I have been reading a lot on Sin and creation. Here are a few of those thoughts.
Sin
With entering of sin into the world, I would tend to lean to explaining this as a "vandalism of shalom." Cornelius Plantinga in his book Not The Way It's Supposed To Be, he explains sin as a vandalism of shalom. I love this! I think God's intent in creating this world is shalom. God left humans, creatures, and nature responsible and even empowered each entity to keep alive shalom. Somewhere along the line, this was disrupted, ending up with shalom being vandalized. I believe we as Christians are to help in the restoration of bring God's kingdom on earth back to shalom. I do not think we can bring it to a full sense of shalom, as thought we've been given power on earth, we are still limited. Either way I don't think that means we can use that as an excuse to do nothing about this restoration process.
So why does this sin exist? I am not sure we can ever truly know, but this is how I have come to grasp the idea.
Creation | not perfect
A summary of Creation Untamed begins with Terrence Fretheim’s identification of creation as a “good” result from God, that is, not perfect. In this sense, God created the world not perfect intentionally. By God creating the world good, God left space for humanity, nature and creatures to exist in the world and continue the process of Gods creation. This project was left into the hands of imperfect beings, humanity, along with the other creatures of creation and eventually, sin, as we know it entered the world. Thus, the existence of the world is a continual process of creation working with God to restore the world back to Gods original intent, shalom.
God created the world good, not perfect.” It is a common belief in evangelicalism that when God created the world as we have in the Genesis story, that created order was perfectness and exactly how God intended humans to live. Nevertheless, the creation story includes God saying that the subjects created were “good.” Fretheim also says, which I agree with, “Genesis does not present the creation as a finished product…for creation to stay just as God originally created it would constitute failure of the divine design…God continues to create and uses creation in a vocation that involves the becoming of creation” (p. 15).
This is not a perfect explanation, but I think it helps in understanding sin. It is not good enough to me to say God is sovereign. I've talked to enough people to feel that that explanation does not do the amount of evil and suffering justice. I think it gets God off the hook to easily for the evil in the world. Does it mean that God is to blame for some evil that exists? Maybe. But that doesn't remove the love of God or the presence of God in those times of suffering. At least that is my belief.
Sin
With entering of sin into the world, I would tend to lean to explaining this as a "vandalism of shalom." Cornelius Plantinga in his book Not The Way It's Supposed To Be, he explains sin as a vandalism of shalom. I love this! I think God's intent in creating this world is shalom. God left humans, creatures, and nature responsible and even empowered each entity to keep alive shalom. Somewhere along the line, this was disrupted, ending up with shalom being vandalized. I believe we as Christians are to help in the restoration of bring God's kingdom on earth back to shalom. I do not think we can bring it to a full sense of shalom, as thought we've been given power on earth, we are still limited. Either way I don't think that means we can use that as an excuse to do nothing about this restoration process.
So why does this sin exist? I am not sure we can ever truly know, but this is how I have come to grasp the idea.
Creation | not perfect
A summary of Creation Untamed begins with Terrence Fretheim’s identification of creation as a “good” result from God, that is, not perfect. In this sense, God created the world not perfect intentionally. By God creating the world good, God left space for humanity, nature and creatures to exist in the world and continue the process of Gods creation. This project was left into the hands of imperfect beings, humanity, along with the other creatures of creation and eventually, sin, as we know it entered the world. Thus, the existence of the world is a continual process of creation working with God to restore the world back to Gods original intent, shalom.
God created the world good, not perfect.” It is a common belief in evangelicalism that when God created the world as we have in the Genesis story, that created order was perfectness and exactly how God intended humans to live. Nevertheless, the creation story includes God saying that the subjects created were “good.” Fretheim also says, which I agree with, “Genesis does not present the creation as a finished product…for creation to stay just as God originally created it would constitute failure of the divine design…God continues to create and uses creation in a vocation that involves the becoming of creation” (p. 15).
This is not a perfect explanation, but I think it helps in understanding sin. It is not good enough to me to say God is sovereign. I've talked to enough people to feel that that explanation does not do the amount of evil and suffering justice. I think it gets God off the hook to easily for the evil in the world. Does it mean that God is to blame for some evil that exists? Maybe. But that doesn't remove the love of God or the presence of God in those times of suffering. At least that is my belief.
Have you read Culture Making by Andy Crouch? He pretty much says the same thing about Creation, but he puts it in terms of cultural goods. It's a good book in general.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Andy. I believe this is a Boyd idea (and probably Lewis and others), but I fully embrace the notion that you cannot have true love without freedom. Yes that applies to each of us individually, but also creation as a whole. For the problem of suffering- I absolutely resonate with any anger/sorrow people may have when tragedy or injustices strike, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine it any other way, ya know? There is freedom in the world, so unfortunately people will hurt me, I will hurt others, I will hurt myself, people will die, disasters will happen, etc., etc., but because of those pains and hurts- I can better appreciate and experience the joys in life...I can more fully know love because I have been through the valley of death.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think perfect creation looks like? Or shalom?