I’m sure you’ve wondered… Why do we have hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters? Why are there wasps, snakes, and other harmful creatures? Why do our bodies suffer with disease, disfigurement, and ultimately death?
Some observe the chaos, pain, and dying and conclude along these lines:
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease…. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1995)
But in the Bible God gives us a very different reason for it all. A monumental, earth-shaking event took place and nothing has been the same since: not the world around us, not history, not even us. It wasn’t always this way. And it shall not always be this way. But for now we are betwixt and between, as they say, in a very bewildering, painful existence.
Genesis 3 will be the focus of our study this Sunday at 10:45. May I encourage you to read ahead and let the Lord begin to answer these weighty questions?