know God and be his friend, experiencing his blessing and returning trust, gratitude and love. However, we are not equals with God, so our relationship with him is also one of the created to the creator; the limited to the all-powerful, the mortal to the immortal, the finite to the infinite. The only right response of humanity to such an awesome being is awe, reverence, gratitude, obedience, humility, allegiance and service.
Another way of putting it is that every human was created to worship God.33 This isn’t just something that happens at church, but is an on-going life attitude, serving God, accepting his offer of love and taking our place in caring for and developing the world. It needs to be pointed out that, from God’s point of view, this is not a relationship of domination. He does not seek to force us into submission. He will cherish us and dote over us as a mother over her newborn child. We should live lives of gratitude, placing him above everything else and glorifying him.
When Jesus was asked which of the ten commandments was the most important, he said, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’34 Every human was created to be loved by God and to love God. Humans are the children in a cosmic parent-child relationship. We are created to be children of God, loving our divine Father, walking in relationship with him.35
Relationship with Each Other
Humanity was not created only to love God. Secondly, and equally fundamentally, we were created to express the love placed in us by God to one another. God formed Eve from Adam and they became one (marriage) and had children. The family based upon a harmonious marriage between a man and a woman is the basic unit of human society. In its ideal form, it embodies the concept that humanity can live in harmony, loving, respecting and honouring one another with the same love God has for each person.36 Consequently, Jesus said that the second greatest commandment is to ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’37 A deep examination of the teaching of the Bible indicates that love for God and for each other is thoroughly intertwined.38 That is, a failure to love others is in effect a failure to love God, in whose image we are made.39
Returning to our father-child analogy, we are created to be a family, loving each other across all humanity. God’s ideal is that we both love him and one another. This does not mean a blurring of individual distinctiveness; it is a unity in diversity. Each of us is unique and born to express our own being and brilliance in a totally unique way. But God’s vision is that we do so in love and unity, one people without war or division at any level.
Relationship with Creation and the World
A third dimension of relationship is found in the story of creation. Humanity was given the charge of caring for creation itself.40 The world that humanity has been given is to be carefully managed to retain ecological balance. We have been given the world to explore its splendour and glory and to use what we find with the creativity that is granted us, for human good. However, we must also show great care and concern for the natural world including the flora and fauna. God is concerned for every living thing, every tree, the animal world and every part of this creation. Hence, we should be deeply concerned at the current ecological problems and in particular, the disintegration of the environment, irrespective of its causes.
God’s hope for planet earth is that it will be a world of love and harmony, where people will live together in perfect love for God and one another, utilising the resources and caring for the world as people express their creativity in work and play. God cares for the whole of the world and his original intention is that human society would be full of goodness and love. So as people spread out and formed society, it was God’s desire that it be wonderfully creative and unified as it richly expressed its God-given creativity. We should value every part of human life. God cares about the arts, the sciences, sport, economics, family, governments, music, literature, ecology and life itself.
Each one of us is created by God (through the natural processes of human reproduction) with a purpose. Each of us is born with a unique set of talents to express our humanity. Each of us has a brilliance to be realised in relationship with God in and for this world and its people. Through this uniqueness, together we will build God’s world and bring into being God’s great dream and project.
Relationship with Self
Although not explicitly stated in the text, it is implied that the first humans were completely comfortable in themselves. There was no self-hate, lack of self-esteem, guilt, shame, depression, anxiety or personal angst. This is seen in their lack of shame.41 The first created humans were at total peace; their private worlds were in order and harmony. They were comfortable with who they were physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. They did not experience jealousy or other desires which stem from a shattered inner being. They were whole and unbroken without the problems that blight us in this troubled world.
Freedom
There is another aspect of love that is an important part of the Christian message – the concept of freedom or volition. Initially humanity in the Garden was free. They were free to live there, work, enjoy it and be nourished by its produce. They could eat of the tree of life which would sustain them, meaning that this life of peace would be eternal; living forever with God and each other in God’s sensational world. However, they were innocently unaware of their freedom, not knowing anything other than the perfection in which they lived.
This is where the story gets a little more complex. If love is to be recognised and experienced as love, it requires not only the giving of freedom but the gaining of the knowledge or recognition of one’s freedom – the freedom to accept or reject love. This being so, God did not create humans as automatons or robots who would simply return his love without choice. Rather, he created humans in his image to have freedom and the ability to accept or reject him. His desire is for a genuine relationship with each and every human being in the world.
God enabled this awareness of freedom by first creating relational people with intelligence, creativity, emotions and discernment. He then placed them in a garden of perfection,42 full of the most wonderful food to eat and which they were to care for and enjoy.43 The first humans were utterly free and innocent within the constraints of the garden, but did not fully comprehend it as they were not aware of any alternative.
God made them aware of their freedom in two interconnected ways. First, he did so with a prohibition against eating from one tree in particular – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.44 The introduction of this command created a boundary which the humans could not cross without suffering the consequences.45
Secondly, along with that prohibition, he allowed into the garden a spiritual antagonist who had already abused the freedom given by God’s love. This enemy is known as Satan and he is symbolised as a snake in the story of Genesis.46 This implies that Satan (or the devil) and his minions had at some previous stage violated their relationship with God and had suffered the consequence of being banished from God’s presence.47 In the garden, Satan twisted God’s words and used them to seduce Eve and Adam (the first humans) to respond to their own desire and eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil – thereby disobey God (this is examined further in chapter two).48 The combination of prohibition and Satan’s distortion provided the choice which the true knowledge of freedom requires.
In addition, the existence of Satan introduced the potential for utter evil to be released into the cosmos and, as such, made humanity aware of the distinction between good and evil. Good can exist without evil, but cannot be discerned as good unless the recipients are aware of the antithesis of good. Without the existence of Satan and evil, choice would not be genuine and knowledge of freedom would not exist. As such ‘the Fall’ (see chapter two), while very much a cosmic disaster, had a kind of positive spin-off for the purposes
