It is well preached by many that when mankind fell through Adam's transgression in the Garden of Eden, the consequences of the resulting curse, which we experience daily, include:
- Sinful men harming each other in innumerable ways (assault, lying, theft, murder, deception, wanton endangerment, etc.).
- A corrupted creation (snakes now bite, spiders and hornets sting, cells mutate into cancer, bacteria don't just help us digest but attack our bodies, as do fungi, and viruses, etc.).
However, a 3rd immeasurable loss to add to the list above, I have never yet heard mentioned in any kind of sermon or Christian teaching. It can be noticed through one of the many symbolisms of spiritual realities God has given us in His invention of the family.
You may have been too young to remember from your own childhood, but if you have ever parented small children, you know they would be dead in short order without the intervention of their parents.
If not physically blocked, they would be run over by cars, burned, poisoned, eaten, crushed, and maimed all day long. Such accidents befalling people are devastating and heartbreaking, but is it because sinners are out to deliberately harm toddlers? Is it because the function of creation is corrupted and not working right? Not at all. It is because their mental facilities and physical capabilities are finite and very rudimentary in comparison to their parents.
Before the fall and the curse, if a boulder was going to roll over Adam, who could not see and be aware of all things, God, who can, would intercede and keep Adam safe. Our finite capacity to know and to understand things puts us in danger.
Humans design life-protecting vehicles and buildings to the best we can. However, we can't see the corroded bolt about to snap, the insufficiency of our equation, the raging heat we are about to touch, the missed decimal place, the invisible tonnage, or the stray object on a collision course with us. This is no small thing, but a huge concern on people's minds, as evidenced by all the devices and rules revealing the yearning of man's heart to be safe. The safety devices and procedures can become stifling in their futility because the only way it is ever possible to be totally safe is for a saved person, i.e., a Christian, after the consummation of all events foretold in the Bible, to spend eternity in the presence of God.
When people cry out for total safety, what they are actually and necessarily longing for is restored communion with their omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator.
And there is still another “lost at the fall” item, which would be number 4 on my list above. Though I am slightly hesitant to mention it because, through the Holy Spirit, a Christian today can partake in an intimate relationship with God. But there is no mitigation for everyone else. Number 4 is the epidemic of loneliness we find today.
When mankind was banished from the presence of God, a profound aloneness had to have resulted. We can try to fill it through people, with whom we were created to fellowship, but people are finite and limited in myriad regards – like the ability to always be there, to completely understand, to help, and not to be distracted by their own needs.
If you are a non-Christian who struggles mightily with loneliness, if you perceive that you are indeed wandering aimlessly through life by yourself, I invite you to the one and only antithesis to our profound aloneness.
I invite you to enter a relationship you were made for with your omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Creator God through the Savior, Jesus Christ.
You can watch a video version of Glen Reidhaar’s post at this link.
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