The Fallout

by, Isam Itson III

 After the Fall humans still desire to live rich, full, lives. But we keep giving in to our desire to have our own way at each other’s expense. This disregard for the purpose of God for our existence and our God ordained need for each other keeps undermining our best efforts at building good lives. Rather than embracing  God and his way of life that leads to cooperation, order, and fulfillment, we keep following our way of life that leads to conflict, chaos, death, and destruction.

The first story after the Fall is the story of Cain and Abel. Adam and Eve’s firstborn son Cain embodied their hope for a new and better life. At the time of the Fall, God had promised that one of their male descendants would destroy the serpent and restore humans to their life in Paradise. Perhaps Cain, who grew up to be a farmer like his father Adam, was that man? Instead Cain ends up killing his younger brother Abel. 

Cain kills Abel because he is angry and jealous that God accepted Abel’s offering of worship but rejected Cain’s. Rather than learning from God and submitting to God’s way of life, Cain led his brother Abel into a field and killed him. Cain was so committed to being  honored that he killed his brother to have his own way. He broke faith with God and he broke faith with his brother. For Cain nothing and no one was more valuable than his personal sense of pride and honor.

The next story  takes place during the days of Noah. The Bible tells us in Genesis 6:11-13, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. ¹³ And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ …” 

The Bible tells us that with few exceptions as humans multiplied they used their God given life and abilities to dominate or destroy each other. Eventually God said “No more violence”.  God instructed Noah, an exceptionally righteous man, to build a huge boat to preserve the life of his family and the land dwelling creatures, so that when God destroyed the violent humans with a devastating flood, life on earth would be able to start over. 

We would expect that Noah and his wife, and his sons and their wives would come out of the wreckage of the old world and follow God’s way of life. We would also expect that the story of the great flood would encourage their descendants to do the same. But the next story proves us wrong.

Within a few generations the descendants of righteous Noah and his sons take their lives into their own hands. Rather than follow God’s way of life and bring life sustaining order across the face of the earth, Noah’s descendants decide it is better to stay together and build a city and a name for themselves. So they built a tower, a temple really, and organized their lives according to their own wisdom for life rather than God’s wisdom for their lives. 

People had learned to cooperate, but they were still committed to following their way of life rather than God’s way of life. To move his purpose for creation forward God confused their language. Instantaneously, different families started speaking different languages. This inability to communicate resulted in multiple populations that separated themselves from each other, and grew into distinct people groups defined by their unique languages, across the face of the earth. 

Each group of people, or nation, sought to make a name for themselves and to define life on their own terms, in opposition to every other nation.  If you accepted their desire to exert their will, then peace prevailed. But whenever a nation seeks to make other nations follow their lead, violence between nations prevails. 

This is the violence, conflict, chaos, and destruction that defines human life on earth throughout history and into our present day. We build ways of life that we have to protect from external domination, internal conflict, and personal acts of violence. This is the self righteous and unjust consequence of the pride and selfishness that took root in Adam and Eve in the Garden in Eden. 

In response

Do you want God to bless the life that you are building for yourself, or do you want to live the life that God has already given you as a blessing to others?