Startled by Existence

What is the Fall..”

Rock formations can be spectacularly beautiful. So it’s not surprising to find them featured in books or other items in Christian bookstores. A coffee table book or calendar might have Grand Canyon pictures accompanied by, say, “The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the Ends of the Earth.” (Isaiah 40:28) ((However))

Today’s canyons, including the Grand Canyon, are the consequences, not so much of God’s creative design, but of the forces He unleashed in divine judgment on sin. So when we contemplate the Canyon’s awesome beauty, as simplistic “God made this” is really inadequate. In fact, everything around us is not the world which God made, or at least not the way He first made it. Whether geological or biological, all aspects of it have been marred by a real, historical curse on all creation. (Genesis 3, Romans 8:19-22). This universal change came about because of a real, historical rebellion by a real, historical man, Adam. (Grand Canyon, a different view section by Carl Wieland. P 90)

When Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance humming birds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that is going to make him blind. And [I ask them], “Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an inn0cent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of Mercy. “

From M. Buchanan, Wild, wild life, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guide, pg 6 March 24 (As quoted in the New Answers Book, edited by Ken Ham p 260