Indeed, the dream of 'self-determination' is pictured so unforgettably in Genesis 3. The serpent 'grooms' Eve with a succession of questions and suggestions, whose end purpose was to detach her from God. It sowed doubts in her mind about the truth of what God had told her and Adam, and then planted the idea in her that they would become "like God" if they did what it suggested. But why was Eve, and then Adam just on hearsay, ready to believe it? There is no escaping the conclusion that God created them - and us - with a vulnerability (which eventually got tested). Nor the conclusion that God created our first home, Eden, with dangers - it wasn't quite the safe place it seems at first reading. What was the serpent doing there?
An intriguing avenue of speculation; but what interests me more practically is that vulnerability. I am quite sure that God knew what He was doing. When the first chapter of Genesis ends with God seeing all that He had made and pronouncing it "very good" (Genesis 1:31), he was including man and woman. So our vulnerability is also "very good". But it carried a big risk. God the risk-taker? Quite a thought. Reflect on this too: we are made "in his image" (Genesis 1:27). Is our vulnerability, too, a quality God copied from Himself to us?
When we gaze upon the crucified Christ, in whom "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell" (Colossians 1:19), then we know that this indeed is so - if the Father reveals it to us. It runs so counter to concepts about God then and even now. It's good to ask God: 'show me again the shock of it all, the foolishness and the offence; dulled in me by familiarity, by accommodating theologies, or by deep-seated doubts that You should go to such extremes for me.'
And God wasn't changing anything about Himself when He allowed Himself to be tortured and killed by us. This ultimate expression of His love and committment to His lost family becomes revealed to our new eyes all through scripture. Philosophical ideas about God preserve Him in remote detachment from mankind: the genius of the Hebrew people lay in their passionate engagement with an even more passionate God.
But love always hurts, always makes us vulnerable. The Cross shows me that God and I are made of the same stuff. My vulnerability, which in my life has caused me to sin, is in the image of God's vulnerability, of which we know "in whom is no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Cross shows me that from God's point of view, even the cause of my downfall, my vulnerability, is a precious quality He shares. He crossed into our world and shared our experience of it, exactly as we do. With His eyes of love, nothing else counted.
"The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating." (Isaiah 65:17-18)
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