Our series so far has concentrated on God's creation and the choices we humans have both in our understanding of the world and how we choose to live within it. One is reminded of the advice which sometimes comes with a new product, 'For best results, follow the maker's instructions'! The fact is that we don't: sin is best defined in terms of failure to do so. It is disobedience. Or, as Francis Spufford puts it in his book Unapologetic, it is the human propensity to mess things up (except he doesn't use the word 'mess', preferring a rather more explicit word beginning with 'f'!)
So there will be consequences, as were thinking last week: climate change/global warming is the inevitable result of an excessive pollution of the ozone layer. In the Old Testament, there are some graphic stories illustrating the consequences of human sin: Cain's murder of his brother, Abel; Noah's Flood, the confusion of languages with the Tower of Babel, and countless stories of what happens when the people of Israel do 'what is right in their own eyes'. Of course, stories like Noah's Flood beg some questions about the nature of God: is he really that cruel and vindictive, that he would destroy the whole of creation, saving but one man, his family, and representatives of the natural world? According to Brian McLaren, such stories reveal a slow, gradual understanding of what God is like; and there are many counterparts in other ancient Near-Eastern cultures. He concludes that the people of God realise, over many centuries, that 'God is better than that' - his justice is tempered with mercy, so that when Jesus Christ is born, there is the fullest revelation of his nature.
The 'desire to acquire' leads to all kinds of misery and injustice. But 'God is better than that' and our world can be better too: to be alive is to join God in caring about the oppressed, the needy, the powerless, the victims and the vulnerable.
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