How Did We Get Into This Mess? Part 1 Eve's Selfishness

To begin to understand how creation care is interconnected to the spread of the gospel, we need to go back to the beginning. The very beginning.

Gen. 1:1 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'(NRSV)

Chapter 1 of Genesis goes into detail about how God formed our universe. Point number 1: God is creator. Point number 2: Good thinks of creation as good. He uses the term six times. Point number 3: It God thinks of creation as good, therefore, creation is important to him. Point number 4: He created Human's in his own image. (Gen.1:21)
Point number 5: He gave humans dominion over the earth.

Gen 1: 28-30

v28'God blessed them and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth". v29 God said, "See, I have given you every plant yeilding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with see in its fruit: you shall have them for food. v30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.' (NRSV)

And point # 6:

Gen 1:31

'God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.' (NRSV)

I think a lot of Christians overlook that word 'everything' in that last verse. As humans we tend to be self centered. We are so focused on being called 'very good' in v.31, we forget 'everything'. I guess that is why God calls us 'His children' so much. We want our Father's love and approval, to gain His favor and His love so much we forget our brothers and sisters around us.

And what I think Christians don't understand too often is that the natural environment affects our brothers and sisters in creation. The very people Jesus commands in Matt.28:19,

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

We as Christians can't tell the unsaved that Jesus loves them without showing love. We show love by meeting the needs human need to survive. Good food to eat. Clean water to drink. Animals to tend to. If one species of creature dies out, the entire creation is affected. That is the harmony God wanted for creation.

But there is one little problem. Sin entered the world. So how did we get into this mess? Well let's focus on who Satan focused on first. Eve.

I know...Women always get the blame and men always get away with murder. At least in our secular imperfect world they do. In God's creation, no one gets away with anything. I'll deal with Adam tomorrow. Now what did Eve do wrong? And I'm not talking about the nice little sunday school answer, "She ate from the tree when God told her not to." No, Eve's crime was selfishness.

The serpent knew how to play her. First he got her to put words in God's mouth. God never said they could touch the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But Eve said he had in Gen. 3:2-3. Then the snake became the charmer. He lied to Eve saying she would be like God. (Gen. 3:5) Selfishly, she wanted to be like God. Walking in the garden with Him wasn't good enough anymore. The fruit looked good to eat and it promised wisdom. So thinking of herself, she took the fruit and ate. (Gen. 3:6) Humans have been thinking of ourselves ever since.

Over the years we began wars over land, take cattle from the poor, shed human life left to right. And when the Industial Revolution came along with it's factorys and mass production, we began to waste the natural resources of creation for our personal gain. For human advancement. Waters became tinted. The air we breath was filled with smoke. Farms became less common. We tear down forests and natural plains to expand our city limits. We take advantage of people in developing or thrid world countries when we buy a product for ourselves but they are paid very little for working very hard.

I'm not saying technology and development is bad. But it's only when we do it our of advancement of self and not others do we suffer from selfishness.

Christians are just as bad. We try to justify our selfishness by misuse of the word 'dominion'. We try to say we can take what we want from the earth because God said we could. We love to point out Gen 1 :28 and 29. (see above) The implication of dominion over the rest of creation is clear. But with true dominon comes responsibility. In v.30 we find God has given every green plant for food to every beast, every bird, everything that creeps, everything that has the breath of life. The implication is we are to make sure it stays that way and take only what we need. Selfishness comes with excuses to take what we want.

Eve thought she should be as wise as God. And even though she had everything she already needed, she took what wasn't hers.

We need to stop taking. We need to start giving. After all Martin Luther wrote,

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."

In short, humans are not God's only creation. So we need to stop acting like we are.