What Has Gone Wrong?

Eden was what most everyone looks for today: a great place to live, intimacy with the perfect mate, good things to occupy our time, value/ worth from a significant person, and a job that fits our makeup. Bliss. Unclouded relationships. Purpose. Affirmation. Satisfaction. Nakedness without a shred of shame (Genesis 2:25). Paradise on earth!

Yet today our world bears little resemblance to Eden as God created the world to be. We feel the universal struggle between light and darkness, good and evil. We wonder who we are. What we do doesn’t appear to make much difference. What we enjoy seems unattainable or fragile. We become frustrated, frantic, despairing. What’s gone wrong?

God gave one simple test of love and obedience (Genesis 2:16-17). Satan, disguised himself as a serpent, attacked Eve and Adam at this point of allegiance in a four-fold attack in Genesis 3. All creation was forever different. And he attempts to trip us up today in the same way.

Step 1: Deception (3:1b): Deception is a rotten lie at the core, coated on the outside with a semblance of truth, like a barbed fishhook covered with alluring bait. It’s Satan’s style. God begins with His generous bounty, adding only one specific, protective prohibition (2:16-17). The serpent reports vast prohibitions while ignoring God’s profuse provision. He subtly undermines the goodness and generosity of God by taking a semblance of Reality and masking it with his crafty deceit. The battle still rages today as Satan subtly twists truth: “Did God really say…?”

Step 2: Debate (3:2-3): Then the enemy coaxed Eve to debate with him in isolation from God, in her aloneness. First, Eve diminished her God-given freedom (focused on the one limit rather than her vast freedom). Then she added to the limit (God did not say “don’t touch”). Finally, Eve minimized the certain, but negative consequences (God said, “you will surely die”). Satan uses the same ploy with us today.

Step 3: Denial (3:4): Now the serpent directly denies the truthfulness of God’s Word with a frontal attack, calling God a liar.

Step 4: Defaming (3:5): The serpent’s words are totally true, yet completely false. As we compare God’s statement in Genesis 3:22, the words are full-on deceit, twisting God’s intent as God only prohibited gathering knowledge separate from Him. Yes, their eyes will be opened to know good and evil. Knowing apart from God though is devastating!

This rebellion resulted in the Fall of all creation since God delegated His authority to humanity to rule with Him. Because of “solidarity,” we are now born in the shattered image of Adam (see 5:3). This results in the devastation we experience today.

 

Jesus is the only way back.

This came from my book, Foundation Stones. I also have a web-site with tools, books and "more than Bible studies" that have helped me to live out of this spiritual DNA, www.JimFredericks.com