Brow Sweat, Part 2: Frustration

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     In our last letter, we started looking into the nature of work. Work: you know, the thing we thought was a punishment for sin, but learned otherwise a couple of weeks ago. The very first human had good and gainful employment before he sinned; and presumably, the second human (his wife) joined in the work – a family operation. Sin happened and changed the appearance of work, but not its origin or its reason for being. With our tuned-up understanding, we’re ready now to see why we misunderstood in the first place.

     Back in Genesis 3, there’s an important detail hiding in plain sight:

And to Adam he said,

…cursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread…” (Genesis 3:17-19).

     True or False: this was part of God’s curse on Adam.

     False. There was no curse pronounced on Adam. Of the four beings in the garden at that moment – the LORD God, Adam, Eve, and the serpent – only one was cursed. The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you…” (verse 14). When the LORD God says, “cursed are you,” it’s a done deal, and the end of the serpent’s story is already written in the twentieth chapter of the Revelation.

     But look again at what the LORD God said to Adam: “…cursed is the ground because of you…” The ground was cursed, not the humans. It’s right there. All manner of ugliness would sprout from the ground because it was cursed. And it was cursed because of human sin. The unhappy couple were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and for the first time ever (and henceforth), frustration and work became inseparable.

     If we mistakenly see God pronouncing a curse on mankind, here’s what happens: we set ourselves up in an adversarial relationship with the creator of all things. And if we could just wiggle out from under the curse (the one that doesn’t exist, actually) we’d be much better off. Adam tried that. It didn’t go well.

     Instead of inventing a curse God didn’t pronounce, let’s look instead at a blessing he did:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

     The question at hand is this: Did God, in pronouncing the consequences of sin, retract the blessing he pronounced earlier?

     To arrive at a sensible answer, let’s break out the blessing, item by item. The benefits of the blessing would be: 1) be fruitful, 2) multiply and fill the earth, 3) subdue the earth, and 4) have dominion over the non-human living things. Now let me ask one question pertinent to each item:

1)    Q: Are humans fruitful, ever? A: Yes.

2)    Q: Have humans multiplied? A: Oh my gosh, absolutely!

3)    Q: Have humans subdued the earth? A: To some extent, sure.

4)    Q: Do humans have dominion over non-human living things? A: We live where we want, for the most part – so, yeah.

    All the essential elements of the blessing are intact. God grants success in every one of them – in measure. Before sin, success was absolute; ever since sin, success has been expressed in a ratio with frustration, and can’t be absolute – yet. (More on the “yet” in a future letter.) Back to the original question: Did God, in pronouncing the consequences of sin, retract the blessing he pronounced earlier?

     Answer: Some of it… for a while.

     In our previous letter, dear Church, I planted a seed: Live as much Genesis 2 (satisfaction) as you can, even though Genesis 3 (sin) happened. Work is not a consequence of sin, because work predates sin. The takeaway from this edition is this: Sin did not cause God to pronounce a curse on mankind; neither did sin cause him to retract the full measure of blessing. Let’s please stay out of the adversarial relationship with our creator; there’s no basis for it.

     Sometimes, Bible teachers will use the term “co-regent” in reference to Adam and Eve: they co-reigned with God in the Garden of Eden. Contrary to the serpent’s lies, the same term applies to Christians now, outside the garden – except, creation is in a flawed, cursed condition.

     But creation won’t stay that way.

 

 Grace and Peace (beyond the frustration),

 

John