Run to the Father

Adam and Eve had it made. Their existence was idyllic. They had perfect bodies and the perfect environment. They had no pain, no decay, no lack of food, nothing bad at all. They had meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Of the latter, the most meaningful was their relationship with the Creator who would actually walk in the garden with them. It could not really get any better than that.

It could get worse.

"The serpent," we are told, "was more crafty than any other beast." (Gen 3:1). So crafty was this serpent that he approached with a benign question of very little impact, a simple interrogative. "Did God actually say ...?" (Gen 3:1). Eve answered boldly because she had a good relationship with God and she knew Him well and she knew what He had said. Except ... not quite. He never said, "... neither shall you touch it." (Gen 3:2-3). This crafty serpent caught the discrepancy and ran with it. "What God told you isn't true." (Gen 3:4).

That was all it took. You know the rest of the story. The serpent promised "you will be like God" and the woman examined his suggestion and thought that it looked pretty good and ... she and her husband plunged the human race into death (Gen 3:5-7).

Life has gotten a lot more complicated since then. First and foremost, not one of us starts out in that idyllic existence. We start with a sin nature. We are born in cradles swinging over a grave. We come into a sin-sick world with sin-sick people and a creation scarred by sin. All our troubles can be ultimately traced back to that moment in the garden. But, like the fellow said, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and we do. God stands ready to receive us all, but we hear whispered in our ears, "Did God actually say ...?" We hear constantly that God is a failure, a liar, not to be trusted. "He's holding out on you. You deserve better. You can be your own god."

It's not as clear as it was in Eve's day, but it's just the same. We don't need a crafty serpent; we can trip ourselves up all on our own. We don't have an inadequate God; we are, instead, driven by lusts (James 1:14). Even we believers, who certainly know better, constantly fall on our faces with the belief that the God whom we love and trust is holding out on us. We sin because the thing we think we desire or need is the thing He is withholding. It doesn't matter what it is. We believe that the God who will "graciously give us all things" (Rom 8:32) is not to be trusted ... while we proclaim our trust. So we run from Him to where we mistakenly believe we can find what we want, what we need, something better ... better than what He provides.

When we think about it this way, the answer is much simpler than we thought, isn't it? If our problem is that we don't trust God, then trusting God is the answer. If our problem is that we're not relying on the only reliable Being in the universe, then relying on Him is the answer. If we are running away from God, the correct thing to do is to run to the Father. Maybe, with enough practice at turning around and going the right direction, we might get better at it. We certainly ought to; it only makes sense.