
In regard to Christianity, one missions author has stated that if you do not change the worldview of a person, they end up with syncretism - adding Jesus to their other gods. It is actually a false conversion because there is no real transformation [this will be my larger point].
In relationship to this, I would like to challenge the Western Protestant worldview that a salvation conversation begins with sin and the cross.
I think the Jesus "event" is actually in the middle of our conversation and that we actually should be taking people back to Genesis 1 in order to truly reach them for the kingdom of God.
Starting with sin, in my opinion, makes the redemptive story solely about Jesus dying so that I don't go to Hell. It would be very easy to embrace this "act' without following through on the total transformative work of God.
I had a brother tell me that he asked a Buddhist if he believed in Jesus. He said, "yes." My brother then asked if he believed that Jesus died for his sins. He said, "Yes." So my brother said, "So you are a Christian." He said, "No."
Do you see the problem? A belief in a set a propositions did not change the worldview of this person. He still held on to his pagan worship but simply added Jesus.
Rarely does anyone tell me that Jesus died so that I could become, through the transformative work of the Holy Spirit, what I have been created to be - a man created in the image of God for eternal fellowship.
I would love to hear what others may think about starting our
evangelism conversations with the fact that a Creator, who we call God, created us in his own image, in his own likeness, and for relationship.
Let's just pause and consider that wonderful act and gift.
