Freedom In Christ Church - Garden's Guest

The Foundational Lie

By George Pogue, Jr.
(Excerpts from Dr. Greg Boyd – Is God To Blame?)

After attending a recent conference I heard a pastor share the following story from a woman in his congregation. Melanie was a distraught middle-aged woman, who by her own confession shared that she had lost her passion for God and her joy in life. She used to be a fired up Christian who poured herself into her faith, but now she felt nothing toward God. She was always depressed. She had once run marathons, but now struggled to maintain a healthy weight. She and her husband were once close, but now felt like total strangers. She used to love to read her Bible and pray. Now both were chore-some and aggravating.
As the pastor spoke with Melanie, he began to learn that Melanie’s downward spiral began four years earlier when she had lost a baby in childbirth. She married later in life and felt the urgency to start a family right away. Due to a medical condition, however, she was given little hope at ever conceiving a child. A miracle happened shortly after this diagnosis and Melanie not only conceived but carried the baby through a full term pregnancy.
Her delivery had tragic complications, as the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck and choked the child during the delivery. The miracle quickly turned into a nightmare and Melanie’s life became one tormenting question. Why would God miraculously give them a child, only to take the baby away while coming into the world? Even more tormenting; why was God preventing them from having another baby?
After two years of struggling with doubt and depression, Melanie and her husband looked for answers to their questions from a well respected Bible teacher they knew. The answer they received was consistent with the theology she had grown up with: “God has a reason for everything.” “There’s no accident in God’s providence.” “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” “You just have to trust that God knows what is best.” The hand that smites is also the hand that heals. You just have to trust him.”
When Melanie asked what the good Lord might have intended by taking her baby and now leaving her without children, the teacher suggested there was a lesson she and her husband were to learn from the event. “When the timing is right – and God’s timing is always right – and when you’ve learned what God wants to teach you, perhaps then God will bless you with another child,” was the teacher’s response. “Or perhaps it’s simply not His will for you to have children.”
Melanie accepted this instruction as the gospel truth. She felt guilty because she had difficulty trusting in “God’s plan.” The fact that her relationship with her husband and God was in shambles, only intensified her guilt. She had come to the pastor (the conference speaker- Dr. Greg Boyd) looking to regain her passion for Christ, but her anguishing torment, lead her back to asking, what lesson God had for her to learn in this trial.
In all of her attempts to find answers, Melanie met up with good hearted, lovely Christian people who tried to provide comfort and support to this hurting woman: however their attempts failed to settle her soul. She remained in anguish, “wrestling with God” for an answer that would give her true peace. How was she to find comfort in a God who would bless her with a child and then rip that very dear one right out of her arms? How was she to “trust” that a loving God would allow irresponsible teens to have babies and addicted mothers to have babies, but she was suppose to learn a lesson?
How was she to live a passionate life for God while He was playing some sick game with her? She was left feeling like a terribly inadequate, unloved and cheated Christian. The answers she had received from well meaning Christians had left her empty and comfortless, even though their hearts ached for Melanie’s loss.
True comfort can only come from the truth. Not a lie. To uncover where this lie originated we must trek back to the very beginning of it all in the Garden. (Genesis 2:8-9, 15, 17) It was in the Garden that the serpent lied/beguiled Adam and Eve. In the Garden, God provided both “the provision” and “the prohibition” for the human race. Both “the provision” as well as “the prohibition” were acts of God’s love toward us. “The provision” was provided in the “tree of life”. This tree gave eternal life, divine health, and sustenance for Adam and Eve. Basically this tree provided for all of their needs.
“The prohibition” was provided in “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. God instructed Adam that he could eat off of any tree in the Garden, including “the tree of life”. He made only one act of prohibition. Adam was instructed to never eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, for if he ate of this tree he would surely die. In order for God to create a true love relationship with His creation, He had to allow for the risk of His creation to choose to love Him or not.
The serpent began to “court” Adam and Eve and made it appear that God was threatened by the forbidding fruit. He challenged God’s love toward them and gnawed at their naivety. He told them that God was trying to withhold this knowledge of good and evil from them, so that they would be unable to see God as He really was – untrustworthy, afraid of competition and someone who did not have their best interest in mind. His persistent taunts, jabs and false accusations finally paid off. The serpent duped/deceived Adam and Eve into eating from the one and only forbidden tree (Genesis 3:1-5). Thus introducing not only the foundational sin for all mankind, but also the foundational lie that continues to permeate our perception of God today.
This faulty picture of God, created by the serpent, lead to an ungodly, unloving evaluation that in turn brought about a rebellious action. Under the bondage of the serpent’s lie we try to achieve (through our own efforts) what God wants to freely give us. We have a God shaped vacuum in our hearts that only God can fill. We try to fill this vacuum through our illegitimately seized knowledge of good and evil, instead of innocently trusting God to meet our inner most needs. We trust in our own assessment (our meager attempts at providing comfort and love) and our own ability to obtain the things we deem as “good”. We live by our knowledge of good and evil rather than by trusting our loving God.
This leads us to a life separated from innocent communion with God and a life lived in judgment, confusion, and questioning rather than a life filled with love (over flowing in abundance to pour out to others). Its foundation is a mistrust of God’s character with a broken and deceptive picture of God. The God we will envision is less than all loving, gracious, kind and wholly on our side. Ultimately, we are unable to trust Him with our whole being.
The extent to which we believe this lie prohibits our ability to understand and relate to God’s love cry as displayed in Hebrews 11:6. “But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” For how much longer will we hold firmly to the religious veil that clouds our ability to see Him as our Rewarder instead of our painful teacher? Our next article will illuminate the true nature and character of God as we press on with our study on “the lie”.