Fallen

Introduction: Conflict, the engine of drama

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to fully appreciate how much I love story. Who doesn’t love a good story? We read stories to our kids from birth; we spend significant portions of our income on stories of various kinds; and we spend quite a lot of our time reading, watching, playing, or somehow absorbing stories all through our lives.

Why are stories so important to us?

I don’t know about you, but I find that, when I read a non-fiction book, say like these—great books with important things to say, I have to push my way through the reading process. It requires effort from me. It’s like swimming upstream.

On the other hand, fiction books pull me through them, like I’m caught in the current of a mighty river. With books like these I don’t have to push myself to read them, instead I have to resist reading them so that I can eat and sleep and be a responsible adult!

What causes that startlingly different experience? Obviously it’s not about utility, since non-fiction books are often more useful. It’s not even the beauty of the language. Many non-fiction books are beautifully written. What is going on?

I, and most people, believe this difference is caused by the human love for story, and that stories are engaging because they are full of drama. But what is drama? You’ve probably heard it said that “drama is conflict.” This quote demonstrates a common perspective:

“All drama is conflict. Without conflict, you have no action; without action, you have no character; without character, you have no story; and without story, you have no screenplay.”

― Syd Field, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting Paperback – November 29, 2005

Now, I don’t think it takes much reflection to recognise that this is going too far. After all, conflict free action is quite possible, it’s just hard to make it engaging. The question really is, why is conflict-based action more dramatic than conflict-free action?

Consider these two novels. The Valley is an Aussie historical crime mystery, set in a fictional village west of Moruya on New South Wales’ south coast. The cover explains the conflict at its heart: “The sins of the father. The love of a daughter. The secrets that divide them.” Now imagine that the story was just unpacking those things. That the father and daughter remained stuck in their places and are never reunited. How disappointing would that be? Equally, consider Across the Nightingale Floor, set in a fictionalised Japan. A nightingale floor is a real Japanese defense mechanism consisting of a floor built to "sing” at even the slightest footfall. This is designed to protect people from assassins. Just knowing this immediately sets up the conflict in the story, right? An impassible defense, a legendary assassin: who will triumph? Imagine if the story just told you about the training of the assassin, trying to defeat the nightingale floor, and then the book ended with the assassin giving up and becoming a radish farmer! Not “the most thrilling series of our time,” right?

No, conflict alone is not sufficient. I believe what drags us forward through stories is the prospect, the hope, of resolution. The resolution of the conflict, whether it is achieved through revenge, reconciliation, justice, or triumph. In fact, the power of Chris Hammer’s books is that he tends to wrap several of these types of resolution together. I would argue that all four of these resolutions are doing one thing: making things right again.

Of course, we are now left with the question, why do we care so much about making things right again? Where does that come from? The evolutionary theory that underpins modern psychology has no way to account for this. In evolution, things were never right in the first place. More importantly, conflict is a necessary part of evolution, and so, in a psychology shaped by evolution, it should have a high value. Sure, society, with its elements of cooperation, supposedly improves our evolutionary chances, but societies still need to compete with one another in the evolutionary model, or we’ll hit a dead end. In the modern worldview, conflict should be an unavoidable good.

And yet the way we consume story demonstrates unequivocally, that the resolution of conflict is one of our deepest and most powerful desires.

There is another origin story, older than evolution, that is better able to explain our true nature. Let’s turn to that account now. One might call this the original origin story. Before we dive in, let’s pray.

Lord, help us to hear your word. Help us to recognise what your word is. Help us to obey your word. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Now, Steve started the story last week. He shared how God had created the world, and created it without conflict. Everything was good: purposeful, productive, peaceful. But that’s not the world we live in, right? What happened? To find out, we turn now to Genesis chapter 3, the third chapter of the Bible.

The original origin story - Genesis 3

Genesis 3 NLT

1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” 2 “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. 3 “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’ ” 4 “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” 6 The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. 7 At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. 8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.” 14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. 15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16 Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” 17 And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. 19 By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” 20 Then the man—Adam—named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all who live. 21 And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. 22 Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” 23 So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. 24 After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

From garden to dirt

Now, this is just part of the big story we’re looking at in this series. But this is where the conflict is introduced, and so it’s really important to understand what’s going on. In this single chapter, we can see how the setting of the story and its characters (us, humanity) goes from a garden paradise to working the dirt that we all came from. We find ourselves, at the end of the chapter, forever banished from the garden and all its delights.

So, let’s look at what the conflict is, where it comes from, and how it has formed the world we live in.

Conflict

Genesis 3:1 NLT

1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

The conflict in Genesis 3 is introduced with the character of the serpent. The Bible says, “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” The word translated “crafty” here is translated as “prudent” in the book of Proverbs, so it’s not necessarily a negative word. It just means “intelligent.”

But intelligence, when it’s misdirected, is a deadly thing. The serpent uses its intelligence to entice Adam and Eve into three types of conflict.

Conflict of word

Genesis 3:1 NLT

1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

The first conflict the serpent entices Eve into is a conflict with God’s word. The serpent prompts Eve to question God’s word—what did it really mean, was God really serious? When Eve insists that God was serious, the serpent insists that God has ulterior motives, it says,

Genesis 3:4–5 NLT

4 “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

This is the first conspiracy theory, and like most conspiracy theories it is wildly wrong, while having just enough grains of truth to stick in your mind. Very crafty.

How often does this happen to us? We have a clear-cut direction, perhaps we’ve got a particular task to do, but everything except that task demands our attention. Or our doctor has told us not to eat a particular type of food, and suddenly that’s all that we see and all that we want to eat! Or our parents have told us not to watch videos or play games until we’ve finished our homework, but we can’t focus until we watch just that one video or play just a couple of minutes of that game.

That’s the first conflict: can Eve trust God’s word? We live with that conflict every day.

Conflict of desire

The second conflict arises because Eve had hung around chewing the fat with this serpent, pondering the nature of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. She notices something.

Genesis 3:6 NLT

6 The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.

She noticed that the tree is beautiful, and the fruit looked delicious. Given that God created them, this is hardly surprising. Eve was undoubtedly surrounded by beautiful trees and delicious fruit. But now that she’d been fixated on this one tree, the fruit of which she is not allowed to eat, she noticed that it was also beautiful and delicious looking.

The fact that she’d listened to the serpent gave her the clinching argument for eating the fruit: it would give her the mystical knowledge of good and evil, and she would be like God. How could she resist this fruit? It came from beauty, it was delight in the mouth, and it gave her the ultimate good.

So she took it.

Of course, to take and eat the fruit, Eve had to deny that God’s word was true. She had to cast God as a selfish tyrant who didn’t want to share his power. She had to believe that the creator of all, including her, the one who walked in the garden with her and had fashioned her body and breathed life into her mouth, this person was either ignorant or malicious.

So when Eve chose to value her own desire over God’s word, she was not expressing adulthood or maturity. She was not moving to the next evolution of human development. She was rejecting love and care and opting for selfishness and indulgence and conflict.

Conflict of authority

Genesis 3:6 NLT

6 The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.

But it didn’t stop with Eve. Adam was there with Eve. Up until now he had been silent. While the serpent was regaling Eve with his conspiracy theories and lies, Adam said nothing. While Eve stepped towards the tree, while she lifted her hand to take a fruit, as she put it to her mouth and bit into it, Adam stood mute and unresisting. Adam, God’s co-regent, given dominion over the earth to help God rule it and keep it productive and harmonious, did nothing while his world fell to pieces.

And when his wife handed him the fruit, what did he do? Adam now had a conflict no matter what he did. Either he was in conflict with Eve, or he was in conflict with God. Which should he choose? Surely it makes more sense to choose the maker of all things. The one in whom all goodness and creativity resides. The one who defines what is true and beautiful.

But no, Adam chose Eve, this companion of his who had just shown how infinitely selfish she is, who had done the one thing she could to show that she does not love God, the one thing she could to show that she, in fact, despises God, views God as inferior to her. Adam, the creature God gave authority to, chose the creature God gave him as a helper to be his authority. For a moment, Eve became Adam’s god.

This cannot end well.

When we listen to a mate and defy the laws of physics in our attempts to drive faster or jump further. When we listen to a friend who counsels us to betray our family for our own desires. When we let relationship drag us into behaviour we know is wrong.

This cannot end well.

Results of conflict

And it didn’t.

Theologians suggest that sin has three distinct results: guilt, pollution and punishment. We can see this pattern here in Genesis 3. Let’s look at what happened as a direct result of Adam and Eve doing the one thing they were asked not to do.

Immediate results (guilt)

Genesis 3:7 NLT

7 At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

The first thing that happened, and it happened immediately, was the onset of guilt and shame. “Suddenly they felt shame at their nakedness.”

Genesis 2:25 ESV

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

The very last verse before Genesis 3 emphasizes that Adam and Eve were naked and yet were not ashamed. This doesn’t mean much to us, but in the Old Testament, nakedness is a symbol of great shame. Nakedness is to be stripped of all your dignity, of all that you have that makes you worthy of respect and value.

Before their choice, Adam and Eve were naked, but it didn’t matter, because their value was in their intimate relationship with God. But once they chose to turn away from God they looked at each other, at themselves, and saw creatures stripped of all purpose and meaning and reflected glory. They saw shameful nakedness.

Genesis 3:7 NLT

7 At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

They were so ashamed that they immediately set to a new type of work, the attempt to shore up their own identity. That’s a work that is endless, and which we still labour over. All the fig leaves in the world cannot cover over our shame. We always feel inadequate, isolated, out-of-place, except when we are using pride to cover our nakedness. All the facebook posts in the world, all the Tik Toks, all the awards, all the clothes, all the makeup, all the money, it can never restore us to the state we enjoyed in the garden: naked and unashamed.

Genesis 3:8 NLT

8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.

And with shame came fear. Suddenly, the God whose comfort and glory they had enjoyed in the garden, become someone to hide from. You’ve seen this, right? The child who clings to us suddenly hides when they’ve done something wrong. The public figure with too much to say is abruptly microphone-shy when some indiscretion needs to be confessed. But this was worse. Adam and Eve had enjoyed God because they loved him, but they had just done something hateful towards him. How could they bear to face him? Would he strike them down? Would he hate them? Surely nothing good could come of this, so they did the only thing they could do, and hid.

But you can’t hide from God, as King David beautifully wrote, thousands of years later:

Psalm 139:7–12 ESV

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

And God did find them, and demanded answers. And Adam and Eve discovered a new way to hide, a new way to make a mess of things: blaming.

Genesis 3:12–13 ESV

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

When guilt comes looking, blame is a shifty shield. At best it will deflect the flame away towards those we care about, and wound us all. How often have I blamed another (usually my wife), only to mourn my stupidity afterwards. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences.

When I look at this picture here: Adam deflecting guilt onto Eve, Eve deflecting guilt onto the serpent. I can’t help but imagine the serpent looking about for someone to continue the blame game, only to discover no-one else there. Oops!

But God doesn’t play the blame game. He knew who was guilty, and what they were guilty of, and so he spelled out how they had polluted themselves and the world—the long-term results of their sin.

Long-term results (pollution)

God started with the serpent and worked backwards.

Genesis 3:14–15 NLT

14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. 15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The serpent received a greater curse than all the other animals. Note that this assumes that the rest of the animals were being cursed, too. We’ll talk about why when we get to Adam, but just note this for now.

Most importantly, the serpent will endure hostility with humanity, and will ultimately be defeated by humanity. This was a mysterious prophecy that took thousands of years to be fulfilled, but I’ll reveal it in a few minutes.

The serpent’s entire nature was transformed by the choice to rebel against God.

Next God turned to Eve.

Genesis 3:16 NLT

16 Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”

There were two pillars of Eve’s identity: her role as the mother of humanity, and her role as Adam’s helper. (By the way, in the Bible “helper” is not a demeaning title, it is actually a title applied to God at times.)

Both of these were corrupted—polluted—as a result of Eve’s actions. She will suffer pain in bringing forth children, joy will be marred by agony. And she will desperately want to rule over her husband, instead of working alongside him, but she will be constantly thwarted in this desire. What agony!

And finally God turned to Adam.

Genesis 3:17–19 NLT

17 And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. 18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. 19 By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

God spelled out Adam’s sin, in case Adam (and us) didn’t get it: he placed Eve’s word above God’s word. Because of Adam’s sin, the world was cursed, the entire creation was thrown into bondage. Adam, instead of working with the ground for fruitful bounty will instead struggle with it, and the ground will defy him, so that only desperate struggle and pain will yield the necessities for him and his family. And, finally, his body will wither away and rot into the soil from which it came.

Instead of a glorious, everlasting life of joy, beauty, fruitfulness, and productivity, molding and shaping creation according to God’s desires, Adam will spend a limited span of years struggling to extract the bare necessities. He has gone from great regent of the world to a slave toiling in the dirt.

These, God told the three, are the consequences of your actions.

Banishment (punishment)

But that’s not the end. There is still a final act. Such great treason does not just have consequences, it must be punished. The traitors cannot remain in the same position as they were beforehand.

Genesis 3:22–24 NLT

22 Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” 23 So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. 24 After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

So Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. Cast out of the place of beauty and peace and fruitfulness. Cast out of God’s presence. They could never return. Their only fruit now was the fruit of death.

Why so harsh?

Now, you may wonder why this is so harsh. They ate took the wrong fruit, after all! Imagine if we punished our kids for eating something they weren’t supposed to in this way? We wouldn’t have any kids!

But that’s missing the point. God gave Adam and Eve the tree of knowledge as an opportunity to show love. After all, how can you show you love someone if you have no choice but to do loving things towards them? Eating from the tree of knowledge was the one thing they could do that was unloving. It was their one way to show that they didn’t love God. That they loved themselves more than him.

Now, for us, someone loving themselves more than us is annoying and frustrating, but it’s not cause to go all flaming swordy on them, is it? But that’s because, first, we’re actually not that lovable. We have all sorts of flaws and weaknesses and don’t really love others very well at all. And, second, we didn’t lovingly create the other person (even if they are one of our children—we just participated in a natural process), we didn’t give them a world and a garden to enjoy, we didn’t give them the breath of life, the wonders of language, the joy of productive work, and so on and so on. And because we didn’t do all this, they don’t owe us love and gratitude and worship.

But God is perfect, lovable in every way. Furthermore, he is the giver of every good gift, and Adam and Eve were surrounded by good and perfect gifts. To love themselves more than God was to show nothing but contempt for God. We can sympathise with a good parent when their teenage child suddenly becomes rebellious and bitter for no reason, right? Well, the injustice of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God’s love is infinitely worse.

Why have we inherited this conflict?

You might wonder why we have inherited this conflict. I hope my constant parallels between our behaviour and Adam and Eve’s has made it clear that we still suffer under the same curse as them, and that we are trapped in the rebellion against God that they initiated.

The Apostle Paul writes,

Romans 5:12 NLT

12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

Adam’s sin corrupted the world, and so all his children—all humanity—inherited his sinful nature, his rebellious attitude towards God. And, of course, we inherited the pollution and consequences of that nature: suffering and death. And so the world suffers, so that even though beauty and grace and fruitfulness still remain, they are marred by agony and suffering.

At the beginning of the letter to the Roman church, Paul made sure that we get his point.

Romans 3:23 NLT

23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

What can we do about it?

But surely there is something we can do about this? There must be some way we can resolve this relationship breakdown, some way we can heal this rift.

But there is not. There is nothing we can do. We are irreversibly in love with ourselves. We are unable to treat God as God.

We can only make our own autonomous decisions, in our own interests. The best we can do is enlightened self interest, and even that only leads ultimately to conflict. Conflict between people and conflict with God.

Romans 3:10–12 NLT

10 As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous— not even one. 11 No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. 12 All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.”

And that’s the end of this installment. Next week we’ll continue around our large table, exploring the next part of the story.

Spoiler: Communion

Oh, wait! There is something that can be done about our terrible situation. God can do something about it! And he did do something about it!

Romans 5:6–21 NLT

6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. 12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. 13 Yes, people sinned even before the law was given. But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break. 14 Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. 15 But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. 16 And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. 17 For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ. 18 Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. 19 Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous. 20 God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. 21 So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so, as the ushers come up to share out the elements of bread and drink, I invite you to ponder how Jesus has resolved the primal conflict between us and God. How the bread, which is in the bottom cup, and you can take and eat in your own time, reminds us of Jesus’ body, which was broken that our body of sin might be destroyed. And how the juice, which we will hold to drink together, reminds us of Jesus’ blood, which was spilt to give us new life. Let’s feel the profound sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from the resolution to a great story as we remember Jesus’ death for us.