The Enslavement of Creation
By Jon W. Quinn

Do you believe in a God of love? I do. But wait. Look at the world we live in. It is in shambles! We see suffering, pain and death all around. Some suggest this is evidence that God does not exist. Richard Dawkins, Europe's most avid atheist/Darwinian evolutionist, put it this way:

“The total amount of suffering per year is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute 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.”

His point: God would not create this kind of world. How would you answer him? That's what we are going to do: give him the answer.

God Did Not Create This Kind of World
We can read about the creation in the first chapter of the Bible. As we look at the last part of the account (Genesis 1:26-31), we find that at the conclusion of the sixth day, all had been created. There was nothing bad in it. Nothing! The bad we may see in the world today is not a result of a mistake God made at the creation. Whether man or beast, there was no suffering, no pain, no hunger, no thirst, no death of any living, feeling thing with breath.

Plants were used for food for all creatures. Plants do not “live” and “die” in the same sense as animals do, having consciousness and so forth. (Note again verse 30).
What about that which Dawkins called “no purpose, just pitiless indifference”? Well, it is really not so, but it does sometimes seem that way to us.

The reason for the horrible things which Dawkins so vividly describes is that following the creation, the world has been enslaved. It has been put under a righteous curse. This slavery is discussed in the New Testament (Romans 8:20-22). The world was created good, and later subjected to “futility” (i.e. became a wasteland) as the result of human choices and actions..

The World Today Is Just What The Bible Believer Expects
We expect a world filled with evil because of what the Bible tells us. But we do not expect to remain here (Galatians 1:3,4). That's far from “pitiless”!
In fact, the Bible would be a false book if we DID NOT live in such a world! Because of the fall, God withdrew His presence and inflicted the promised consequences for humanity's disobedience (Genesis 2:15-17). Many characteristics of the world were changed with the fall, including the ground itself (Genesis 3:17); the animals (3:14) and the plants (3:18). Why? Because they had all been a part of man's dominion (Genesis 1:28). This is also when death entered the world (Genesis 3:19; cf. Ecclesiastes 3:19,20; 12:7; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Romans 5:12, 14; 17-19

Modernism and its Compromise
A “modernist” is one who says he believes in God, but not what the Bible says about certain things. Some claim to believe the Bible, but say the story of the creation and fall as related in Genesis is merely allegorical… a story invented to explain things as they are and not historical. This way they can find a compromise and suggest that the six days of creation were millions of years, and that the Adam and Eve story was allegorical and explained how evil got here. Many of the clergy in mainline denominations believe this to one degree or another, and the Pope recently went on record in stating he believed that God took millions of years to create the earth instead of just 6 days.

First, we'll notice what a humanist says about the modernists approach to the Bible. In this case, the humanist is correct! He says, “And the creationists have shown irrefutably that those liberal Christians who regard the creation stories as myths or allegories are undermining the rest of Scripture, for if there was no Adam, then there was no fall; and if there was no fall, then there is no hell; and if there was no hell, there was no need of Jesus as Second Adam and incarnate Savior, crucified and risen. As a result, the whole biblical system of salvation collapses.” <A.G. Mattill, Jr. >

Here's why: God's judgment on Adam involved two kinds of death; spiritual death and physical death. Adam disobeyed and immediately died spiritually and began to die physically. Now, which came first? Death or sin? The Bible says death was caused by sin, but if the earth is millions of years old and its creatures have been dying for millions of years then sin is not the cause of death, because death was here first. Once we begin to do away with sin as the cause of death entering our world, then the death of Christ for sin loses its meaning.

What's more, Jesus Himself refers to the creation as given in Genesis as real (Mark 10:6). What makes this even more significant is that He was there! (John 1:10).

Jesus came to save us from sin, which saves us from eternal death (John 3:16,17). Dawkins was right about one thing; God would not make the world we see out there; He didn't. The evil in the world is of our own making. The world is cursed, but it is passing away (1 John 2:17). God is preparing a new place where the curse is no more (Revelation 22:3; 21:4). One who does the will of God will abide forever!

From the Bradley Banner 2/23/2003
Published by the Bradley Church of Christ
1505 E. Broadway
Bradley, IL 60915