Adam

Stephen Steele writes about sculptor Gillian Genser who was experiencing headaches, vomiting, hearing loss, confusion, and suicidal thoughts. For years, doctors were baffled by what was afflicting her. They asked if she was working with anything toxic, and she assured them she wasn’t. She told them that she only worked with natural materials. They prescribed antipsychotics and antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help.

Finally, she saw a specialist who tested her blood for heavy metals and found high levels of arsenic and lead in her system. She was shocked, but still confused—how had she ingested those dangerous compounds? Finally, she talked to one doctor who was horrified to hear that she had been grinding up mussel shells for the past fifteen years to use in her sculpture. She had no idea that mussels can accumulate toxins over years of feeding in polluted waters.

The most fascinating thing about the story is who the sculpture was meant to be. It was Adam, the first man. Genser recognized the irony herself. She said: “It’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Steele comments,

And it makes perfect sense, because that is what Adam, the first man, did to all of us. He poisoned us. He rebelled against God – and we are contaminated by that rebellion. The message of the Bible, however, is that a second Adam – Jesus Christ – has come to cleanse us from this in-built corruption, as well as the other poisonous thoughts, words, and deeds we add to it during our lives. It doesn’t mean those who trust him will be perfect. Like Gesner, we will suffer the effects of Adam’s poison for the rest of our lives – but it will no longer define us forever.

Researchers calculate that about 530,000 fewer public school students are learning about intelligent design in 9th or 10th grade biology classes today, compared to 2007. The amount of class time science teachers spend on human evolution has also doubled in those 12 years, according to scholars at Penn State University and the National Center for Science Education. The changes come from a new generation of teachers, new textbooks, and updated education standards.

Science teachers who teach intelligent design is a valid alternative:

2007 – 8%

2019 – 5%

Science teachers who discuss intelligent design:

2007 – 23%

2019 – 14%

Science teachers who teach evolution is established science:

2007 – 51%

2019 – 67%

Leighton Ford, evangelist and brother-in-law of Billy Graham, once met the former boxing champion Muhammad Ali at a hotel in Sydney, Australia. Ford listened as Ali regaled a group of admiring onlookers before introducing himself as "Billy Graham's brother-in-law." Ali's face lit up as he said, "Oh Billy! Billy! I love Billy! I went up and saw him at the house at Montreat and he signed a book for me." Ford explained what happened next:

We got into a very interesting conversation. He was not only very articulate, he was also a very bright man. Of course earlier in his life Ali had become a Muslim, but he told me and the onlookers, "You know I have travelled all over the world. And I have seen all these different religions. It seems to me that they all have the same thing. It's kind of like you have a river, and you have a lake, and you have a pond, and you have a stream. But they all have water in them, so they are all the same, aren't they?"

I said, "Muhammad that is very interesting. But suppose you have all of them and suppose they are all polluted. Then you would need a purifier, don't you? You see that's who Jesus is. Jesus is the purifier." And he thought about that for a minute and he said, "That's good. I had never thought about it quite like that. Jesus, the purifier."

I know that Muslims don't refer to Jesus as "the Son of God" because they interpret that in some physical way that God had relations with Mary, which of course isn't true. So I told him, "Did you know that in the Bible Jesus is called the Second Adam?" And he said, "I didn't know that." I said, "Yes, you see there was the first Adam that God made in the first creation. Then the second Adam was Jesus, the new creation, in whom everyone can become new." And he said, "I've got to think about that."

Well it was 30 years ago and I haven't seen him since. I know that "The Greatest," as he called himself, has met the One who alone is really the Greatest, because all great ones pass away. But he has come face-to-face with the One great God. I wonder what Muhammad Ali had to say, or maybe he would say, "God what do you have to say?"

In his novel Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry describes a character from the fictional town of Port William named Ray Overhold, a quiet, smiling man who "was about as ordinary as a man could be." Berry writes:

Roy, who had never claimed to be a lion, would thereupon be discovered to not be on the attack, or even on the defense, but merely not present …. In all his life he never did anything that surprised Port William. Except for the sometime extremity of his misery, I don't think he ever surprised himself …. I don't think he ever fought with [his wife] or made much of an argument in his own favor. When she raised the pressure, he just escaped. He just quietly shifted off into one of the maybe innumerable precincts of Port William or the surrounding outdoors where she disdained to go …. As a rule when the pressure was on, Roy eased away. He was not by nature a man who was very much in evidence.

In Christ and the Meaning of Life, German theologian Helmut Thielicke tells the story of a young [soldier] who reached out to pick a bouquet of lilacs and uncovered the half-decayed body of [another] soldier beneath the bush: "He drew back in horror, not because he had never seen a dead man before—he drew back because of the screaming contradiction between the dead man and the flowering bush."

Thielicke notes that the soldier's reaction would have been different if the man had come upon a dead and faded lilac bush instead: "A blooming lilac bush will one day become a withered lilac bush—this is really nothing more than the operation of the rhythm of life—but that a man should be lying there in a decayed condition, this was something that simply did not fit, and that's why he winced at the sight of it."

We can only understand the mystery of death if we see it through the lens of Adam's rebellion against God. We are pilgrims who traverse an "empire of ruins" with death as our fellow traveler. Unable to rid ourselves of this cheerless companion, we attempt to rehabilitate it instead, treating death as if it were a neighbor and not a trespasser.

We clothe it in our best dress and apply make-up to its waxen features. Laid out before us in stiff repose, death looks as if it were merely asleep and if we do not look too carefully, we can almost convince ourselves that it has a beating heart within its breast and warm blood pulsing through its veins. We whisper to ourselves that it is not as alien as it first appeared. But this fool's dream vanishes the minute we attempt to embrace death, finding that it repays our kiss with only sorrow and loss.

Death is not a natural stage in the cycle of human development. Death is a curse. The presence of death is an intrusion. It is "natural" only to the extent that nature itself suffers from the stroke that fell upon Adam as a consequence for his sin. Nature endures death but not willingly. It groans in protest, loathing the bondage to decay which death has brought upon it and yearning for "the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). Death is "the last enemy," a tyrant who acts on sin's behalf and whose sway over us was finally broken at the cross but will only be fully realized at the resurrection (Romans 5:21; 1 Corinthians 15:26).

Death is our enemy but, like the law, it is also a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. Death's hard lesson exposes the true nature of sin. Indeed, the law and death are strange allies in this mysterious work. In the hands of God both act as a goad, puncturing our denial and prodding us to turn to Christ for relief from death's sting.

The doctor said, "If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one."

The doctor was talking about Alcides Moreno. By every law of physics and medicine, Moreno should have died. Moreno was a window washer in Manhattan. He rode platforms with his brother Edgar high into the sky to wash skyscrapers. From there he could look down to see the pavement far below where the people looked like ants. On December 7, 2007, catastrophe struck the Moreno family. As the brothers worked on the 47th story of a high rise, their platform collapsed, and Alcides and Edgar fell from the sky.

If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one.

No, Alcides Moreno didn't land on a passing airplane or catch his shirt on a flagpole or have anything else amazing happen like you see in the movies; he fell the entire 47 stories to the pavement below. As would be expected, his brother Edgar died from the fall, but somehow Alcides did not. He lived. For two weeks he hung on to life by a thread. Then, on Christmas Day, he spoke and reached out to touch his nurse's face. One month later, the doctors were saying that he would probably walk again some day.

If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one.

In the beginning of the human race, Adam also fell from a great height. From sinless glory in the image of God, Adam rebelled against God and fell into sin and death and judgment, and in this terrible fall he brought with him the whole human race. But "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). God the Son left the heights of heaven and descended to the earth to become a man. He lived a sinless life and then willingly went to the cross to die for the sins of Adam's fallen race. On the third day he rose again, and in his resurrection he made it possible for all to rise again and live forever.

If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one.