Planetwise: Dare to Care for Love's world (extract from Dave Bookless's newly published book)

Extract from Chapter 2 The fall: Creation's groaning

 

It did not take long for there to be trouble in Eden. Almost before God had finished declaring it 'very good', the harmony and beauty of creation were disturbed. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and were thrown out of the perfect garden. This dramatic event is full of important truths that still affect us today: truths about the relationships between God, his people, and the rest of creation. It's impossible to understand the state we are in, humanly and environmentally, or to understand why Jesus died, without grasping how we have fallen from God's good plans.

It is, most of all, a story of broken relationships. The friendship and intimacy that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God were gone. They had walked with God in the garden, enjoying the goodness of creation. Their nakedness showed they had nothing to hide from each other or God. After eating from the only tree God told them to avoid, all this changed. Adam and Eve hid their naked bodies from each other by making simple clothing, and when they heard God walking in the garden, they hid among the trees. The God whose purpose in creating was to enter into and facilitate loving relationships was rejected by the creatures chosen to bear his image.

The great drama of Scripture had quickly become a tragedy. Nothing would ever be the same again: a corrosive presence had entered the world and spoiled the perfection of creation. The rest of the biblical drama follows the disastrous consequences of sin's arrival and God's costly plans to resolve the crisis through Jesus.We cannot blame this on Adam and Eve alone, as the Bible is clear that every human being apart from Jesus has made the same choice. As Paul puts it, 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23).

Christians have usually seen this tragedy in terms of the broken relationship between God and humanity, and rightly so. Nevertheless, its results are far wider than this. Yes, humanity falls from grace, goodness and intimacy with God. However, it is not only about one broken relationship, but about how all the good relationships that God created have been spoiled.

... there are three main actors in the drama of creation: God, humanity and the rest of creation. We can picture the relationships as a triangle ... As human beings, we have a relationship both with God and with the rest of creation. In addition, creation itself has a relationship with God, as we saw earlier. When human beings turn against God, this not only breaks the relationship with God, but also affects the other sides of the triangle. When climbers are harnessed together by a single rope, the fall of one pulls the rope and inevitably affects all the other climbers. When the knitter of a complex pattern makes a single error, the whole item may need to be unravelled. The very relational, interdependent nature of creation means that one broken relationship affects all the others.

Because human beings turned against God's good plans, the broken relationships are seen in at least four directions, spelt out in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible:
between God and humanity

• between human beings
• between humanity and the natural environment
• between God and his creation

Often, Christians only concentrate on the first of these broken relationships. We are thrown out of God's presence and no longer have a relationship of closeness and intimacy. From God's perspective, we, the creatures he made in his image to relate to him, are now cut off and in rebellion against him.

Yet, the impact of the fall goes further, as a damaging rift immediately opens up between the first two human beings. ...

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Revd Dave Bookless is founder and National Director of A Rocha UK, part of the global family of national A Rocha initiatives. He preaches all over the UK, speaks regularly at events like New Wine, Spring Harvest and Greenbelt, and comments frequently on green issues on Premier Radio. He has also featured on Songs of Praise and God TV. He represents environmental issues on the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council Dave is married to Anne and they have four daughters.

Further information about the book can be found on the A Rocha website.

You can also order the Planetwise Environment Resource Pack - developed to partner with the book 'Planetwise', it's been designed to help individuals, groups and churches better understand what the bible says about God's world and develop practical ways to care for people and the planet. The book and the pack come together at a special offer price of £16 including P&P.