The God Who GivesSample

Something Went Wrong 

George Buttrick tells the story of a lecturer who spoke to a gathering of businessmen and displayed a large piece of white paper on which was one small black blot. “He asked what they saw. All answered, ‘A blot.’” Of course, Buttrick admitted. “The test was unfair: it invited the wrong answer. Nevertheless,” he pointed out, “there is an ingratitude in human nature by which we notice the black disfigurement and ignore the widespread mercy. We are broken and we live in a broken world. Shalom was the peace of God ruling the world he had created. 

So when sin entered the world, shalom was lost. This beautiful Hebrew word (shalom) carries with it the idea of peace, not only as the absence of hostility but as wholeness and harmony. In the shalom of Eden, people were made to live well with one another, with the earth, and under Yahweh. This was an environment for total flourishing in every direction: here God was exalted, creation was enjoyed, and relationships were pleasurable. 

Although praise and celebration marked the creation, the fall into sin put a new song into the air. Rachel’s haunting song of weeping for her children echoes the mourning song of creation as it experiences the fall (Jer. 31:15). Laughter has given way to lament. 

Before the fall human labor was a blessing, but now it is a burden. Soil grows hard, animals become resistant, bodies move toward decay. Whereas originally everything made was good, now even the best things appear tainted. Nudity represented our primitive parents’ former freedom; with the fall they covered themselves, demonstrating their new awareness of the shame and guilt that stole over them. By rejecting God’s lordship, Adam and Eve began to know a painful vulnerability, the fear of exposure, and the sting of violence. The changes were swift and pronounced: from truth to accusation, from harmony to fracture. Although creation was made in God’s overflowing love, rebellion against the Creator plunged humanity into an ever-growing desire for mastery and a fear of the other. 

By taking what God had forbidden (because it was deadly), our first parents changed human nature and the world.