creation covenant

growing up in the tradition which i did, i believe i was taught that death is simply our punishment, being handed out by God, for our sin. that is to say...the reason people die is because as a whole, we've chosen to be sinful, and so, God had decided to punish us with death. This had a huge influence on how i read the account of creation in Genesis. i always read it as a humanity who chose to sin and a God who chose to punish us for our sin with a verdict of death. This view also had a huge affect on the way i would interpret our culture. For example, when the hiv/aids crisis began to stir publicly in the 80s, many people claimed that it was God's judgement for our sins (particularly if you contracted this disease). everything within me said this was a wrong assumption, however, logically, it was the only conclusion i could come to under my worldview and genesisi interpretation at the time. in rejecting this proposition, that God was punishing us through hiv/aids for our sins, i was rejecting logic. still, i couldn't bring myself to believe that this was the case and i chose the illogical.

it wasn't until a few years ago as i was re-reading the creation account in Genesis that i realized that death wasn't God's punishment for our sin. rather, death was the natural consequence of choosing life outside of what we were created for, a relationship with God. This changed everything for me. God was no longer an ant bully with a magnifying glass, scortching us for not choosing Him. Instead, humanity had rejected our purpose, our meaning, and in so doing had rejected life. the natural consequence of which was a turn towards unfullfillment, or death.

recently i came across an excerpt by nt wright which goes so much further to help explain paul's writings in light of a covenant God and that God's creation.

"When we begin with creation, and with God as creator, we can see clearly that the frequently repeated warnings about sin and death, referred to as axiomatic by Paul, are not arbitrary, as though God were simply a tyrant inventing odd laws and losing his temper with those who flouted them, but structural: humans were made to function in particular ways, with worship of the creator as the central feature, and those who turn away from that worship – i.e. the whole human race, with a single exception – are thereby opting to seek life where it is not to be found, which is another way of saying that they are courting their own decay and death."

the entire paper can be read here and was well worth my time.