Eden Has the Answers
Back to the basics
The following is a first look at my next book project that’s currently underway. The book will be a study of Genesis 1-3, examining how the answers to all of our day’s most pressing issues are found in those chapters.
‘Eden Has The Answers’ is a working title that will almost certainly not be the final one. If you’d like to offer a suggestion, go here!
“Speak your truth.”
As this little phrase wormed its way into our cultural consciousness, it was a clear sign that something was very, very wrong. Over seven billion people can’t have their own truths. If there are that many truths, then there are effectively no truths.
Thus, the idea of “my truth” is a complete rejection of God and His rule over all things. Anywhere man names himself the arbiter of truth, he has ruled out a Divine lawgiver. Like Eve in Genesis 3, he has decided that he can override God’s commandments and become his own source of good and evil.
The probably is, finite, mortal mankind make for very poor gods.
We are not capable of creating objective truth. For a time, man tried to find objective truth through science and other disciplines, but that failed to answer the big philosophical questions.
Instead of realizing that that road led straight back to God, man tried out the only other alternative: subjective truth. There is no objective truth to be created or discovered, we decided. It’s all up to the individual and their lived experiences. I can’t tell you what’s right, and you can’t tell me what’s right. You be you, and I’ll be me.
How’s that working out for us? About as well as one should expect. In the last 100 years we have seen…
Anything goes, Godless systems of governance that have enslaved and killed tens of millions of their own citizens.
Men and women who have killed over one hundred million of their own children, leading to the rejection of the blessing of children altogether, as seen in plummeting fertility rates.
Soaring divorce numbers that gave way to cynical avoidance of marriage in the form of casual hookups, porn, and/or cohabitation.
The glorification of sexual perversion of all stripes, including the sexualization of children.
A battle of the sexes spawned by feminists that started small and ended with men in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.
Racial animosity and its various overcorrections that have pitted man against man for centuries.
Crises of loneliness and poor mental health that have reached epidemic levels.
Environmentalism that views man as a plague on the planet, equal to or even less valuable than animals.
In all of these things, mankind has been raging against nature. But nature can’t ever successfully be raged against, at least not for long. Why not? Because God made it. The earth and all that is in it are His, and He sustains it all by the power of His Word. It only works properly when it is submitted to His design.
As Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it.” It is clear that man has long been laboring in vain. We can’t have a house worth living in when we’re following our own plans rather than submitting to God’s blueprint.
But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
The Christian would argue that the Bible has the answers to all of these issues. The doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture insists that God has given us the instruction we need for life and godliness. When we trust in the truths He has given us instead of leaning on our own understanding, life just works.
However, in this book, we’re going to go one step further.
We’re going to examine how the answers to all of today’s biggest problems were established not just in the Bible, but in the Bible’s first three chapters. By the time Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, we had a rock solid foundation for everything we need to know. The first humans had a clear picture of how to properly live human life under God’s watchful eye.
To be sure, the answers are developed more fully throughout the rest of the Scriptures, and history has borne out their wisdom. We will certainly draw on the rest of the Biblical text to see how it built on the principles found in Eden. But the blueprint for happy, fulfilled, God-honoring life on earth has been in place since the very beginning.
The only questions are, 1) Will we seek God’s answers from Eden? and 2) If we find them, will we submit to them?
It is my aim to point you to God’s answers in this book, and by picking it up you are on the journey to answering the first question in the affirmative. But the answer to the second question remains to be seen.
Are you prepared to submit to God’s plan instead of making your own? Will you live by His truth, even if it’s difficult? Or will you go back to the comfortable convenience of “your truth,” regardless of the consequences?
Will we learn from Adam and Eve’s grave error and instead let God be God? Or will we follow in their footsteps and try to make ourselves like God by casting off His authority?
Notes
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