Made For More (Chapter 3): East of Eden -- When Everything Goes Terribly Wrong

Scripture records that man and woman were made in God's image.  How, then, can we live in a world where atrocities are daily committed within and around us?

"Ours is a world of tragic paradoxes. A world where people labor under backbreaking conditions and still are unable to support themselves and provide for their families; a world where vulnerable children are trafficked like animals, bodies and souls sold to the highest bidder; a world where the wealthy waste resources as nations slowly starve to death; a world where men and women routinely destroy themselves through addiction in a desperate attempt to escape the brokenness.

"And if we're completely honest, we have to admit that the brokenness isn't simply around us.  This brokenness invades our own souls.  Instead of God's glory radiating through the prism of our lives, much of the time it is obscured and darkened.  Instead of owning our legacy as image bearers, we wander around half-human... trapped in his awkward fog, we exist in a twilight zone between what we were and what we hope to be." (Hannah Anderson, Made For More)

The conflict can be traced back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve chose to reject God's law and pursue their own.  Since then, each human has experienced opposing pulls: in one direction towards God's perfect law, and in the other towards self-determination.

Anderson notes that, "when we turn to other things for knowledge, when we define ourselves by things like our work, our relationships, our giftedness -- even our pain -- we create an alternative source of identity."  This identity is unstable and flawed, unlike the true and unchanging nature of God by which we were created.

What is the solution to this war within us?  As is the answer to so many things, simply: Jesus.

"When the time was right, He came as a child to rescue His children.  Because we had left Him, He came to us.  Because we would not humble ourselves, He humbled Himself.  Because we would not obey, He obeyed perfectly.  And because we live lives of death, He lived and died to free us from them."  (Hannah Anderson, Made For More).

Or in the words of a much older Book:

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)

Jesus is the answer.  He has come for us, in our confusion and in our rebellion.  He has come to bring us back to glory.