Part 3: The Story of Christmas by Jon Foreman (SWITCHFOOT)
The Story of Christmas, Part 3: Trust
Our freedom allows us make choices, freely choosing goodness or evil, choosing to obey or disobey. Our making ability results in wonderful decisions and horrible ones. In this light, making man in the image of God was a beautiful and dangerous thing. When Adam and Eve choose to willfully disobey, they are simply exercising one of their many options as creative entities. This act of disobedience, was an creative endeavor.
But this creative act is unlike any action that has ever been made up to this point in the story. Everything else was either made by The Good-Maker or made by man in accordance with the Goodness of the maker. This act of disobedience ushers in a world not entirely made by the maker. Man’s free will has played a cancerous role, destroying a world which was entirely created by God. And at the same time, opening the door to a world created by both God and man.
Doubting the very identity of the Good-Maker, the serpent calls God’s goodness into question. Humanity eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we become judge and jury, witness and accomplice. We side with the accuser – and the goodness of God is called into question.
The simple math is this: a new man-made creation was built on the foundation of human disobedience. It’s a new world that holds the cancerous bite of destruction in it. Before, there was goodness and trust built into everything that God had made. But this is something new. Yes, it’s the old creation but it’s twisted and warped. This world outside the garden still has a bit of the old goodness in it but it looks like destruction, it’s a new form of living that smells like death.
Of course the story continues for thousands of years- tales of a fallen creation that continues to create. Wars and rumors of wars. A rebel planet at war with herself. Proud towers that scrape the sky. Fighting for power, possessions, and position. Holding beauty and death for all of humanity. It’s a mantel that has been passed down, from generation to generation: every creative decision we make holds the promise of goodness tinged with the cancerous decision to doubt God’s goodness.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
-Romans 3:23
