"Let`s start at the very beginning. That`s a very good place to start", sang Julie Andrews in the "Sound of Music". And that`s what we`re going to do today. We`re going to start at the very beginning when God looks at the world that He has made, and says joyfully, "That`s very good".
"VERY GOOD" - in those simple words we see the power, the awesomeness, but above all the BEAUTY AND THE BALANCE of God`s Creation. Travel along the top road from Shaftesbury to Blandford and look down Fontmell Valley and you`ll catch a glimpse of it. From time to time I stop there to look and think and wonder. It wasn`t possible to do that in my mining village Parish near Wigan, with its slag heaps and the air filled with metallic smoke from factory chimneys. In Dorset you could say that we see the land as God created it - in Wigan the mess that man had made of it.
Yes, God did create everything "Very Good", but something happened to make a mess of it. The picture the Bible paints is devastating. "Fornication, theft, adultery, greed, malice, fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, murder, war" - a disease has touched out human nature.
I once met a man who was afraid. In his 40`s, a thinking man at the height of his powers, his world was shattered when the doctors diagnosed cancer. "For a long time I would not entertain the possibility. I`d been so fit" he said. "Oh, I`d had my share of accidents and illnesses, but my body always recovered quickly......... I dismissed the pain when it first started. It`ll go away.......... but it didn`t. This thing is inside me, eating away at me, and they tell me its too late to do anything about it". His body had been invaded by a destructive disease - his natural healing process overwhelmed.
We were made to be "Very Good", to be in balance, healing at the centre of our systems - but we have been invaded by a destructive disease which eats at the heart of our human nature to destroy it. The natural question to ask is: "How could God allow it?" How could He create a world like this, with such potential for goodness, but with such potential for evil built in?
Well, Jill and I love our children deeply. When they were tiny we gave them rules to protect them. If we had a fire in the sitting room we would put a fire guard round it and say, "Don`t go near the fire. It can hurt". But if they had ignored us, and touched the fire, who would have been at fault when they were burnt? Jill and I? Maybe it was the fire`s fault - fire is good when it warms us - but when it is abused it destroys. That`s the nature of fire.
So, at the beginning of time, God, loving His children passionately, said to them, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is evil. You must NOT eat that fruit - if you do you will DIE". But they had no idea what He was talking about.
I can understand that - for instance, if I said to you, "Don`t touch the fire, because if you do you`ll `SCHPLINK`", your natural reaction would be to say, "What`s he talking about - `SCHPLINK`? Never heard the word before. What does it mean?". So you put your hand in the fire, and that very good warm fire begins to eat your hand away, and you look at what`s happened to your hand, and you say: "So THAT`S what SCHPLINK means!"
Well, that`s what happened to God`s first children. God said, "Don`t eat or you`ll SCHPLINK"........... but they ate, and SCHPLINK began to touch them - first a dreadful sense of shame. Then the terrible feeling of being separated from God. Finally came the day when Cain killed Abel, and Adam and Eve looked at their dead son and said, "So THAT`S what SCHPLINK MEANS" - and they were devastated.
And that "SCHPLINK", which God calls "DEATH", is a terrible DIS-ease which has infected the whole human race. Death is not just the dying of the Body, because Adam`s body didn`t die immediately. Death is a process - we are cut off from the very good, we are cut off from God, we are cut off from each other. And St. Paul gives a list of the things which cut us off - fornication, theft, adultery, greed, malice, fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, murder, and war. As Jesus says: "These evil things all come from inside, and they defile a man", and their effects touch us all. They are the symptoms of death.
Of course statements like I`ve just been making offend many people. "Surely, Eric, you don`t believe in Adam and Eve and the apple" says educated man. "Haven`t we left those fairy stories behind". Well, I don`t know what you think about those early stories in Genesis - perhaps it didn`t happen quite the way those stories say it happened, maybe what happened is too deep and devastating for us to understand, so that God had to speak in picture language and leave us to wrestle with the pictures. But look at the horror of life for so many on our planet today, and try and come up with an explanation -- have you got a better explanation than this?
Or perhaps your reaction is this: "Most people aren`t like your picture at all, Eric. There`s so much goodness in the world as well as so much evil" Well I`m going to speak in picture language. with a very strange story, which I made it up. Will you ponder it, despite the fact that it sounds so strange.
"Imagine that war has broken out, and our planet has been devastated by nuclear weapons. Very few are left alive - much of civilisation has gone. No towns are left, no schools, no hospitals, no libraries. We are the few survivors, trying to grub a living from a soil which sometimes produces food, and sometimes an inedible mutation. Life has becomeshocking.
Our bodies are affected too. Radiation has invaded us, so that our children are born, some with a few strange changes, and others terribly deformed - life expectancy drops to 20 years. But it`s not just our bodies that are affected, so are our minds. Memories become very short, so that we begin to forget the terrible event which caused this. Time goes by and morality begins to deteriorate - one man comes home from work on Friday and says to his 14 wifelets, "I`ve had a good week this week. I`ve only killed 10 people". Another man says, "Our scientists have made a startling discovery - once five is five, two fives are 10, three fives are 15, four wives are 20"....... "How wonderful" says his friend, "We will be like gods soon"! Most people no longer walk upright - they crawl 100 yards in an hour, and think they are moving quickly. We look at ourselves and say, "The gods must be very proud of us, for we are the crown of their creation".,
Now will you stretch your imagination a little further. Imagine that YOU as you are now, are taken forward in time to that terrible period. Think what a shock it would be when they saw you. You stand there before them, godlike in their eyes. They would marvel at your knowledge which would seem vast compared with theirs. When you told them that you had never killed anyone, never committed adultery, or stolen anything, all their achievements - all their comparisons ("I`m as good as if not better than the man next door - I help out where I can, I care for my children, and so on") why, they would seem puny compared with the heights of education and morality YOU have achieved.
But think how much more staggering it would be, if you told them, "I am what you were supposed to be. Everyone was like this until the catastrophe came" - "What catastrophe?" they would say. Think of how they would feel. To be like YOU! To be able to walk 3 miles in an hour, to be able to do the 20 times table, to add, subtract and multiply, to read books and newspapers ("What are books and newspapers?").. All the things you can do, those many things you take for granted, would seem astounding to them - it would reveal to them the poverty of their life.
Yes, I wonder how they would feel? Would they welcome your visit, or would they feel angry at you, angry because of the truth you had revealed? Would they feel envious and long to be like you, or turn their backs on you, feeling condemned by the comparison? Would they try to destroy you because what you are and what you say offended them, or turn to you with longing saying, "Do something for us. With all your vast treasure house of knowledge, do something to change us and make us like you"? And what would YOU feel? Would you look with sorrow at what your great-great grandchildren had become, knowing you could do nothing?
What a fantastic story!! Is it just the work of my imagination - or did a catastrophe like this really happen at the dawn of time? Was what Christians call "The Fall" a terrible and far-reaching event which infected mankind with a sickness far more devastating than radiation sickness? Did it enter into the heart and soul of man with effects so great that the strange twisted picture I painted in my story pales into insignificance when compared with it. Are we men and women in reality twisted and stunted and broken and empty and far from being the godlike creatures the Father planned us to be? Is the Bible right when it says, "ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?". Finally was the extent of this Fall only revealed when the Man, Jesus, stood on this earth and said "I am what you were intended to be!".
If so, then something has to happen. Something has to happen to us. And it really does not wash to say: "For goodness sake , most people aren`t like that at all. There`s so much goodness in the world as well as so much evil" or to look at our next door neighbour and think "I`m as good as he is - I help out where I can, I care for my children, and so on". That is totally the wrong comparison to make - we`re judging ourselves by our own standards not God`s standards, looking at mankind`s achievements with distorted vision when we do. Something has to happen to heal us from this disease that all of us are suffering from - but what, for goodness sake?
(See "The Serpent")
