At the fall, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to what they looked like from the perspective of someone who didn’t like them very much. Prior to the fall, they were defined by God who thought they were as cute as toddlers in a bath tub. After the fall, they realized that this wasn’t the only possible way of being seen.

God looked at them through the eyes of a loving, doting father. But his is not the only perspective in the universe. We also have an enemy whose entire reason for being is to tell God what is wrong with his creation; ie to make accusations. He’s the one who looks at mankind’s nakedness and says, “Look at how ignorant they are. Why don’t they stop lolling around and do something with themselves? Put some clothes on, go explore the mountains, become more sophisticated and refined? They’re capable of it. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

The enemy views the world entirely differently than God does. God looks at it and says, “it’s good.” He looked at us and said, “they are very good.” The enemy looks at everything and says, “here’s what’s wrong with creation. Here’s how it ought to be better. Here’s what’s not good enough.”

When the serpent told baby Adam and Eve that God didn’t want them to be as he was, he wasn’t lying. God knew what it was like to see things from the perspective of the enemy, the one who didn’t like him or approve of his ways. It was useful to him even, much like giving your work to someone with an extremely critical eye for evaluation can be useful.

But God did not want us to have that experience. He wanted us to live and enjoy our lives like the animals do, without worrying about being judged. The enemy knew that we were different from the animals in an important way.  If you sneer at a lion for it’s poor table manners, it will take no notice. But the mere prospect of of using the wrong fork at a fancy dinner has been known to drive us humans into a panic. The enemy took advantage of that. He invited us to see what we looked like not just from the perspective of good, but the perspective of evil as well.

Prior to the fall, all we knew was good. All we knew was what we looked like through the eyes of one who loves us. If we wanted to run around naked and throw poop at each other, that was no problem. Sure, throwing poop is unsanitary so we might get sick from doing it. But we humans are particularly good at learning. We’d figure out soon enough that the poop throwers always had the runs, sometimes died and had no friends.  In time we’d teach our kids that poop throwing wasn’t such a great idea. Continue reading “Overcoming the Fall”