“If I want to know who I really am and who God intended me to be, I must go back behind the lost paradise, I must look to the morning of creation and try to hear the first words God spoke to me and my father Adam.”- Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began (1961)
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. And God blessed them.”- Genesis 1:27-28 (ESV)
As Mark Batterson moves on in Chapter 9 of A Million Little Miracles, he observes that one can reverse engineer nearly every human problem, propensity, and potentiality back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Genesis is our source code. As such, it contains the secret mysteries of life and love, plus a million little miracles. Hence, the author stresses, we must take a full accounting of what went wrong in Eden. Anything else results in what Thielicke called “cheap apologetics.”
Certainly, Pastor Batterson notes, some of us know the origin story backwards and forwards. We’ve heard the story so many times that we fail to see the forest for the trees. A cognitive bias called the curse of knowledge. As a result, the curse of knowledge often equates to the loss of wonder. Thus, we no longer see with Eden eyes.
Yet, Mark reminds us, even though Eden contained thousands of trees for Adam and Eve to enjoy, Satan successfully shifted their focus. To the one and only tree off limits to them. Consequently, Mark explains:
“The Enemy’s oldest trick is a tactic called forbidden fruit. Instead of enjoying a million little miracles, we get bent out of shape by the one thing that isn’t ours. This is how negativity bias enters the equation of human emotion. This is when and where and why we start playing the shame game, blame game, and fame game. Spoiler alert: The only way to win any of those games is to not play.”
Today’s question: What Bible verses help you look to the morning of creation? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Our script-cure = Scripture”