It is my belief that the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis hold the keys to understanding life. Almost every cultural issue of our day is addressed in them. They obviously are inerrant, Divinely inspired and bear the fingerprints of God. They provide both an understanding the Fixed Order of the material world AND provide a category for the strange and preternatural. They give context to many of the philosophical problems that we face in this world. For example, why did God allow Cain to live after he killed Abel? This question is ultimately at the root of why evil men are allowed to exist in the world. Additionally, these chapters shape the debate around the problem of human governments. There was a 1500-year period of time where God had no say in shaping the governments of man. This was a time that was filled with violence (Genesis 6:11). After the Flood God commanded the only people left of the earth to engage in social accountability and punish murder (Genesis 9:6). This meant that there needed to be tribunals (that sought to understand what may have happened when someone was accused of murder) and that those tribunals needed to be strong enough to enact their punishments. But when God commanded this kind of accountability it meant that He was entrusting these decisions into the hand of man, who is by nature fallible. This meant that God was choosing to institute human governments; that were going to at times make mistakes, act in their own interests and be oppressive; because the alternative was much worse. It was an imperfect solution for man, who had willfully chosen to leave the Divine Order of Eden but nonetheless provided some degree of stability to life and protection to the righteous, which would provide enough of a cover for His Plan to redeem the world through the Promised Seed (Genesis 3:15). In our day we have forgotten this paradox and are unwilling to recognize that the fallen world is filled with problems that don't have perfect solutions. War is incredibly tragic, and God values every human life on every side of every conflict, but sometimes war is unavoidable. We often criticize actions of nations because of the blood that they shed while prosecuting war, but we don't always consider what the alternative would have been if they hadn't taken those actions. Human governments are always going to do things that we can criticize, and we should speak out on their failings, but we should at the same time recognize that the imperfect solution of the man-made state has been instituted by God to promote a degree of order (as incomplete and partial as it may be) because the alternative of an anarchist free-for-all power vacuum is much worse.

Posted by Clifford Paul Engels at 2025-06-22 12:55:26 UTC