In the beginning, everything was originally good and perfect. The universe experienced shalom as it was meant to, and mankind enjoyed—and benefitted from—a perfect relationship with God and each other. But, like most stories we know and hear, something went wrong—drastically wrong.
This is a dark chapter in story of God called “The Fall,” which refers to the historical event when Adam and Eve were deceived by Satan and rebelled against their good and loving Creator.
Sin entered the earth and infected and affected everything, such as the perfect relationship between God and mankind (vertical), the relationship between Adam and Eve (horizontal), and the relationship between mankind and creation, among many other things. The fall was truly a tragic event. Mankind—being created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27)—fell short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23).
What is interesting is that the original Genesis mandate—to rule over creation—calling still stands. The only difference is that it is now harder because of sin, which has permeated God’s good creation, negatively impacting everything.
As the story unfolds, mankind’s evil and pride only increases, as seen through events such as Cain’s murder of Abel and the towel of Babel, among others. Ever since the fall, mankind has been on a downward-spiral, relationally, physically, and spiritually.
Mankind has—broadly speaking—failed to, as one of my professors likes to say, “Put God on display” in such a way as to reflect or mirror God and His attributes well to the rest of mankind and creation.
This is a tragic reality. It would be eternally-devastating if the story ended there, but the good news is that it does not. On the contrary, the story continues on a note of hope, as we will see in part three, “Redemption”.