The Fall - United Methodist Distinctives
When I was a young teenager, Jehovah’s Witnesses frequently targeted our neighborhood. They would go out in pairs, knocking on doors, handing out their Watchtower magazines, trying to get new converts.
One day they rang the doorbell and my sister, who was in middle school, answered the door. They talked for a while, and soon it became apparent to them that they weren’t going to convert her. As they were leaving, one of them turned to her and said something along the lines of, "Even though we don’t agree with each other, it’s nice to talk to someone who actually knows what they believe."
So I ask the question today, "Do you know what you believe?" Could you have an intelligent discussion with Jehovah’s Witnesses or other pseudo-Christian cults? This week, we kick off a series where we will be looking at the question of what do United Methodists believe. To get to that, we need to start with the very beginning… in the Garden of Eden.
One thing I often hear is that humanity is inherently good, that, given the choice between right and wrong, just innately, humans will generally choose right. If that’s the case, if we’re inherently good, which of you was the one who taught your children to fight? Which of you taught your children how to lie and steal? You didn’t teach them that? Of course you didn’t. They picked it up naturally. But that wasn’t the plan.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:31: God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
Adam and Eve walked with God, speaking with him face-to-face. Genesis 2 concludes with the statement that the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. There was nothing dirty or pornographic about their nakedness – they had nothing to hide. They were completely innocent. There was no such thing as sin, and thus, there was no such thing as shame. They had no need to hide anything at all from God. This was the life we were created for – perfect relationship with our Creator.
In Genesis 2:16, God told Adam, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
And as you probably know, the very next event recorded in Genesis has the serpent tempting Eve and she and Adam disobey God and eat from the forbidden tree. Thus ended the perfect relationship with God. Though God did not kill Adam and Eve, they were banished from the Garden of Eden, and the process of dying began.
Physically, death was the consequence of disobedience. But the spiritual consequences were far more dire. Our completely holy God does not allow sin to remain in His presence, and so that sin created a gulf between humanity and God. Though God created us in His own image, that image was completely destroyed at the moment of original sin. We often refer to this sin as "the fall."
It was through Adam and Eve that sin entered the world, and humanity grew up showing a great proclivity toward that sin. As we continue on in Genesis, we read about Adam and Eve’s son Cain killing his brother Abel, and things went even more downhill from there. In Genesis 6:5-6 we read the following description: The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Verses 11-12 continue: Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.
Unfortunately, and in spite of some people arguing to the contrary, I don’t believe we’re any better than the people I just described. We continue to figure out new ways to sin and new technologies to allow us to sin more efficiently. Technology continues to make us more effective at murder than ever before. The internet allows unrestricted access to pornography and to illicit online romances as well as easy dissemination of hate and terrorism. More Christians have been persecuted and put to death since 1900 than in the two-thousand years previous, even in the time of the Roman persecution of the Church.
You don’t have to teach a child how to be greedy and selfish. You don’t have to teach a toddler how to lie or to fight. No, it comes quite naturally. And as adults, we don’t do a whole lot better. The Apostle Paul wrote about his struggle in the book of Romans, chapter 7, verse 15 and 22-24.
One day they rang the doorbell and my sister, who was in middle school, answered the door. They talked for a while, and soon it became apparent to them that they weren’t going to convert her. As they were leaving, one of them turned to her and said something along the lines of, "Even though we don’t agree with each other, it’s nice to talk to someone who actually knows what they believe."
So I ask the question today, "Do you know what you believe?" Could you have an intelligent discussion with Jehovah’s Witnesses or other pseudo-Christian cults? This week, we kick off a series where we will be looking at the question of what do United Methodists believe. To get to that, we need to start with the very beginning… in the Garden of Eden.
One thing I often hear is that humanity is inherently good, that, given the choice between right and wrong, just innately, humans will generally choose right. If that’s the case, if we’re inherently good, which of you was the one who taught your children to fight? Which of you taught your children how to lie and steal? You didn’t teach them that? Of course you didn’t. They picked it up naturally. But that wasn’t the plan.
Genesis 1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:31: God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
Adam and Eve walked with God, speaking with him face-to-face. Genesis 2 concludes with the statement that the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. There was nothing dirty or pornographic about their nakedness – they had nothing to hide. They were completely innocent. There was no such thing as sin, and thus, there was no such thing as shame. They had no need to hide anything at all from God. This was the life we were created for – perfect relationship with our Creator.
In Genesis 2:16, God told Adam, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
And as you probably know, the very next event recorded in Genesis has the serpent tempting Eve and she and Adam disobey God and eat from the forbidden tree. Thus ended the perfect relationship with God. Though God did not kill Adam and Eve, they were banished from the Garden of Eden, and the process of dying began.
Physically, death was the consequence of disobedience. But the spiritual consequences were far more dire. Our completely holy God does not allow sin to remain in His presence, and so that sin created a gulf between humanity and God. Though God created us in His own image, that image was completely destroyed at the moment of original sin. We often refer to this sin as "the fall."
It was through Adam and Eve that sin entered the world, and humanity grew up showing a great proclivity toward that sin. As we continue on in Genesis, we read about Adam and Eve’s son Cain killing his brother Abel, and things went even more downhill from there. In Genesis 6:5-6 we read the following description: The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Verses 11-12 continue: Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.
Unfortunately, and in spite of some people arguing to the contrary, I don’t believe we’re any better than the people I just described. We continue to figure out new ways to sin and new technologies to allow us to sin more efficiently. Technology continues to make us more effective at murder than ever before. The internet allows unrestricted access to pornography and to illicit online romances as well as easy dissemination of hate and terrorism. More Christians have been persecuted and put to death since 1900 than in the two-thousand years previous, even in the time of the Roman persecution of the Church.
You don’t have to teach a child how to be greedy and selfish. You don’t have to teach a toddler how to lie or to fight. No, it comes quite naturally. And as adults, we don’t do a whole lot better. The Apostle Paul wrote about his struggle in the book of Romans, chapter 7, verse 15 and 22-24.
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Since God will not allow sin into His presence, you might wonder why He even created us with the capability to sin. The answer is free will. He created us with the free ability to choose right or wrong. If He had simply created us without that ability, then we wouldn’t be truly free to love Him, and that wouldn’t be real love. True love is not forced – it must be chosen.
Unfortunately, in the state of sin, we can no more choose love for God than we can choose our hair color. Sure, you might be able to fool some people, but you just can’t trick God. A better analogy might be that in our natural, sinful state, we can no easier choose to love God than we can choose the content of our dreams. You see, in sin, we are in what amounts to a spiritual sleep. Like Rip Van Winkle, we slumber on, oblivious to the world around us.
This doesn’t seem very hopeful, and without the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, this would define our entire existence. However, we are not without God, so there is hope. But you’re going to have to wait until next week for the hope of Prevenient Grace.
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