In the essay, What Went Wrong, it was argued that the deepest, most serious “sin” of human beings is envy, or baseless hatred. Envy, when it is taken into oneself, is a poison that destroys relationship with God, with others, and ultimately with self. The creature that turns away from God to envy also turns sinks into envy towards all that God has made. Such a being cannot help but be destructive, because it unconsciously looks at all things outside itself as opponents to be conquered, enslaved, and/or destroyed. In the long run, humanity at enmity with God is both murderous and suicidal. 

Perhaps this will seem to be an exaggeration of human sinfulness. Jesus, however, calls Satan, the one credited with introducing envy into the world in the Garden of Eden, “A murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). He also says that the Jewish leaders who wish to kill him are acting out of a “family likeness” to Satan: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father” [the context is, they are looking for a way to kill Jesus]. Jesus is not saying that some people are created by God to be God’s children, and that others are created by Satan to be Satan’s children. He is saying that those human beings who follow the devil’s example of envy demonstrate a spiritual likeness to him. Envious human beings share the devil’s fundamental characteristic of baseless hostility. For this reason, it is worth realizing that the sin of the devil and of demonic beings is no more sinful than that of human beings. If you buy into envy, you are responsible for your part in it. No one has the excuse that “The devil made me do it,” nor “My parents made me do it,” nor “The oppressors made me do it.” Jesus says, 

You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. But I say to you, don’t resist the evil person. Instead, if someone wants to slap you on the right cheek, offer him the other cheek too. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat too. . . .I say to you, love your enemies and pray for people who persecute you, in order that you may show yourselves children of your Father who is in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust. For if you only love those who love you, what reward will you get? Don’t the tax-collectors do that much? Or if you are only friendly to your own people, how is that more than normal? Doesn’t the whole world do that? Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:38-48).

So the fundamental problem for human beings is not that they stepped outside a line that God drew in the sand, and God rejected them and subjected them to suffering and death because of God’s offense at being disobeyed. God’s nature is not easily turned into enmity. Just the opposite. God is “compassionate and gracious, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining loyalty to thousands, and forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7). 

If God is so inclined to forgive, then why did God not wish humanity to have access to the tree of life and live forever, after the discovery of good and evil (see Gen. 3:22-24)? Because, I submit, in learning about evil in addition to good, human beings became aware of their power, and that power was in danger of being used to do endless harm. I assert that unless God had introduced human mortality, the whole human race would have descended into an endless hell of war and violence and torment. As it is, a Hitler does not live forever, nor do those whom he would like to torment or enslave. Mortality sets a limit on human power both to do, and to suffer, injustice. Thus, in the Book of Revelation, John hears the words, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on–yes, says the Spirit, it is in order for them to rest from their labors” (Rev. 14:13). Even Satan himself, who has “great wrath” (Rev. 12:12) and desires to harm, cannot torment the faithful forever, nor can he himself continue on forever. Both of these limitations are a blessing.

I have said that the fundamental problem with humanity is that it has chosen a place of enmity with God–not that God has chosen a place of enmity with humanity. Consider Paul’s words in Colossians: 

It was the Father’s good pleasure for all his fullness to dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross–not only things on earth, but things in the heavens also. And although you once were strangers and enemies in your attitude, with evil ways, Christ has now drawn you into reconciliation by the death of his physical body, in order to present you before God holy and guiltless and free from accusation (Col. 1:19-22). 

Here we see the fundamental problem addressed by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is not the problem of God being at enmity with humanity, but humanity being at enmity with God. It is not God that needs to be warmed up to accepting us, but we who need to be reconciled to God. Christ’s loving, self-giving visit to the human race ended up in the unimaginable pain of death by crucifixion. Consider this: Christ did not die because God was the enemy and needed to be appeased in order to accept an imperfect humanity desirous of acceptance. No, Christ died because humanity was the enemy and needed to be reconciled to a loving and forgiving God. And the only way the reconciliation could take place was for the parties to meet face to face. When we faced God in Christ, we showed how deadly our enmity was. “They shall look on Me, whom they pierced” (Zech. 12:10; Rev. 1:7).

Here is Paul again, in 2 Corinthians. 

God. . . reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave over to us the ministry of reconciliation. For just as God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding their disobedient acts against them, so God has also placed in us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are like ambassadors for Christ, and he is appealing to you through us. On behalf of Christ we plead with you–Be reconciled to God!

Human sin is destructive–not because God gets destructive when God’s favorite ways of doing things are ignored, but because at the core of sin is a hostility that is destructive by nature. Humanity out of reconciliation with God is out of reconciliation with all of creation, and is in danger of destroying its world and itself. Does that sound strong? Consider the story of Genesis. The first murder in Genesis happens in the very next chapter after humanity’s turn into enmity. Cain, the first born of the second generation kills Abel, the second born of the second generation (Gen. 4:8). Noah represents the tenth generation of the fledgling human race. By his time, the text says, 

The LORD saw that the wickedness of humanity was great on the earth, and that every human intention and inner thought was nothing but evil, all the time. And the LORD was sorry for having made humanity on the earth, and  was grieved down to the heart. . . . Now the earth was rotten in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and saw that it was rotten, for everyone on earth had become rotten in their behavior. Then God said to Noah, “The end of every living thing has come before my face, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. Now look–I am going to destroy them from the earth.”

According to this account, within ten generations, the human race went from envious, to inherently murderous, to globally, corporately suicidal. The text says that God couldn’t bear to watch the human race destroy itself and all of life (“the end of all flesh has come before my face, for the earth is filled with violence because of them,” Gen. 6:13). As a prudent gardener trims a rose bush ‘way back in the winter, or a grape arbor after the harvest, so God trimmed the human race ‘way back to the root. In the same way, says Jesus, looking to the future, “If those days hadn’t been shortened, no flesh would have been saved.” (Matt. 24:22). The last thing the author of Genesis or Jesus means is that if God didn’t quit taking God’s aggravation out by hitting humanity God would kill it. To the contrary. In each case it is being said that, without God’s intervention, the human race would proceed to destroy not only itself, but also all living things on the earth. That is how desperate the human condition is according to the Bible.

Now someone may scoff when we try to explain that things are this dangerous with the human race. But consider this question. When was the first automobile invented, and why? The answer is, the automobile was invented in 1770 by a Frenchman named Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. Cugnot was looking for a new way to transport artillery. He used the newly invented steam engine technology to power a kind of tractor that rolled along at about 3 miles per hour. This vehicle qualifies as the first automobile, because it is the very first self-propelled wheeled vehicle. As with very many breakthroughs in human technology, the first self-propelled vehicle came into existence as an aid to killing people. 

In 1945, 175 years, or about six generations, later, the two most powerful inventions ever made were tested, by the United States of America. These inventions, the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, were also tools for killing people. In this case the object was not to kill soldiers, but civilians. In two experimental blasts, three days apart, over 100,000 ordinary civilians were instantly killed in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the next 17 years after that, less than one generation, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics raced one another to produce as many of these devices as possible. Between the invention of the very first self-propelled vehicle in 1770 and the year 1962, there were 192 years, or roughly eight generations. In October of 1962, the two most powerful leaders on earth were seriously threatening to unleash new self-propelled vehicles called ICBMs, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. These weapons had been produced in such numbers in those short 17 years, that they now had the power to wipe out or poison nearly every living thing on the planet. According to some estimates, the present world nuclear capability is up to 2,500 times the destructive force used during the entire Second World War, or enough to kill every person on the planet fifty times over.

The skeptic may say that the story of the fall and the flood are old religious stories that come from a negative attitude towards human nature. The progress of the human race from the very first self-propelled vehicle to capability of utterly destroying itself–and seriously threatening to do it–within eight generations is an undisputed historical process. Humanity’s capacity for and tendency towards self-harm is objectively real. In this context, the imposition of mortality by God (Gen. 3:22) is recognizable as a “grave and necessary blessing.”