first circle

Look at me, attempting a series! I feel so grown up.

Yesterday I talked about the corruption of our world. How we live in a world that seems to have been good one day, but now most of what is good seems steeped in nostalgia. Today I want to comment on the root of that nostalgia and just what was corrupted in the first place.

"In the beginning God created..."

Order. Intentionality. Purpose.

If God created, then this world means something. God is an artist. Artists create things. They think about shadows, proportion and subtext. They know the rules, even if they break them.

The world is not an accident and that means something. A friendship that splinters, a life that is lost accidentally or something beautiful that is destroyed for simple profit matter because this world matters.

God created heaven and earth, stars and sky, water and land, animals and humans. And humans were crafted in the image of God.

We create, because we were created. When a three year old colors on a wall, it's because it's created in the image of God. How cool is that?

God created man to take care of the world and the animals. God gave man a job, and that job was to take care of what God created. Not to survive or just make it, but to take the keys over what God just made.

Man got lonely. Turns out that even without any separation between man and God, loneliness still existed. Apparently we are created to be together.

So God made woman. God said she was good. Man said she was good indeed.

Man did not abuse her, force her to do anything against her will or dominate her at all. Man was not given dominion over her, but she came to help him take care of creation. They could be naked and without shame. Cosmopolitan never told her she was fat and no one ever told him that he needed to keep her in line. He had nothing to prove and no one whispered to her that she could have done better. Naked and without shame.

All they needed was produced by the good, God-made world.

God and man, at peace. Man and woman, at peace. Creation produced good fruit and man and woman honored and took care of it.

The first circle, our home. We cling to each other looking for peace, but too often find scorn and betrayal. We argue how to take care of the earth, but often cannot see beyond our greed and politics. We look for God, but argue where he is.

All because we are no longer in the first circle.

Many of you know the story. It has a snake, a piece of fruit and quite a few consequences.

But stop for a moment and think about the first circle.

God is so close, He is walking with you. Standing side by side with others, without a hint of shame. You know your job and it is purposeful and matters.

No wonder we are so dissatisfied with the second circle, maybe at some level we remember the first circle. We remember a God who is close and a shameless existence. We miss our home.

We turn the music up louder and fire up another video game. We take another hit and allow the numbness to consume us. We study harder and harder waiting for the moment that we feel "good enough" even though it never comes. We go into another bed, but never quite feel okay naked.

Perhaps we are deeply, deeply homesick.

We explain away the first circle as a pipe dream or as an ancient fantasy because it reveals how corrupted our world really is.

Yet, I have never met someone who really thinks that the world is "right". It feels off to everyone, because it is off. We cannot live without regret, because we actually regret something that happened long before we were born. We regret that we are not "there", even though we do not know where "there" actually is.

So where is God? One bite of fruit and He's gone? Does He care about a creation that is decaying?

That's what the third world is all about.