I mentioned last week that I've been ruined by the idea that Christians spend eternity on the new earth, and that God comes to us (rather than us leaving a doomed world behind to float in the clouds). A related idea that has also ruined me (though not in my original list) is the thought that I honestly don't know what an unfallen world would look like.
We often make comments that suggest we do know what the restored creation will look like:
"I can't wait 'til heaven, when I'll be talented enough to sing," I read a friend's post on facebook once.
"I can't wait 'til God tells me everything I've ever wanted to know and I can understand it instantaneously," I've often said.
And my personal favorite was R. C. Sproul's off-handed comment in a video I once saw: "Entropy is a great little result of the Fall."
It amazes me that we are so self-derogatory that we think that what we perceive to be insufficient talent is a consequence of our sinfulness, or that having to learn is a mark of imperfection. If even God is described as "learning" in the Bible (yes, I'm aware of the danger of taking such verses out of context, and that's not what I'm doing here--hence the quotation marks), why should our process of learning be a source of shame?
[And I'm still trying to understand how the integral of (1/T) with respect to Q (because that's what entropy is) could be a result of sin... I suspect Dr. Sproul was simply reaching for an illustration.]
What aspects of human life (or the universe in general) do you often attribute to the Fall? Is it necessarily so?
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I have long felt that learning will remain an integral part of what we will do for all eternity. Otherwise I see no purpose or value in what we spend our lives learning now. It seems to be an essential part of our humaness and seems to me to predate the fall.
ReplyDeleteI agree with John.
ReplyDeleteGod gave man instructions for cataloging, cultivating, and culture-building at the out-set of creation. The introduction of sin did not cause a degree of stupidity in humanity; but a separation from God in our universal call to action.