crisis

What has Gone

Wrong with the
World?
The Breakdown of All
Relationships

Session 4
 worship and prayer

• Sing 2-3 Worship Songs (project songs on PowerPoint)

• Pray out loud for the course and for God to reveal himself through it
and have each student pray for his or her neighbor at the same time that
10 God may reveal himself and his purposes in a deeper way, give vision
minutes and renewed passion for his work on earth to be done.

review of previous session

Ask students to summarize the most important points of the last session.

xx
minutes

group activity: homework review1

In your application exercise for this week I asked you to do something
concrete that would help advance God’s will being done “on earth as it is
in heaven” something that could affect your family, church, community,
xx nation, or any sphere of society.2 (See PowerPoint.)
minutes

At this point I’d like you to go into your groups of 4-5 people and share
with those in your group how you did in your personal application. If the
class is small, do not divide.

Ask students to summarize what they did as a personal application — two

minutes each. Do not make comments until all students’ experiences have been
shared. Walk around and listen to groups. Select one or two student to report to
the entire class.

introduction: what is evil?

War. Famine. Betrayal. Murder. Brutal Oppression. Economic
Exploitation. Child Prostitution. Human Trafficking. Terrorist
xx Bombings. Genocidal Governments. Domestic Violence. Crime.
minutes Corruption. Injustice. All this is part of our world. (See PowerPoint.) It’s
obvious that our reality today is diametrically opposite to what God
intended when he created our world. What has gone wrong with our
world? Why is our world the way it is? When trying to answer this
question, it is staggering to observe the level of naiveté and false beliefs
that most people have regarding evil. Surely we know that evil is cast

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 around us; that there is an evil force in this world.3 ere is hardly any
denying that evil actually exists. (See PowerPoint.)

In fact, most Christians, I suppose, will have little difficulty believing that
evil supernatural forces exist and bring suffering upon individuals. But in
today’s cultural climate many may have difficulty in believing that the evil
supernatural forces also affect and seek to control the socio-political
systems under which we live.4 So we Christians often live in two
extremes:5

1. We do not live like these evil forces actually exist in the socio-political
realm. We don’t take them seriously enough. We may even sneer at or
mock the very idea of the demonic. While we acknowledge the
existence of evil – it’s difficult not to – we don’t want to dwell on it or
wrestle with questions regarding evil and the implications the answers
to these questions might lead us to. Many theologians of the last
century have been simply embarrassed by talk of the demonic and so
generally, Christians from middle-upper-class churches and shaped by
a Western worldview take this stance.6 In fact, they would have
difficulties acknowledging evil residing in the very institutions and
socio-political structures that benefit them so much. ey also tend to
shy away from a too personalized view of evil – i.e. that there are real
demons lurking around, trying to put their claws into unsuspecting
victims.7
2. We try to explain all wrong by demonizing and spiritualizing it. Some
today see much pastoral work for the healing of nations and societies,
more or less in terms of exorcism.8 One young woman who had
frequented a fundamentalist-Pentecostal church but no longer did so,
was asked for the reason of her absence: When pressed, she excused
herself, saying: It was not her fault, since the demons prevented her
from getting out of bed in the morning. Without failing, she declared,
the demons always attacked her on Sunday mornings with spells of
fatigue. In many fundamentalist, charismatic or Pentecostal churches
talk of Satan and demonic attacks abound. It almost seems – when
one listens to testimonies offered by church members Sunday after
Sunday – that everything which goes wrong is caused by demonic
forces. Personal responsibility is played down, since Satan and his
powerful demons are given such prominence. Shortly after the
genocide in Rwanda, for instance, some missionaries and church
leaders seriously suggested that territorial spirits were primarily to
blame for the genocide in 1994. Some said that the killings began
after the Rwandan government imported a monument from another
country and erected it in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. e monument,
evidently, brought a host of demons that instigated the slaughter.
While the demonic was doubtlessly present during the Rwandan
genocide, it would be short-sighted to blame the entire genocide on

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 personalized demons and territorial spirits, and neglect to take into
account other forces and factors, including the Church’s own one-
sided Christianity that limited the Church from being a prophetic
voice exerting a more positive influence on ethnic relations between
Hutus and Tutsis.

Either of the extremes that most Christians live with is not satisfactory,
nor biblically sound. at makes life very confusing. While we know that
evil somehow exists – we hear of it every day in the news – we often have
no satisfactory explanation for it. Where did evil come from? What is its
motive? How are we to find refuge from its claws?9 I believe it is essential
for us to have a biblical understanding of evil, for only so can we
adequately confront it. Had Gandalf not known of the origins, power and
purpose of the ring, everything would have been in vain. Sauron could
have easily acquired the ring and destructed Middle Earth. Fortunately,
he had a degree of understanding, however, since he had read and
attentively listened to the stories of old. So he was able to organize a
resistance and take actions to confront the growing powers of Sauron, by
attempting the destruction of the ring. We need to know what evil really
is, why it’s there in the first place, why it’s been allowed to continue, and
how long this will go on.10

Once again Genesis gives us some clues to answer these questions and to
gain a more biblical understanding of evil and sin, even though –
admittedly – the answers are not very full.11 In certain ways, we are left to
deduce insights from different biblical and apocryphal texts since the Bible
does not give us clear answers. Nonetheless, the insights presented below,
have a long-standing tradition within the early church and the patristic
age and thus should be listened to carefully.
 
video clip: the story’s first tragic turn: rebellion in the
heavens
As we continue to study Genesis we will find that very early on God’s
xx Story with his world took two tragic turns. e first tragic turn happened
minutes in the heavens – God’s first part of creation. e second tragic turn
happened on earth – God’s second part of creation. During this session
we will briefly look at the first tragic turn, which happened in the heavens,
but concentrate most of our time on the second tragic turn that happened
on earth.

It is important to understand what happened when God created the

heavens. As we noticed earlier, Genesis doesn’t dwell much on God’s first
part of creation. We just know that all things invisible were created during
that time, including the angelic beings, which appear as Cherubim in

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 Genesis 3:24. Nonetheless, the Story God is telling, let’s us know that
things happened prior to this life we are living, things we must
understand. As Gandalf whispered to Frodo, the two of them huddling by
the fire: “at’s a chapter of ancient history that which it might be good to
recall; for there was sorrow then too, and gathering dark, but great valor,
and great deeds that were not wholly vain. One day, perhaps, I will tell
you all the tale, or you shall hear it told in full by one who knows it best.”
Something happened before our moment on this stage, then.12 So what
happened in the heavenlies? What went wrong in the heavenlies?

Show Video Clip: “Rebellion in the Heavens”.

Have participants then turn to the article “e Fall of Lucifer” and have
two students read out loud to reinforce the content of the video clip.

One of the most famous Christian writers and philosophers of the 20th
century was C.S. Lewis. An atheist, who turned to the Judeo-Christian
faith after a long search for intellectual integrity, he writes about his
discovery of evil in his well-known book, Mere Christianity: “One of the
things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously
was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe – a mighty
evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease and sin …
Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good
when he was created, and went wrong. … Today there is no neutral ground
in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed and
counterclaimed by Satan.”” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

As to the circumstances of this transformation from good to bad we are

left to guess. It is true, the Bible provides no explicit philosophical or
speculative account of the ultimate origin of evil; it is also silent
concerning the creation of beings within the spirit world, i.e. how and
when they were created. Despite this we are pressed to assume that there
must have been a rebellion within that segment of God’s created order
prior to the fall of the human race, since the Bible clearly speaks of Satan,
demonic forces and evil – which are opposed to God.13 Perhaps the
traditional interpretation, which is based on apocryphal texts and a few
biblical texts, may have some merit after all! Most of the church fathers
had no problem asserting the reality and personality of the Satanic and of
demons. Origen who lived in the second century wrote: “In regard to the
devil and his angels and opposing powers, the ecclesiastical teaching
maintains that the beings do indeed exist; but what they are or how they
exist is not explained with sufficient clarity. is opinion, however, is held
by most: that the devil was an angel; and having apostatized, he persuaded
as many angels as possible to fall away with himself; and these, even to the
present time, are called his angels.”

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 If Origen and most other Christians of the early church are right, perhaps
this Story, then, is not nearly as “safe” as we’d like to believe. is is
precisely what the Bible has warned us about all these years: we live in
parallel worlds – or in one world with two halves, part that we can see and
part that we cannot. One world consists of hills, and lakes and barns and
politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. e other
consists of angels and sinister forces and somewhere out there places called
heaven and hell. We are urged for our own welfare, to act as though the
unseen world (the rest of reality and creation) is, in fact, more weighty and
more real and more dangerous than the part of reality we can see. e
Bible does not attempt to prove the existence of demons any more than it
attempts to prove the existence of God. It simply reports on their
activities as if its first readers accepted their existence.

So in broad strokes, the Christian Faith portrays Satan as a personal

spiritual being of the highest order, originally created by God for good
purposes but now engaged as the leader of a cosmic rebellion. We are
pressed to acknowledge the reality of this Dark Power, since the Bible so
clearly speaks of Satan, demonic forces and evil. Even though his
insurrection was squelched and Lucifer and his followers were driven out
from the heavenlies, Satan continues to create havoc in God’s creation –
only that now his realm of activity is the earth instead of the heavenlies.
e mighty angel, the captain of the Lord’s armies, had been banished
from the heavenlies, but not destroyed, the Story goes. So he waited in
the shadows for an opportunity to take revenge. Unable to overthrow the
Mighty One, he turned his sights on those who bore his image.14 is is
where Genesis continues the Story.

scripture study 1: the story’s second tragic turn:

rebellion on earth
Genesis tells of how our Story takes its second tragic turn. Sadly, the big
story did not end with the fruitful garden where human beings are
xx
minutes
obedient stewards and God walks in the afternoon.15 ings changed
dramatically, and Genesis tells us how they changed and what is at the
bottom of why our world has gone wrong. Genesis calls what happened,
the “entrance of sin” into the world. Genesis 3 is by any account one of the
most profound, but also puzzling, stories in all of literature. We all want
to know what the story refuses to tell us: why there was a snake in God’s
beautiful creation in the first place, and why it wanted to use its cunning in
that way. Instead of giving us an outright explanation of the origin of evil,
the story gives us a brief analysis of it.16 In the following hour we will try
to understand what the Bible says about sin. We will take note of the
holistic nature of sin, i.e. how sin affects all areas of life. Have participants

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 turn to Scripture Study 1: e Essence of Sin, to follow along with the
questions.

Read Genesis 2:16-17.

Here we have one of the first commandments that God ever gave to
humans. What is the commandment that God commands? Look
carefully at the text, noting exactly what is being said to whom, where,
and when.
e first commandment is: “ You are free to eat from any tree in the garden!”
Often we immediately jump to the negative command, even though God’s first
commandment is very positive.

So what does this first commandment tell us about who God is? Did
God set up any advance charges or requirements for eating of the trees?
If the only information we had about God was this first command, what
would this call to ‘eat of every tree in the garden’ tell us about him.
He seems to be a very generous God. A God who likes to share his abundance as
the owner of the earth and everything in it.

If this is how God reveals himself in this first commandment, how,

then, are we to understand this second command: “You must not eat
from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you it of it
you will surely die”?
It seems like this command reflects God’s desire that people avoid dangers and
death. is command can be heard as coming more from a physician or parent
than from a judge. A doctor’s orders to not eat something would be understood
as preventive health advice, rather than as a legalistic prohibition. A parent’s
orders to a child to not cross the street or put their hand into the flame of the
stove show the parent’s love and desire to protect. Trust in the parent or doctor
is based on the belief that they care about our health and security and are
working for our best interest. e fact that God does not say, “If you eat of the
fruit I will kill you or punish you,” supports reading this command as parental
protection or a doctor’s orders rather than as a legal requirement. e Hebrew
text’s ending, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die”, presents death as a
natural consequence of eating rather than as a punishment.17 It appears, then,
that the commands of Genesis 2:16-17 are a rule of God, but a good rule that is
there to keep humans healthy and safe. God said to us: “Trust me in this one
thing. I have given the entire earth to you, for your joy. Explore it; awaken it;
take care of it for me. And I have given you one another, for love and romance
and friendship. You shall be my intimate allies. But on this one matter, you
must trust me. Trust that my heart for you is good, that I am withholding this
for a reason. Trust me that my purpose for my command is to protect you! For
that reason do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil … or you will die.” 18

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 Read Genesis 3:1-3, 6

It is important that we understand who God is as portrayed by Genesis

2:16-17 if we want to understand what happened next.
Who is present in these verses?
e serpent and the woman AND the man (see v.6).

Who does the serpent represent?

It seems that Satan sought to deceive Eve and Adam by usurping and seducing
the serpent – a once good creature of God. So evil was lurking in the garden,
seeking to usurp God’s good rule of Shalom over the earth.

Who do the serpent and the woman talk about?

ey talk about God. It seems we have here the first theological discourse… A
discourse about who God is and what he wants.

According to the serpent, what was God’s first command to the

humans?
“ You must NOT eat from ANY tree in the garden.”

So how does the serpent perceive God? What do the serpent’s words
and depiction of the Lord’s command tell us about the serpent’s image/
theology of God? How is God, according to the serpent?
He would be a very unattractive God, if the serpent were right. e image of a
liberal, generous, good God who desires that humans enjoy life and who seeks to
protect them from danger stands in stark contrast to the serpent’s dark picture of
an unlovable, miserly God of prohibitions. e evil one draws people away from
their first love by positing an idol in the place of God. is idol is a God of the
serpent’s making, a perverse God who is far less than the self-revealing God of
Genesis.19

So what do you think of the woman’s response? How did she answer the
serpent? Did the woman answer the serpent rightly? Read her response
carefully!
No! She who knew God intimately was succumbing to the serpent’s subtle
challenge. Her adding the words “and you must not touch it” shows that the
woman is distorting God’s directives and moving from seeing God as a liberal,
loving, freely giving God to a God of rules and prohibitions. e woman also
understated the positive command of God. She could have spoken much more
forcefully about God and frontally countered the serpent’s theology. She could
have said: “No, you are wrong! It is not just any god who has commanded us.
He is a personal God, a good friend, a good God, rich in love and kindness. e
Lord God commanded us: “Eat of every tree just not this one tree, because it will
do you harm! e Lord loves us so much that he warned us to be careful, because
he doesn’t want us to die. e Lord told us not to eat of just one single of the
thousands of trees, because he wanted to protect us!” However, her theology was

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 weak, vulnerable to the next assault of Satan, disguised as the serpent
theologian.20

Sometimes, as we read the Bible, we need to pay attention to what a key

character doesn’t say or do. e silences in the text (what the text does
not say) are sometimes as revelatory as what the text does say. I.e. in
verse 6 further down, we read that the man was standing beside the
woman as she was having the theological conversation with the serpent.
Yet, he remained silent. So what do you think of the man’s response?
Did the man answer the serpent rightly?
No! e man had been with God even longer than the woman. He had
experienced how God encouraged him to exercise authority and dominion over
God’s creation; he had first-hand knowledge that God was very interested in
sharing his power with humankind; he had become the recipient of God’s
generosity many times; he had felt the God’s love when God created him a
companion. e man knew that the serpent’s theology was wrong. Yet, he
remained silent.

Do these two responses sound familiar?

Allow participants time to respond.

Read Genesis 3:4-5.

Look at how the serpent responds to the woman’s theology:

How does the serpent depict God, according to these two verses?
e serpent goes even farther in its negative depiction of God. According to the
serpent, God is not only miserly, God is a controlling power-monger, he is
greedy, and even lies to protect his supremacy. e serpent succeeds in getting the
woman AND the man to ponder a detestable God.21 It seems like this is what’s
happening here: e serpent deliberately inspired distrust through suggesting
that God is not good, but diabolical. rough the serpent Satan whispered his
age-old lie to Adam and Eve – and in them to all of us – “ You cannot trust the
heart of God … he’s holding out on you … you’ve got to take matters under your
control.” His word ends up putting the word of God in question. “Can you
trust that God has your best interests at heart even if you do not know
everything?” And in that way Satan sowed the seed of mistrust in Adam and
Eve’s hearts – and in them in all of our hearts.22 is focus on a false image of
God, the idol, pulled the woman AND man away from gazing on the loving
God. Once the woman AND man were no longer standing consciously before
the true God of love, they became weak and vulnerable to be seduced by the false
image. e woman’s AND man’s listening to the serpent’s malicious gossip
affected them, distracting them away from the original command. eir bond
with God was weakened by negative images.23 e so serpent’s question has
lingered throughout the ages like smoke from a forest fire: “Is God truly good? Is
he holding out on us? Can we trust him?

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 Have you ever experienced or been witness to seeing how lies, gossip,
and slander were used to separate a lover from the beloved, or a people
from their leader, or a friend from another friend?
Allow participants time to respond.

Does the serpent’s theology sound familiar to you? What of the

serpent’s theology have you heard or believed?
On the one hand, many churches portray God as a punisher. As someone who we
need to be on the lookout for! Somebody who has put up a lot of rules! Somebody
who demands our submission to his rules and is out to get us if we don’t fulfill
them! Somebody who doesn’t want us to enjoy life, but requests of us to live our
Christian lives in a spirit of suffering, enduring the hardships of life as an
ongoing sequence of tests to our faithfulness. According to Genesis, however, this
is not biblical truth but a satanic lie. On the other hand, we see the serpent’s
theology manifest in the following assertion: “Trusting God is way too risky.
You’re far too vulnerable. Rewrite the Story. Give yourself a better part.
Arrange for your own happiness. Disregard him.”24

group activity: what is sin?

Before we continue with Genesis, let’s stop here for a moment to reflect
on the following question: What concepts do you have of sin? It is very
important for us to have a clear understanding of the nature of sin, if we
xx want to make sense of the rest of the story and get a biblical
minutes
understanding of evil.

Show Video Clip: What is Sin?

In this video clip we saw one understanding of sin. What do you

envision is sin? What is your definition of sin?

Form groups of 4-5 and give participants five minutes to draw their conception
of sin on construction paper as a group and/or write up a definition of sin in
1-2 sentences.
Once they’re done, have them share their drawings and interpret them to the rest
of the group.

Most likely participants will share understandings of sin that are

personalized or individual (i.e. a breach between me and God; or aiming
beside the mark – that is, not reaching or fulfilling our purpose etc.). All
of these explanations have their validity, but are limited to the personal-
individual dimension of sin. What about the corporate-structural
dimension of sin? Having raised that issue, then engage participants in a
dialog on the nature of structural sin, asking them the following question:

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 Are systemic structures morally neutral, meaning that evil is not
inherent in them, but rather in the behavior of people who operate
within them? Is there something like structural sin, or do we perceive
sin as entirely personal-individual? (See PowerPoint.)
Allow participants time to respond and engage them in a conversation without
giving direct answers to these questions initially. Have them then
contemplate the example of a policeman who enters the police force with
many good intentions to help people and fight crime. But after a couple
of years he gets sucked into the way things are done and by year 5 has
become corrupt himself. In other words the system corrupts him. Or take
the example of a community leader who starts out well with good motives
to help her community. But after 3-4 years working with municipal
officials, she starts understanding how the political game works and begins
seeking personal favors. A couple of years later the system has corrupted
her and she no longer works for the wellbeing of her community, but the
profit of her party or herself. In other words, we see how individuals
corrupt systems, but also how systems corrupt individuals. ere is sin in
both and both contribute to an unhealthy vicious cycle. In short then, if
we want to understand the nature of sin from a biblical standpoint, we
need to be clear about the presence of sin in both individuals AND
systems and structures.

Returning to our Story, how does Genesis describe and define sin?

Read Genesis 3:6.

What do you think finally led to humans’ first transgression? How do

you see sin depicted? What is sin?
It seems that sin may be best defined as mistrust of God – mistrust that his heart
for us is indeed good – which then leads to disobedience to God’s good commands,
then to destroyed relationships, and finally to death. Bad deeds are a
consequence of sin, but not sin itself. Sin is distrusting God’s heart. Wasn’t it
their distrust of God by envisioning God negatively that led to their disobedience
and their taking the fruit? And so the woman and then the man take of the
fruit, being attracted to it by its beauty and the false promise that eating from it
would make them wise and God-like. Envisioning God negatively makes trust
impossible, leading people to meet their own spiritual and physical needs rather
than believing that God will provide. People often use drugs, affairs, sex, work-
ambition, money and power to take care of their own anxiety. Self-medicating
takes the place of seeking and waiting for God’s provision.

Doesn’t it almost seem like the first injustice ever committed was the
one committed against God and that this same injustice continues to be
committed against him again and again?
Allow participants time to respond and offer reflections as to how this reading of
Genesis 3 is amplifying their perception of sin.

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 scripture study 2: the holistic scope of sin
In the next group study we will look at the consequences of this event on
our world, according to Genesis. We will look at a number of areas that
were affected by this mistrust, which the Bible generally refers to as “e
xx Fall”. Unfortunately, because we have tended to accept the dichotomy
minutes
between the spiritual and physical, which we talked about in our first
session, we sometimes inadvertently limit the scope of both sin and the
Gospel. If God’s concern is only for the spiritual, then we reduce our
understanding of sin to something personal (our bad acts) that separates
people from God. is in turn tempts us to reduce the scope of
redemption to the spiritual or personal realm alone. In other words, by
limiting the domain of sin to a person’s soul, we inadvertently limit the
scope of the gospel as well. e result of this dualistic thinking makes it
hard to understand the impact of sin in the material world of economics,
politics, culture, and all human institutions.25 In what follows, we will see
how far-reaching the impact of sin was. Far beyond we often seem to
hear, if we limit the domain of sin to a person’s soul.

Divide students into the same groups of four to five. If the class is small, do not
divide. Have students turn to “Scripture Study 2: e Holistic Scope of Sin” and
discuss their answers to the questions. Finally have them also discuss the
questions at the end of the Scripture study (personal and community
evaluation). Walk around and listen to groups. Select two or three student to
report their findings to the entire class.

Make sure that the following points are addressed. If necessary, add the
following insights after having 2-3 students report their findings, and ask a
couple of follow-up questions to draw out the following answers:

After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve, who had previously known only
good, now came to experience, taste and know evil (Gen. 3:22)!
Innocence was lost! Goodness was forever marred! One of the first
results of their newfound “knowledge” was that they were no longer
unashamed of who they were as creatures made in the image of God.
Whereas before they were unconcerned about their nakedness, fully
confident about themselves, their mistrust led to a loss of self-esteem if
not self-hatred. eir view of themselves turned negative. Now they felt
they had to hide part of their bodies. What a sad gain! Having lost a
good image of God, they also lost a good image about themselves – as
made in the image of God! What’s more, they also lost trust in one
another, including sexual trust, which is why they wanted to cover their
differentness, disrupting their sexual relationship. e shame and fear they
felt, hence, was the result of broken trust. And that was but the beginning
of humanity’s troubles for acting on the deception of the Evil One.

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 Only part-way – since much of the serpent’s assertions were perverted
truths: eir eyes were indeed opened – to evil. Yet, they most definitively
didn’t become like God. To the contrary – their mistrust marred their
being made in the image of God – effectively making them less God-like.
Ironically, then, the man and woman’s effort to become more like God
actually distorted the image of God in humans.

It seems that once the first humans accepted and acted out of the serpent’s
negative image of God, it was only natural that they would fear God’s
presence and lose their intimate connection with him, their sense of
positive dependence. ey transgressed against a “bad god” and
consequently feared a severe reaction. ey hid their nakedness and
shame, as if God were all-seeing. ey expected God to come as
punishing judge. If they had seen God as a parent and physician seeking to
protect them, they might have come to God as a physician who could heal
them, delivering them from impending death. God’s call to the humans
in v. 9 can be interpreted as the call of a concerned parent of physician
coming to the rescue, rather than as a punished to be feared.

God’s question to the man gives the man the opportunity to seek help
after eating the deadly fruit. God came looking for them. He called to
Adam, “Where are you?” us began the long and painful story of God’s
pursuit of mankind that goes back through the ages until today. e man
refuses to approach God as a parent, physician or trustworthy confidant,
however, to whom he can come to with his problem. He avoids speaking
the truth as if he is hiding before an accusing judge.

Unfortunately, God’s invitation to the man to trust his goodness and

return to a relationship of confidence is once again rejected. e man and
woman both sought protection through their own justifications,
counteraccusations, and scape-goating. ey continued to hold on to their
false image of God. ey continued to believe the serpent’s theology and
distrusted God’s heart for them.

It seems that the man and the woman now experience God’s medicinal
judgment. God warned them that the price of mistrust and disobedience
would be death. Not just a physical death, but a spiritual death – to be
separated from God and life and all the beauty, intimacy, and adventure
forever. Death becomes a pervasive reality within life.26 As Paul says in
Romans 6:23: e wages of sin are death! Sin reverses the process of
creation and causes chaos to return. Doesn’t this ring true? Mistrust lead
to destroyed relationships which lead to death – physical, emotional,
spiritual?

Indeed, the effect of this distrust and disobedience ensured that human
identity and all dimensions of human relationships would be marred. e

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 scope of sin proved very broad – very holistic if you will. It touches every
aspect of human life: marriage and sexuality; birth and death; work and
food; human and nonhuman. In all of these areas, one could speak of
death encroaching on life. Disharmony reigns supreme. It led to
widespread deception, distortion, and domination in all forms of human
relationships – with God, with one’s self, with one’s family, community and
between others, with the environment, and with the systems and
structures.27 So the formerly inherent goodness of all relationships was
destroyed, evil entered the Story, and God’s own heart has been called into
question.

group discussion: the holistic scope of sin and how it

affects all of life
Let’s look more in depth at each of the relationships outlined in the graph
on the PowerPoint. (See PowerPoint.) How would you say have the
xx
minutes
relationships in each of these areas been distorted by sin?

Divide students into the same groups of four to six. If the class is small, do not
divide. Have each group turn to the article “e Holistic Dimension of Sin” and
read one section of how sin ruptured a specific relationship. Have them then
write on post-it notes how the relationship was before and how it changed after.
Put up a poster board with two columns saying “before” and “after” and have the
groups stick their post-it notes into the appropriate column. Walk around and
listen to groups. Select a representative from each group to report their findings
to the entire class.

plenary study: the forfeiting of dominion and what god

does
Read Genesis 1:28.
xx
Remember what command God had given the woman and the man
minutes
together – what we commonly call the cultural mandate? (Genesis 1:28)
He gave them dominion over the earth!

Did the woman and man fulfill this command? Did he and she exercise
their dominion ‘over every living thing that moves upon the earth?’
Who dominated whom in the couple’s interaction with the serpent?

It seems that the roles were reversed in the rapport between the serpent
and the couple. e woman and man did not exercise their dominion over
the creeping thing. Rather, they let the ‘living thing that moves upon the
earth’ define God for them. While God sees the serpent as good, like all

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 other animals, the serpent – it seems – let itself be usurped by evil forces
that oppose God. ose forces – through the serpent – now tried to
seduce the woman and man away from what they knew about God.
Instead of seeing him as affirming, trustworthy, loving, they began seeing
him as deceitful, weak and adversarial. ey handed over their role of
dominion to the serpent, which in turn began to exercise dominion over
them. In stepping into a relationship with the creature, they let the visible
creation subjugate them by allowing it to mediate God to them rather
than listening to God’s direct command. In doing so, they exchanged the
revelation of a good and loving God for an oppressive and unattractive
God. In fact, as a consequence of handing over their dominion to a
creature, nature no longer always reveals God’s will and person to humans.
Natural catastrophes etc. now have dominion over us. is is important to
see, because if we accept nature as God’s will (hurricanes, sickness, death,
crop failures, Tsunamis, earthquakes etc.) this will fatalistically lead us to
identifying nature and God, creature and creator. Looking to nature, we
then encounter both a deterministic and a capricious God.28

When God gave humans dominion, He gave them the freedom to legally
function as the authority on this planet. In this way, he placed his will for
the earth on the cooperation of the will of humans. God did not change
this purpose when humankind fell, because his purposes are eternal and
his word stood firm.29

God gave humanity a vast amount of freedom and authority on earth. Yet
these gifts were dependent on human’s using their will to do the will of
God. If they used their will for anything other than God’s will, the image
and likeness of God within them would be marred, and the purpose of
God for the world would be obstructed – purposes of goodness,
fruitfulness, creativity, joy, truth, justice, and love. e rebellion of the first
man and woman brought about this distortion of God’s image in
humankind and thus attacked God’s plans and vision for the earth.30

Humans forfeited their authority to the serpent theologian, whom they

had chosen to believe in place of God. Traditionally, the serpent
theologian has been connected with the figure of an adversary of God –
called Satan. So that meant that the Fall introduced a new ruler on earth
– one bent on its destruction rather than its growth in godliness and
fruitfulness. Because Satan usurped humankind’s authority on earth, the
apostle Paul referred to him as “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:431

So sin is not simply the breaking of a law. It is the missing of an

opportunity – the opportunity to exercise Shalom-inspired dominion on
earth. Nonetheless, God has not rescinded from giving humans dominion
over the earth. What has changed, of course, is the capacity of human
beings to live up to this calling.32

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 So what does God do? What do you think God will do about this?
Allow participants time to respond. Well, let’s see how Genesis answers
this last question itself.

Read Genesis 3:21-23.

What does God do? Why does he banish them from the Garden?
He clothed Adam and Eve and banished them from the garden so that they
would not eat of the tree of life.

What does this say about the character of God?

It seems God continues to care for humans, clothing them but also making sure
that they won’t live in misery for eternity. God remains the same and doesn’t
change. Sin doesn’t make God into a cruel sadist. He still is seeking the well-
being of humans and of his creation – as he has done from the very beginning.

summary and conclusion

God created a good world meant for Shalom. “And God saw all that he
had made, and it was very good!” (Genesis 1:31). Yet, he gave some of the
xx beings he created real power and authority. Some angelic beings misused
minutes
that power and digressed against God’s good rule, inciting a rebellion that
is ongoing. Indeed, we shouldn’t move past the issue of an adversary too
quickly. Someone other than human beings created the temptation that
resulted in the fall. Too often we dismiss the idea of a form of personal
evil that actively works against God and God’s intentions for human
beings and creation. Yet, without Satan’s role in the first part of the
biblical story, there would be no need for the rest of the biblical story. We
cannot read Satan out of the story and have it make any sense.33
According to our Story, then, there is an adversary who actively seeks to
bend God’s good creation so that it no longer points at the purpose for
which it was created: Shalom! is Dark Power and his demonic cohorts
seduce human beings to sin. While they cannot force humans to sin –
that remains a choice – they can lie and manipulate in order to achieve
their goals. Sin, then, can be described as mistrust in God that leads to
disobedience and finally destroyed relationships. ese destroyed
relationships are at the bottom of what has gone wrong with our world.
ey explain the violence, injustice, discrimination, oppression,
exploitation that we witness day by day, as people go on sinning and keep
on being sinned against.

is Dark Power and his demonic cohorts also infiltrate human systems
and structures, perverting them so that they become destructive, instead of
life-giving. e systems absolutize themselves and no longer act according
to their God-given calling. In turn, they shape humans, seducing some of

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 them to internalize their perversion, while oppressing and exploiting many
others.

Our Story, then, is realistic about the nature and dimension of evil. It
doesn’t play evil down but acknowledges its presence in human systems
and structures. It also acknowledges its presence in people and ascertains
that sin can be explained as mistrust in God leading to disobedience and
broken relationships. Yet, it is important to note too that our Story doesn’t
give the Dark Power more prominence than necessary. Humans are not
marionettes, neither in the hands of puppet master God, nor of puppet
master Satan, as some may have us believe. Our present and future is not
determined by Satan. God has given humans dominion over this earth.
He hasn’t changed his mind about that, even though our dominion has
been affected by the fall. is means that Satan can only have as much
power and dominion over us humans and our systems as we allow him to
have. So our Story also asserts that we have a continuous part to play. In
fact, God invites us to join him in his fight against the forces of evil, by
taking our authority in God seriously and hindering the advance of evil
and sin. It follows, that the redeeming and restoring power of the gospel
must address not only individual persons in their brokenness, but also the
broken structures, systems and communities in which we participate,
including the brokenness of the church itself.34

So if we ask the question, "What is God about? What is God's project?",

then we may always answer in the most expansive way imaginable. God's
“agenda” is that all things be made new; that people and communities and
the whole creation are restored and renewed so that they may fulfill their
creaturely calling and develop according to God’s intentions.35

is is, in fact, what the rest of the Bible is about – from Genesis 4
through Revelations 22. (Leader should visually indicate the amount of pages
that Genesis 4 through Revelation 22 represent, by using and holding up a
Bible). It tells us the story of how God continues to try to reach out to
people and entire nations and bring them back to himself, bring them
back to a place where they can live full lives in abundance, live in just and
relationships, seeking the well-being of each other and other nations, live
as they were intended to be.

How does he do that? How does the Story continue? at’s material for
the next session.

homework assignment and application

Assign students to read the article “God’s Initial Rescue Efforts
Continued” and study the Scripture Study 1 within it as homework. Have
xx them write their answers into their application journal and come prepared
minutes

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 to share their findings with other members of their group. In addition,
have them choose a personal application; an application that helps address
a relationship they’re in (with themselves, God, others, environment,
systems) that doesn’t yet reflect God’s intentions. Have them decide how
they could better that particular relationship and then do something
concrete within the next week to improve that relationship. (see
PowerPoint).

closing prayer
Ask a participant to close in prayer.

5
minutes

total time:
xx
minutes

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 personal notes

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 endnotes
1 Adapted from e Harvest Foundation, Leadership Development Training Program,
Level I, 19
2 Darrow Miller & Bob Moffitt, On Earth as it is in Heaven, 6
3 John Eldredge, Epic, 29
4 Vishal Mangalwadi, Truth and Social Reform, 37
5 As C.S. Lewis notes, “ere are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can

fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. e other is to believe and to
feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. ey themselves are equally pleased by
both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
6 “ose who cherish the insights of Carl Jung have in fact argued that the language of

the demonic is the projection of those aspects of our own personalities, that we are
uncomfortable with or want to pretend don’t exist. What we should do, then, is to learn to
befriend our ‘shadow side’ and see what we presently call ‘evil’, or what we presently shun
as satanic, as simply another aspect – perhaps a very creative and hence threatening one –
of our full-orbed personality. While that has an attractive and holistic ring to it, and there
may well be truth in the proposal that at least some language about the demonic is simply
a projection of that kind, the Bible and massive Christian experience over the centuries
suggest otherwise.” (N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 111)
7 e effect of Enlightenment thinking on Christians was invariably to remove God and

other supernatural beings from the physical world. God could not be scientifically tested
because he occupied a supernatural place. He was thus immune to the challenges of
science. Slowly, therefore, the natural world was left to the scientists who could define its
laws and patterns. e world gradually became defined as a place that operated according
to testable rules. God may well have set up those rules in the first place, but he did not
now intervene within them. Science and faith in God therefore learned to live with each
other by concerning themselves with different questions; as the old Sunday school saying
goes: “Science answers the ‘how’ questions and religion answers the ‘why’ questions. is
sort of thinking protected Christianity from the atheistic attacks of some scientists, but it
also made it difficult to conceive of how the supernatural might act within the world of
natural causes and effects. Some evangelical Christians, in effect, became believers in a
sort of ‘clockwork’ universe. God set up the physical universe with its own rules and
patterns and provided the sustaining power for the universe, but he never intervened in
the structures and patterns of that stable system. If God and angels did not intervene in
the physical world then there was even less chance of the devil and demons being able to
intervene in physical and tangible ways that differed from the natural running of the
system. (Dewi Hughes, God of the Poor, 109-110)
8 N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 110
9 John Eldredge, Epic, 29
10 N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 44
11 N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 44
12 John Eldredge, Epic, 30
13 Arthur F. Glasser, Announcing the Kingdom, 40
14 John Eldridge, Epic, ?
15 Bryant L. Myers, Walking With e Poor, 27
16 N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 51
17 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 30-31
18 John Eldredge, Epic, 54
19 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 31-32
20 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 32-33
21 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 34
22 John Eldredge, Epic, 55

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 23 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 34-35
24 John Eldredge, Epic, 56
25 Evangelical Protestantism has tended to center its theology in God’s work of salvation.

Particularly in its more popular, non-reflective forms, the evangel has historically been
proclaimed in terms of individual salvation – the calling of the sinner to Christ. Because
of this emphasis on individual salvation, evangelicals have been inclined to approach evil
as individual. If Christ’s atoning work is sufficient to cover all sin, and if salvation is
understood as individual, then the sin that salvation covers must be individual as well.
Otherwise, Christ’s death is insufficient to cover our sins. Because it is sufficient and
because salvation is seen as the redemption of the individual, the evangelical preacher is
forced into an examination of sin that is individual. e danger with such an approach is
that those who stress exclusively individual dimensions of salvation can neither
understand the full extent of evil nor appreciate the full salvific work of Christ (Robert
Linthicum, City of God, City of Satan, 44-45)
26 John Eldredge, Epic
27 Bryant Myers, Walking With e Poor, 27
28 Bob Ekblad, Reading the Bible with the Damned, 35-36
29 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 37
30 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 41
31 Myles Munroe, Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 42
32 N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, 121
33 Bryant L. Myers, Walking With e Poor, 28
34 Relief & Development Group, June 2002, 1-2

God simply could have come down and wrenched control of the earth back from his
adversary. He could have done that, but he never would have. Why? It would have been
inconsistent with the integrity of his character and his purposes. If he had done that, his
adversary could have accused him of doing what he had done – usurping the authority
that had been given to humans in creation. God has all power and authority. Yet he has
given humankind authority over the earth, as well as a free will, and he will not rescind
those gifts, - even though humans sinned and rejected him, and deserved to be separated
from him forever. What extraordinary respect God has for humanity. He respected the
authority of humans even when it lay dormant within their fallen nature. (Myles Munroe,
Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer, 48)
35 Relief & Development Group, June 2002, 2

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