By Nathan Hart
Maybe you’ve seen one of the internet memes captioned “How It Started vs. How It’s Going.” On the left side, there’s a picture of a bride and groom on their wedding day, smiling joyfully and cherishing the moment. On the right there’s a picture of the same couple today: stressed, disheveled, dealing with some mess their toddler just made. How It Started vs. How It’s Going, get it? Others have used the meme as an opportunity to brag about their achievements. The left-hand image depicts a younger version of themselves amidst humble surroundings and the right-hand one shows them on their new shiny yacht. How It Started vs. How It’s Going—look at us now!
I was thinking about this as I read the Creation narrative in the book of Genesis in the Bible. After we complete the book the Revelation this August, thus completing our three-year chronological review of the entire Bible, our church will re-start the process in September by turning the pages all the way back to Genesis.
In the Creation narrative we learn how it started: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1-2). For the next several verses, God speaks reality into existence: separating light from darkness, waters from land, plants, animals, fish, birds, the sun, moon, and stars. After these creative acts, Genesis describes: “And God saw that it was good.”
Then God created humans. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:28).
The narrative concludes with the statement: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
“Very good.” That’s how it started. God created a very good world filled with the wonders of Creation, and he created good people who “had dominion” (authority) to bless and care for every living thing. Perfect harmony existed in the heavens above and the earth below. God gave the people only one law: you may eat of any tree in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). As long as the people obeyed, then order, harmony, and blessings abounded. Paradise!
So, how’s it going now?
Well, not long after the Creation narrative, the Bible tells the story of humanity’s fall into temptation, into sin, into becoming our own decision-makers. It tells the story of humanity rejecting the authority of God to carve our own path based on our own desires. They ate from the tree; they broke the one rule. All humans who came after them would behave the same way. As the prophet Isaiah put it, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). In rejecting God’s good order for ourselves and the world around us, we rebelled against him and his authority. Chaos ensued.
Near the end of the Bible, in the book of Jude, it says, “In the last time[s] there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit” (Jude 1:18-19). This is a pretty good description of our world today, isn’t it? Everyone follows their own ungodly passions, like sheep gone astray, leading to a chaotic scene on a global scale.
So that’s how it started (good picture) and how it’s going (bad picture).
But unlike an internet meme with two images, there is a third scene in the Biblical narrative: How It All Ends. Beginning with the work of Jesus on the cross, God set out to rescue and redeem his fallen world. He sought to re-order what sin had broken. Instead of erasing Creation and starting over—a path he first went down with the flood and Noah’s family—he would enter into the scene in the person of Jesus, teach people how to live under God’s intentions again, and ultimately receive the due punishment of our rebellion. He allowed all the brokenness of Creation to break his own body, so that we might be made whole by his loving act. “By his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
Not only that, God promised to create a new heavens and new earth, where “he will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
That’s How It All Ends, and that’s good news for anyone who is discouraged by How It’s Going.
Rev. Dr. Nathan Hart is the Senior Pastor of Stanwich Church.
