Yet beneath the city’s beauty, signs of brokenness were visible everywhere—homeless people on the streets, refugee families with babies seeking assistance, and crowds gathering for riots and protests—reminding me that this is the world that “is” at the moment, beautiful, but also broken and deeply wounded by the cosmic plague of sin. 

While shopping in a grocery store, she accidentally stepped on a slippery floor that was not properly guarded and injured herself. Speaking with the insurance agent on the phone was a nightmare. The agent seemed to be more interested in hurrying to dismiss and end the claim than genuinely caring for the person who had been injured.

Recently, I wrote about the meaning of our vocation in the world of creation—suggesting that our vocation was meant to reflect our identity and calling as the Lord’s vice-regents, that we are called to care for and develop the potential of creation. We work for the good of the world, filling the world with the beauty and glory of the Lord.

Alas, a quick look around reminds us how different that vision is from our daily reality. In “Where Is the Love?” The Black Eyed Peas sing of the deeply troubled state of our current world:

People killin’, people dyin’

Children hurtin’, hear them cryin’

Can you practice what you preach?

And would you turn the other cheek?

Father, father, father, help us

Send some guidance from above

‘Cause people got me, got me questioning

Where is the love?

We see the brokenness of humanity manifested seemingly everywhere in our world today, in both public and private realms, both globally and locally. Nor is this unique to today.  As the 17th century poet John Donne said in An Anatomy of the World, grieving the world’s selfishness in the midst of the bubonic plague: “‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone.”

What has happened to God’s original beautiful and harmonious design of a covenantal cosmos, one where we carry our responsibility of vocational stewardship by filling the world with praises of the glorious grace of our Lord?

As we come to Genesis 3, we see the covenantal cosmos broken and fallen. Humanity, created in God’s image, enjoyed everything in the garden, able to explore its full possibilities, yet was told to guard the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—to refrain from consuming its fruit, with severe consequence if not obeyed.

What was so special about the tree? Tim Keller says,

“The answer is probably nothing, per se. There was likely nothing magical or unusual about the tree or the fruit itself—the tree was a test. God was saying, ‘I want you to do something for me, not because you understand why, not because you can see whether it would benefit or disadvantage you. I want you to obey me simply because of who I am, simply because you love me and trust me more than anything else.’”[1]

This was God’s original design—a world to be fully enjoyed and unfolded for its full potential but within the proper order of relationship that would keep God’s revealed will at the very center of the hearts of humanity.

But in Genesis 3, humanity tested God’s design and questioned the truthfulness of his words. Humanity ventured into an unholy curiosity, wondering, “Did God really say that?” and “Did God really mean what he said?” These questions led Adam and Eve to consume the fruit of the tree instead of guarding it. The core issue was not consuming the fruit of the tree but their hearts’ innate desire to live independently of God’s revelation, to decide right from wrong on their own terms, bringing cosmic plague—”sin”—into God’s good world.

With this, the design of the world became broken and fragmented. After their sin Adam and Eve become unable to respond properly to God or his word. They run and hide from his presence. They engage in the blame game, shifting their responsibility first to one another, then ultimately to God, himself. The harmonious design for relationships in the world—God to people, people to people, and people to planet—was disfigured and fragmented, bringing cosmic incoherence in the place of order.

Because of this, the Lord tells humanity that our work—which was meant to harmonize life and worship—will no longer be joyful, but instead painful. The creation will no longer cooperate with the work of our hands but will instead fight us; it will produce thorns and thistles. This is the story of the Fall, the world that “is” for us now.

Just as the fall impacted Adam’s vocation of farming, we see the consequences of the Fall expressed in the vocational lives of people throughout history. Work has become disconnected from its true purpose. Vocation has become exploitative of people, places, and planet. Balance has been lost.

In creation, God gave parameters to limit the scope and scale of our work—for example, that we are called to work six days but rest on the seventh day. This rhythm of work and worship would keep work in its proper place and purpose and keep God as the center of who we are and what we do. Yet we see again and again the Old Testament prophets speaking against a people who have become selfish, engaging their vocations not for the mutual good of the world but for economic and social exploitation of others, particularly the poor.

In Isaiah 5:8, the Lord pronounces judgment on the rulers of the people for accumulating wealth in unjust ways:

“Woe to you who add house to house

and join field to field

till no space is left

and you live alone in the land.”

In Israel, all land ultimately belonged to God, and families were not allowed to dispossess others. Even in the unfortunate case that land had to be sold, it was to be redeemed by a kinsman, and if even that were not possible, all land was nonetheless to return to its original owners during the time of Jubilee. Alas, we have no record that such a Jubilee ever actually occurred. Instead, the Lord saw some increasing their wealth by dispossessing the poor and forcing them into lives of permanent servitude.

Even in our modern world, we see the Fall expressed everywhere.

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