God said to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.” (Genesis 3:17) Work had always been part of Adam’s and Eve’s lives in the Garden (Genesis 2:15), but now work would become toilsome. The relationship between people and God’s Creation broke, too. (Ephesians 2:14-15) Because of the peace Jesus brings, we can overcome social poverty. He sent us Jesus to restore peace, both with God and with one another. God did not abandon us to continue harming one another. (Matthew 5:21-22) When people blame, misunderstand, cheat and resent one another, they are living out the effects of the fall. Jesus pointed out that even to hate someone, before taking any action against them, is sin. Human sinfulness is the root of every relational rift. This pattern of people harming each other has been repeated throughout history. Adam and Eve’s son, Cain, killed his brother, Abel. Relationships between people continued to worsen. When God asked Adam whether or not he had eaten from the tree, Adam said, “The woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12) Rather than confessing, “Yes, God, I ate the fruit,” Adam first pointed out Eve’s mistake. Immediately after God confronted Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the couple started blaming each other and God. The breaking of our relationship with God causes every other relationship to break. Deuteronomy 4:31 says, “For the LORD your God is a merciful God he will not abandon or destroy you.” In fact, through Jesus, He gives us an opportunity to live according to His original design. The good news is that God has not abandoned us. We experience death instead of abundant life. As the book of Isaiah says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way.” (53:6) Have you noticed that people set themselves up or other parts of creation as gods? Everyone’s natural inclination is to worship the creation, including ourselves, instead of the Creator.Īs a result, we forfeit the purpose of our creation, which is to worship God. Today, we see the effects of mankind’s broken relationship with God. Adam and Eve immediately became afraid of God (3:10), which shows the breaking of the relationship between people and God. Genesis 3 describes the Fall and its repercussions. They were innocent and trusted Him (Genesis 2:25). In Scripture, we see that when Adam and Eve broke God’s law by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were banished from the garden.īefore the Fall, Adam and Eve had lived in unbroken communion with God. We saw that all poverty stems from the Fall, the original moment in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve broke God’s law. People also experience spiritual, social, and mental poverty. “We were very disappointed and felt so much stress,” she said.Īs we have learned from previous posts in this series, physical need is just one manifestation of poverty. “I was growing weak because of lack of food we hardly got one meal a day.” Due to the lack of food, Anitha’s nine-year-old son, Romeo, suffered from malnutrition that affected his health and schoolwork. “Malnutrition is a very big issue in my community,” she said. In other words, results from The Fall of creation.įor Anitha, a mother of four in Burundi, poverty was about the lack of food. But the responses will likely have one thing in common: they will all mention the lack of money, food, or other material things. You can read the next post in this series here.Īsk any ten people for a definition of poverty, and you’re likely to get ten different answers. Follow the series, starting with the first post. This post is the ninth in a series on God’s Story, the Foundation for FH’s Work in Relief and Development.
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