The Bible is not kid friendly. For the most part, many of the stories in the Bible, are too scary or complicated. The result is often a view of God as an angry Being who will kill you if you disobey Him. Either that, or you end up just confusing the child. Somehow I think this may be the case for older hearers of the Biblical stories as well. Like all pieces of literature, the Bible has an audience, cultural-historical context, and authorship that must be studied and understood in order to more fully grasp the full range of meaning of any particular text, and even more so to understand the text as a whole. Thus went my thought process as I lay awake late one night, physically exhausted, but unable to make my mind shut off. From there I began trying to formulate an explanation of the sin-salvation story as I would tell it to a small child or even a new believer of any age. It was in the midst of this that I had my epiphany.
As I was mentally unwrapping the story of Creation and the Fall and the implications of the Fall in my mind in the context of how I might explain this to a young child, it was as if I was explaining it for the first time to myself. I think as believers, no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, it is crucial to refresh our memory as to the plight and redemption of humanity. It is truly a beautiful love story. Do you ever think about it? I mean, really think about the details of our history?
Here’s how it goes: God prepares a beautiful creation with everything man needed. There was food in abundance. Beautiful plants were in full bloom; possibly some flowers and trees that don’t even exist anymore and exceed the most intricate conceptions of the mind. Can you imagine it? Close your eyes for a second and picture it: a beautiful, lush garden full of the ripest, most delicious fruits and vegetables. Can you see it? Can you smell the scents of the flowers? Taste the juicy, sweet fruits, riper than anything you’ve ever tasted? Hear the sounds of the crystal, clear waters running over the smooth rocks nearby? Hear the echo of birds chirping above you? Feel the peace of a world where man walks with God and animals live in harmony. There’s no death, there’s no heartache, there’s no hunger, there’s no sin or evil. Everything is peace and perfection.
God creates man and woman to live in this world and gives them one rule, and one rule only; “Do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden”. The consequence for disobeying this one rule is certain death. Doesn’t seem too difficult does it? Adam and Eve have EVERYTHING! They can eat from any other tree or bush in the entire garden. They’re the only ones there anyway, so why would they need to worry about running out of food? After all, their Creator has provided everything already, so they can be sure he’ll continue to provide.
But something happens. An imperfection has snuck into this perfect paradise. A crafty serpent has somehow ended up in the midst of Eden with hopes of poisoning humanity and breaking the relationship between God and His creation.
It can only be assumed the origin of this crafty creature. There is a theory that believes there was a rebellion by Lucifer that destroyed a “first” creation and therefore God had to recreate the world. It is possible that this serpent’s deceitfulness was a result of that first fall of Lucifer and some of the angels. It is interesting, but not necessarily pertinent, to note that the serpent “spoke” to the woman. Perhaps this indicates that pre-Fall animals could communicate verbally, just as humans. After-all, animals were the first proponents of companions for Adam. But these are but superficial details within the context of a bigger picture.
The tactic of the serpent was to make Adam and Eve question Truth—Truth in this sense meaning their trust in their Creator’s reliability. He tempted Eve with not simply the aesthetic beauty and desirability of eating the fruit from the Tree they were warned against eating from, but he taunted her with the lie that God was keeping better things from them. Better things? What could be better than a world without evil, death, and pain? What could be better than the opportunity to literally walk amidst a beautiful paradise with the Creator? What could be better than a world where all creatures live in peace and harmony? What could be better than having all your needs provided for and never having to work for your living? But Eve fell for it. Not only Eve, but Adam “who was with her” went right along with the lie and disobeyed.
My epiphany was this: here disobedience is a rejection of trust in God as the ultimate source of Truth. It’s a reliance on human understanding. King Solomon understood this when he stated in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”. It is when we stop believing the words of the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the universe who longs to walk with us in the gardens of paradise that we fall into sin and its fatal consequences. When we stop being thankful for the blessings God gives us when we dwell in His presence and give into the lie that there is something better than trusting God we walk down the path of death, pain, and destruction. And this was the very result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Though out of ignorance, it was still disobedience. Eve knew what God had told her. Adam knew as well, and not only did he not stop his wife, he also participated in the disobedience.
We are all guilty of this ignorant disobedience. We all in some capacity or another have believed the lie that “the grass is greener”. But we are finite creatures, created by an infinite God and it is He who holds ultimate Truth. The beauty of this love story is that this infinite Creator became one of us to pay the consequence for our disobedience in death. Not only did he pay the costly price to give us a way to be “bought back” from the curse of sin, but he also conquered death by rising from the dead. We now have access to both the forgiveness of sin (the sin inherited from Adam and Eve and our own personal acts of disobedience) and freedom from sin (the bondage of our own personal sins and sin nature). We can yet again have the choice to revel in the abundant paradise of all God has for us and walk in communion with Him yet again in the gardens of perfection. But we still need to focus on His blessings and not be distracted by the lies of something better. God is the best and all we need. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
I had a second epiphany at the end of all this: if I were, in fact, ever to try to explain the sin-salvation story to a child or new believer, I would probably bore and confuse them. Hopefully I did neither for anyone currently reading this. My hope is that somewhere in the jumble of my theological ramblings, you gain some glimpse of insight into the heart of God and His purpose and will for your life.
As I was mentally unwrapping the story of Creation and the Fall and the implications of the Fall in my mind in the context of how I might explain this to a young child, it was as if I was explaining it for the first time to myself. I think as believers, no matter how long you’ve been a Christian, it is crucial to refresh our memory as to the plight and redemption of humanity. It is truly a beautiful love story. Do you ever think about it? I mean, really think about the details of our history?
Here’s how it goes: God prepares a beautiful creation with everything man needed. There was food in abundance. Beautiful plants were in full bloom; possibly some flowers and trees that don’t even exist anymore and exceed the most intricate conceptions of the mind. Can you imagine it? Close your eyes for a second and picture it: a beautiful, lush garden full of the ripest, most delicious fruits and vegetables. Can you see it? Can you smell the scents of the flowers? Taste the juicy, sweet fruits, riper than anything you’ve ever tasted? Hear the sounds of the crystal, clear waters running over the smooth rocks nearby? Hear the echo of birds chirping above you? Feel the peace of a world where man walks with God and animals live in harmony. There’s no death, there’s no heartache, there’s no hunger, there’s no sin or evil. Everything is peace and perfection.
God creates man and woman to live in this world and gives them one rule, and one rule only; “Do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden”. The consequence for disobeying this one rule is certain death. Doesn’t seem too difficult does it? Adam and Eve have EVERYTHING! They can eat from any other tree or bush in the entire garden. They’re the only ones there anyway, so why would they need to worry about running out of food? After all, their Creator has provided everything already, so they can be sure he’ll continue to provide.
But something happens. An imperfection has snuck into this perfect paradise. A crafty serpent has somehow ended up in the midst of Eden with hopes of poisoning humanity and breaking the relationship between God and His creation.
It can only be assumed the origin of this crafty creature. There is a theory that believes there was a rebellion by Lucifer that destroyed a “first” creation and therefore God had to recreate the world. It is possible that this serpent’s deceitfulness was a result of that first fall of Lucifer and some of the angels. It is interesting, but not necessarily pertinent, to note that the serpent “spoke” to the woman. Perhaps this indicates that pre-Fall animals could communicate verbally, just as humans. After-all, animals were the first proponents of companions for Adam. But these are but superficial details within the context of a bigger picture.
The tactic of the serpent was to make Adam and Eve question Truth—Truth in this sense meaning their trust in their Creator’s reliability. He tempted Eve with not simply the aesthetic beauty and desirability of eating the fruit from the Tree they were warned against eating from, but he taunted her with the lie that God was keeping better things from them. Better things? What could be better than a world without evil, death, and pain? What could be better than the opportunity to literally walk amidst a beautiful paradise with the Creator? What could be better than a world where all creatures live in peace and harmony? What could be better than having all your needs provided for and never having to work for your living? But Eve fell for it. Not only Eve, but Adam “who was with her” went right along with the lie and disobeyed.
My epiphany was this: here disobedience is a rejection of trust in God as the ultimate source of Truth. It’s a reliance on human understanding. King Solomon understood this when he stated in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”. It is when we stop believing the words of the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the universe who longs to walk with us in the gardens of paradise that we fall into sin and its fatal consequences. When we stop being thankful for the blessings God gives us when we dwell in His presence and give into the lie that there is something better than trusting God we walk down the path of death, pain, and destruction. And this was the very result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Though out of ignorance, it was still disobedience. Eve knew what God had told her. Adam knew as well, and not only did he not stop his wife, he also participated in the disobedience.
We are all guilty of this ignorant disobedience. We all in some capacity or another have believed the lie that “the grass is greener”. But we are finite creatures, created by an infinite God and it is He who holds ultimate Truth. The beauty of this love story is that this infinite Creator became one of us to pay the consequence for our disobedience in death. Not only did he pay the costly price to give us a way to be “bought back” from the curse of sin, but he also conquered death by rising from the dead. We now have access to both the forgiveness of sin (the sin inherited from Adam and Eve and our own personal acts of disobedience) and freedom from sin (the bondage of our own personal sins and sin nature). We can yet again have the choice to revel in the abundant paradise of all God has for us and walk in communion with Him yet again in the gardens of perfection. But we still need to focus on His blessings and not be distracted by the lies of something better. God is the best and all we need. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
I had a second epiphany at the end of all this: if I were, in fact, ever to try to explain the sin-salvation story to a child or new believer, I would probably bore and confuse them. Hopefully I did neither for anyone currently reading this. My hope is that somewhere in the jumble of my theological ramblings, you gain some glimpse of insight into the heart of God and His purpose and will for your life.
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