The problem, our problem: if this world was created by the Wisdom of God (as the Old Testament affirms), why is this our world such a poor sort of world? (C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, p.107)
If you were
building your forever house, you or I would hire the best people we could
afford to design and build our dream home, would we not? Why did a good God, who has unimaginable
resources, not take similar care when putting this world into play amongst the
galaxies? Our God designed home on earth
is irrevocably diseased, a place where death is king.
C. H. Dodd tells us that this was one of the predominate
questions being asked a few centuries after the resurrection of Jesus. That atmosphere was charged with a
multiplicity of wild schemes or theologies that sought out a palatable answer. In 325 A.D., the First Church Council of Nicaea
imposed an answer upon all of us, the disease is not God’s fault, Adam did it! Adam unleased an evil influence upon this
world by eating an apple from the no, no tree in the Garden of Eden.
To this very
day, that is where our biblical thinking has remained. What if, Adam was not a historical figure and
the garden was not an actual physical place on earth? What if, both Adam and the Garden are mythological languages spoken
to convey a humanly devised theological truth? What if God is at fault, so to speak? Could it be that God intended our world to be
what it is, a hell hole?
Maybe, the chaos of this world is allowed and utilized by God to convince us of the error of our arrogant selfish human ways. As we are forced into chaos, we become acutely aware of our desperate situation and this prepares us to one day bask in the eternal safety or salvation that God has provided for all humankind. This is an eternity appreciation world, for all the people to appreciate eternity, all the people must experience the aloneness of our chaotic world.
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca
