Thoughts on the lose of paradise
Wouldn’t you like to know where the Garden of Eden was located?
Scholars have sought its location for a long time.
Scripture tells us that four rivers flowed from its heights (it was on a mountain (Ezekiel 28:13-14)): the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. We can identify the Tigris and Euphrates today, but the location of the Pishon Gihon is uncertain. This has frustrated attempts to determine its exact location.
It’s clear from scripture that the Garden of Eden was a specific place, not the entire earth. It was a place that Adam, with Eve’s eventual help, was supposed to tend to.
Genesis 2:15:
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
But Adam and Eve also were told their dominion over nature went well beyond the garden’s boundaries.
Genesis 1:28:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
The garden also contained the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Both are in the middle of the garden.
All of the splendor of God’s abundance was around them, but they were told not to touch only one tree. And that single object became their sole focus of curiosity.
So they ate, and history changed.
Since then, God has been working through history to return us to his intended created order, to redeem humanity and all of creation.
Romans 8:19-21:
“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”
Colossians 1:19-20:
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
Throughout the Old Testament, we see God trying to work with humanity without utterly destroying his image bearers to try and get us back to the garden ideal.
Story after story shows humanity in rebellion, filled with selfish concerns, denying God’s sovereignty over his creation, and seeking their own wisdom to rule themselves and their environment.
God eventually turns to a chosen people — a people who would eventually lead to the messiah, but also a people who were expected to honor God and learn his ways.
Israel was commanded by God to be a light unto the nations, but Israel didn’t exactly carry out that mission. The nation often failed to do a good job of taking care of itself, repeatedly falling into idolatry and sin.
So, we are left to speculate about what paradise lost was actually like.
There is a mystery hidden in the Genesis account. What was the rest of the earth like? What creatures roamed the lands and swam in the seas? How might the descendants of Adam and Eve have subdued it and cared for it, had dominion, in a way that would have aligned with God’s rightly ordered creation?
Without sin, how would creation have been different than what we have? Certainly, humanity would not have exploited the planet, and its abundance of good things would have been available to all, with no poverty, oppression, or death.
This is the created order God is trying to lead us to and to prepare those who follow Jesus to be a part of, but we can hardly grasp what the new heaven and earth will be like.
God’s intended created order was abundance, and as Christians, Jesus told us to strive to create this order so that all of humanity might enjoy this abundance.
Instead, humanity remains bogged down by the illusion of scarcity, which drives the greed that leads to the exploitation of the earth and its bounty. The fear of scarcity has created much evil in the world. Name any evil done by man, within the Church or without, and at its root is scarcity and insecurity.
Yet, we also long for the Garden of Eden.
All of man’s imagined utopian visions for the future might very well have been inspired by Luke 12:22–31:
22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.
23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.
24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!
25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?
27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!
29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.
30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”
As we look at this mess of the world, what should we, as Christians, do to work toward a God-ordained approach to caring for his creation and ensuring its bounty is available to all our fellow image bearers?