Longing for Eden, Pt 1: Living East of Eden
Victory Life Church — Sunday, January 12, 2025
[ Connect to the heart, our deepest longings ]
To be human is to crave a sense of meaning—that our lives mean something…
Author Father Ronald Rolheiser describes this longing, this “dis-ease” we are all feeling as “an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else. This dis-ease is universal.”
[ Cultural Critique ] What is life really about?
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, a supercomputer called Deep Thought is asked to determine the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After much anticipation, Deep Thought reveals that the answer is 42.
The question isn’t whether or not we desire meaning. The question is, where do we find meaning? If you ask philosophers (those whose academic pursuit is the meaning of life), they’ll say that life’s primarily a pursuit of things like “power” (Nietzsche) or “pleasure” (Freud). You don’t have to have a degree in philosophy to see how these things play out in our lives…
If you ask most people, they attempt to find their meaning in things like — Relationships, Work, Attributes (intellect, appearance), Possessions…
But here’s the thing…Relationships can change, Jobs can be lost, Attributes change over time, Possessions can be repossessed…
The reality is that we will not find ultimate meaning or purpose in anyone or anything temporal or transient. Our lives need a larger, more stable orientation. We orient our lives by a story. We need a larger, even eternal, story that will provide us with a more grounded sense of meaning and purpose. What story are we living according to?
The Creator’s Intent
Genesis 1:26a (ESV) Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion …
Humans are God’s image. The image of God is what humans are. Being comes before having or doing.
The meaning of our lives comes from understanding our origins and our Creator’s intent for us. Before there was a purpose we were commissioned to do (have “dominion”), we were given a status and identity: God’s image.
“The “image” is like an angled mirror, reflecting God’s wise and caring love into the world, bringing order and fruitfulness to the garden where the humans were placed.” ~ N.T. Wright
Humans were made to rule, to have “dominion” (v26). God created all humans to reflect His character and steward His world. The point is clarified for all humanity: male and female (v27).
Genesis 1:27 (ESV) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
“The ultimate goal of creation [is] for humanity to dwell with God.” ~ L. Michael Morales
This is the Eden Ideal: to be in an interdependent relationship with God and each other (Tree of Life), tasked with a purpose of partnership with God, spreading His goodness in caring for and cultivating the garden of Eden into all creation. But in this interdependent relationship and purposeful work, God gives boundaries.
The Wrong Tree
The serpent tells a different story about the tree. He challenges God’s boundaries and lures humanity into disobedience. He lies to them, “You will not die,” making them question the truthfulness of God’s consequence to crossing His boundary; he seeds suspicion that the God you trust is holding out on you, “God knows…your eyes will be open”; and tempts them with a half-truth, “You will be like God.” Humanity falls for it, and it’s the moment they embrace their own destruction. This is sin at its essence: seizing control apart from God and disobeying his boundaries.
Genesis 3:6 (ESV) So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Sin is seizing control apart from God and disobeying his boundaries
It is the compulsion to do what is right in our own eyes. Because of this failure, they fracture their relationship with God, the source of life, resulting in death, and God is heartbroken.
The consequences of humanity’s failure are exile from the garden, being cut off from the source of life, and being sent into a wilderness (Genesis 3:24). Humanity is exiled from the source of our meaning and purpose, disconnected from intimacy with God.
[ Cultural Critique — disorienting the self as center ]
- Good for food — orienting our lives around our appetites: pleasure, lust, desire (hedonism)
- A delight to the eyes — orienting our lives around possession: attention, greed (consumerism)
- Desired to make one wise — orienting our lives around self: arrogance, ego, power, comparison, superiority, pride (intellectual, social, political, financial) (narcissism; nihilism)
We long to return to Eden, to live in the light of God’s presence, but instead, we “reach for” cheap substitutes and alternatives that fracture our lives and mutilate our world. We consistently are guilty of “doing what is right in our own eyes.” The Scriptures present this as sin, not just in individual human beings, but every human being trying to exercise their authority in rebellion, which consistently results in death and exile. This is why we live in a world of rebellion, corruption, injustice, and tragedy when we were made to cultivate a world of love, beauty, peace, and justice in partnership with God and His goodness.
Ecclesiastes 2:9–11 (NLT) 9 So I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me. 10 Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. 11 But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.
The Teacher here is living the modern dream: great wisdom, wealth, power, constant pleasure, and doing what he wants when he wants to. The Teacher would be the greatest Instagram and YouTube influencer today. And yet, he says it’s meaningless. There are 12 chapters of this search and results. He tries every way he can to find meaning in all the places we think it can be found, but the end result is the same: meaningless. But the author of the book concludes with this:
Ecclesiastes 12:13 (ESV) The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
The Westminster Catechism begins this way. What is the chief end of man?
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Conclusion: Jesus
But humanity is not without hope, and God was not without a plan. In the fullness of time, God sent His Son to restore us into relationship with Him, into “eternal life.”
John 3:16 (ESV) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Galatians 4:4–7 (ESV) 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
When we think of our purpose or finding meaning in our lives, we tend to look to what we do, but God starts with who we are. We are sons and daughters (who you are); no longer a slave to sin (what you do). So, what’s your purpose? To glorify God by bearing his image and enjoying him forever.
John 17:3 (ESV) And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Our sense of meaning is found and restored by joining our lives to Jesus. Our search for meaning doesn’t begin with trying to find meaning in our families, our work, or our social presence or approval; the search for meaning doesn’t begin with us at all. That longing stirring in each of us is a longing for God, to find ourselves in Him and with Him.
“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” ~ St. Augustine
Notes and Citations
Ronald Rolheiser. The Holy Longing, p. 4
Recommended Reading: “Being God’s Image,” by Carmen Joy Imes
N.T. Wright, The Case for the Psalms, p. 50. The rest of the quotation adds a powerful and sobering reality to sin’s entrance into being God’s image: “That project was, of course, tragically twisted with human arrogance and sin. But it has never been rescinded.”
L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, p. 40
The Westminster Shorter Catechism
Augustine, St. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 1 (Also translated: “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”