Fallen World Meaning – Sin, Hope & Redemption
With all the trouble going on today, we can pretty much all agree that the world is messed up. We can agree that things are imperfect in just about everything, from serious things like terrorism and sickness to minor annoyances like traffic or missing the bus. What many struggle with today is the reason – why are things so messed up? Why is life hard? We might try our best to make the world a better place, and we can make a difference. But, there is always more to be done.
The Christian world view that the world is “fallen” provides a framework of understanding of what is going on. The gist of it is that people were and are given a choice to follow God’s way of doing things, or to do things on our own. The story of Adam and Eve describes with much wisdom and imagery how this happened to the first humans, the first beings that were created in God’s image to be capable of love. They chose to try and do things their own way, and by doing so, all of creation suffered by being partially removed from God’s presence. It can be a struggle to recognize God among us, kind of like wearing blinders, or viewing truth and life through a screen or blurry window. God is like the air – we don’t notice that He is there, but we sure would notice if He was gone!
We are fallen beings living in a fallen creation. No matter how much we try to fix ourselves or the world around us, we can never perfect ourselves or our surroundings. In short, we need a savior – someone who can make things right again and fix what we can’t.
This doesn’t mean that we should throw our hands up and give up… we have been given the power to affect change and make things more beautiful, and bring order and love out of chaos. But we can never do it all ourselves.
This is really what the concept of sin is about. Sin is being in a state separated from God, our creator and Father who wants nothing more than to be with us. To sin is to act against the will of God; to follow our own path since we think we know better than God. Sin will eventually yield to negative consequences (some call it karma), but many these days tend to not see the connection between their own sin and bad decisions and their hard times. Even worse, the sin of one individual can affect other, innocent people – this is obvious and we see it all the time. On a grand scale, all of humankind’s sin affects all of creation.
From here, we can go in many directions, but the point is that we live in a fallen world, or a world that is imperfect due to our collective and individual sin. But all is not lost, on the contrary – there is good news! We can break the cycle – it has been done for us as a gift. Will you accept it? Many do not, because it does cost us something, something that most people are not willing to give up. Stay tuned for more posts…
