Garden City by John Mark Comer

Author:John Mark Comer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2017-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Cursed is the ground

Okay, now it’s time to deal with the elephant in the room.

All this talk about work is just a tad unrealistic. (Okay, there I go again. It’s very unrealistic.) I mean, a theology of work that’s rooted in the Garden of Eden is ignoring the obvious — we don’t live in Eden anymore.

My address isn’t 197 SW Euphrates Road.

My wife’s name isn’t Eve.

And I don’t commute in the nude to my job as a gardener and animal-namer: I call this one possum!

The world I call home is anything but a garden.

God’s original vision of Adam and Eve as kings and queens, ruling under his generous, loving authority and over the earth, drawing out the world’s potential and repurposing it for God’s kavod and human flourishing — oh man, it was beautiful.

And short lived.

Sadly, Genesis 2 is followed by Genesis 3 . . .

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ ”

This is why a lot of people don’t trust the Bible. A talking snake? Really?

If that’s you, suspend judgment for a few minutes. Remember this story is thousands of years old. It was probably around for a millennium as an oral tradition before it was ever written down.

Is it poetry? Narrative? A metaphor? Literal?

You’re missing the point. What should jump off the page to you is the serpent — this embodiment of evil — was an animal.

Remember, Adam and Eve were called to “rule” over “every living creature that moves on the ground.”1 But instead, in a catastrophic inversion of the created order, an animal — that Adam himself named!— ruled over them.

This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.

Adam was supposed to “take care” of the Garden — to guard it and watch over it — but instead he let evil incarnate right into the center of Eden, and he abused its most precious resource — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He was the first king of the world, and tragically, he was a colossal failure.

And the fallout is disastrous. God comes to Eden in search of his king and queen. Where are they? Hiding in the bushes. So the very place that was once “delight”2 — a place of safety and vulnerability and beauty — is now a place of fear and shame and regret. And the Creator, who so far has been marked by creativity and power and generosity and freedom and love, does something odd and out of character — he curses his image.

And Adam and Eve are cursed differently.

God says to the woman, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.”3

So Eve is cursed in childbirth. What was originally a good pain — a healthy sense of creative energy — is now “very severe.” I’ve watched Tammy give birth to two children, and trust me, this language is more than fitting.

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