Created good but fallen...

One of the marks of authentic spirituality is a quest for truth and its application in every area of life.  Notice I said quest.  It is a life-long pursuit and a trajectory of constant searching and hopefully Spirit-lead growth.  None of us have perfectly apprehended the truth about the world.  

Why does it seem like so many who profess Jesus 

are not questing to know and apply God's truth

to every area of life?

I think it is primarily because we have not learned how to develop an authentic Christian mind.  We have not been taught even the basics of how to understand and live in this world.  As a result, we continue to think and to live like everyone else in the world.

What do we need to know?

The first basic truth we should know is that all things were created good.  The ringing cry of Genesis 1 is God's declaration that what He made is good.  Over and over again, God creates and declares it good.  The final summation of the chapter concludes, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." (vs. 31)  

What does this mean?  Simply it means that all things were created with an inherent goodness.  This includes humanity that is created in the image of God (vs. 26).  Not just individually but also corporately since male and female together reflect the full image of God.  This means that human interaction and culture was created to be good and to reflect the character of the God who created it.

Friends, this is great news!  This explains the joys we experience in relationship, the awe of being alone in nature, and the amazing wonder of seeing a newborn child.

I wish this truth was the entire story; but unfortunately, the goodness of creation must be balanced with another truth.

The second basic truth we should know is that all things were infected and effected by the fall.  Genesis 3 details how Adam and Eve turned away from listening to God to listen to their own desires.  When they were tempted by the Evil One, they chose to follow their fleshly desires to eat the fruit of the so-called knowledge of the good and evil.  The result was alienation from God (3:10), alienation from others (3:12), alienation from self (3:13), and alienation from all creation (3:16-19).  The consequence is

Each human and the entire universe suffers from this alienation from its created good.

We don't all suffer in the same way, but we all struggle against this alienation.  In other words, we all share a common problem.  We all know the tension of longing for the created good, but experiencing the disappointment of selfishness, sin, pollution, and evil.

Thankfully, these two truths are not all of the story.  At this point, so many of our modern fairy tales and morality plays end.  They tell you to get on the side of good and work to make the planet a better place.

One question.  How exactly do we do this?

You see, all of us have twin natures.  We were created to be great, free, beautiful, and good.  Yet, we are folks that are more often marked by selfishness, apathy, self-protection, and fear.  We are all fallen beings struggling to put off the gravitational pull of our sin tendencies. This pull drives us away from trusting in God and instead moves us toward trusting in self: our strength, our judgment, our resources.  The problem is that we forget that our strength, our judgment, and our resources are all infected with the consequences of the fall.

This is why our "solutions" to cultural and even individual problems often cause more issues than they solve.

What can be done?

Here is where Christianity offers a different answer than our cultural morality plays.  This post is getting long, so I will leave it here and pick up on Christ's answer next time.