PARADISE WAS LOST

The Bible tells the tale that something terrible happened within humanity. The Reflection Of God Became Impaired By Sin. That happened in the paradise lost story, when Adam and Eve got the whole ball rolling. Like a snowball on a hill, it got larger and large affecting us all. Mankind today is only remotely like the ideal humanity portrayed by the psalmist in Psalm 8. The original Adam and Eve was ideal humanity. The human possessed the God-given capacity of self-determination, which meant that he and she had freedom to choose to obey God or to disobey. To disobey would be a violation of the relationship with God. When the original humans from whom we came, chose to disobey God, that act of rebellion defaced the image of God in the human and has affected the entire race. Long after creation, Solomon observed the tragedy that man did not remain as he was created. "This only I have found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

SIN’S POLLUTING INFLUENCE

We know that the first man and the first woman sinned by disobeying a command of God, not to eat something, the fruit that came from one tree in a garden paradise. In the narrative it is not long before we read about the heart-wrenching aftermath to sin’s polluting influence. Adam’s and Eve’s offspring, Cain and Abel, one an agricultural farmer and the other a sheep farmer, had a falling out. Each brought an offering to the LORD from his produce, one of vegetable and fruit and the other an animal sacrifice. God showed his preference for the animal sacrifice, and Cain instead of dialoguing with God so he could understand, blamed Abel, despised him and killed him. Now within less than two generations, sin is so communicable that there is murder. And from that point humanity only became worse and worse and within several generations God made the decision to place a time limit on the human lifespan of 120 years, which was followed some time later by God's expressed sorrow at having created the human species and his determination to exterminate the race. There was only one man who found favor in God’s eyes and that was Noah.