Our Flawed World

A couple weeks ago, one of the visitors here to A Christian Worldview of Fiction left a comment regarding the effects of sin on the world:

How, exactly, is the universe flawed? I think we both agree it is, but I couldn’t say exactly how I believe that is manifested.

Before I could give the question much thought, I “stumbled” upon the answer in my regular reading, which is currently in the book of Isaiah. Here’s what the first six verses of chapter 24 say:

Behold, the LORD lays the earth waste, devastates it, distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants …

The earth will be completely laid waste and completely despoiled, for the LORD has spoken this word.

The earth mourns {and} withers, the world fades {and} withers, the exalted of the people of the earth fade away.

The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.

Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who live in it are held guilty …

Obviously this is talking about judgment on the earth, though it sounds in some places like future judgment (which could have fulfillment on more than one level—one future to Isaiah but already accomplished to us and one yet to occur) and in some places like ongoing judgment (started in Isaiah’s past and continuing on into the future).

Some commentaries concentrate on the particular curse Isaiah was delivering to his intended and immediate audience (Israel), but I think it’s instructive to see what was involved in this curse as a window to the curse God delivered to Adam in Genesis 3:17.

If God was going to “lay waste” to the land of Israel as one aspect of the curse, doesn’t that suggest that he also laid waste to the entire earth in much the same way?

Here’s what one commentator says about Isaiah 24:

Sin has turned the earth upside down; the earth has become quite a different thing to man from what it was when God made it to be his habitation. …

The earth mourns, and fades away; it disappoints those that placed their happiness in it and raised their expectations high from it, and proves not what they promised themselves it would be. The whole world languishes and fades away, as hastening towards a dissolution. It is, at the best, like a flower, which withers in the hands of those that please themselves too much with it. …

The world we live in is a world of disappointment, a vale of tears, and a dying world; and the children of men in it are but of few days, and full of trouble.

II. It is God that brings all these calamities upon the earth. The Lord that made the earth, and made it fruitful and beautiful, for the service and comfort of man, now makes it empty and waste (v. 1), for its Creator is and will be its Judge; he has an incontestable right to pass sentence upon it and an irresistible power to execute that sentence. It is the Lord that has spoken this word, and he will do the work (v. 3); it is his curse that has devoured the earth (v. 6), the general curse which sin brought upon the ground for man’s sake (Gen. 3:17), and all the particular curses which families and countries bring upon themselves by their enormous wickedness. …

IV. It is sin that brings these calamities upon the earth. The earth is made empty, and fades away, because it is defiled under the inhabitants thereof (v. 5); it is polluted by the sins of men, and therefore it is made desolate by the judgments of God. Such is the filthy nature of sin that it defiles the earth itself under the sinful inhabitants thereof, and it is rendered unpleasant in the eyes of God and good men. See Lev. 18:25, 27, 28.
– from Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible accessed online at Crosswalk.com

It’s that first line that I think is key. The earth is turned upside down. What we see, and consequently, what science studies, is not what God originally made.

Sin blinds our eyes on so many levels, not the least of which is to blind us to its own effects. We have a hard time seeing what sin has done to us because all we’ve ever known is a sinful world.

But here’s one thing that I think is telling. What person have you ever heard say in his later years that the world has gotten so much better throughout his lifetime, despite technological advances or even personal advancement? Notoriously people look back on earlier times as better—simpler, perhaps, quieter, cleaner, closer to nature. Why this trend if the world were doing anything but withering?

It goes to reason that if people weren’t identifying a true phenomenon, there would be a healthy mix of contrasting views—people who praised the accomplishments of their lifetime and felt satisfaction that they were leaving their children a better place.

Sadly, I think the testimony of the vast majority of people over the centuries bears out the truth that the world is wasting away.

If you look at passages in the Old Testament that describe the Promised Land, it’s a little stunning to realize how different it is today. That’s one area, where we have a written record to compare to. Then magnify those changes to the whole world.

So I’ll sum it up like this: because of the curse, the earth isn’t as lush as it once was. It is drying up because it is “exposed to the elements” more each day. I personally think there was another layer to our atmosphere—the water Genesis 1 talks about—that protected Earth from harmful rays. But of course, that’s just speculation.

Romans says the whole creation groans and suffers pain, that it is subject to futility, that it is enslaved to corruption. Anyone care to speculate about what that looks like?