“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Genesis 3:11

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[7 minutes]

There is a crisis of information today. No, not the lack of it, because, as we all well know, there are no limits to where we can find whatever we’re looking for whenever we need it. Alexa, how long does it take to boil an egg in the microwave? Hey Siri, what was the primary reason for the downfall of the Roman Empire?

Our appetite for knowledge is appeased through Google, ChatGPT, X, Apple News, Wikipedia, YouTube, Waze, Food Network, Zillow, and a thousand other sources as close to us as our devices. We are glutted with real-time data from every direction.

Suffering from the tyranny of FOMO, we bathe ourselves in digital light, robotically taking in whatever it feeds us — good or bad — for hours on end. Like junkies, our habit is fixed by mainlining content that is killing our souls. The Matrix is changing us from being made in God’s image to beings who slither around on our bellies like snakes.

In the beginning, God was the only source of information. So when the Lord asked Adam, “Who told you?” the latter had to sheepishly admit to going off-script and getting hoodwinked by misinformation.

It all falls apart in Genesis 3. The First Man on planet earth had barely gotten his feet under him before he believed the lie and, tragically, became the lie itself.

who told you God can’t be trusted?

The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ.

—Martin Luther

Thanks to the Original Couple, we have embedded inside us the default mechanism to accuse God of being spartanly unfair or cruel. It’s a constant battle for many to quell the urge to instinctively blame God for their misfortunes.

I find it telling that the first book in our Bibles — chronologically, that is — is not Genesis, but Job. Of course Adam and Eve walked the earth long before he did, but Job preceded the writer of Genesis by a long shot. If we can trust the dating of Job, and I believe we can, then it asks the oldest question of all: If God is so good then why do I hurt so badly?

Now you can see why Moses opened the canon with Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. Each of those first five books provides a master class for people who have a background of suffering and struggling to “not go there” when they are tempted to believe the lie that God cannot be trusted:

This is God. This is who he is. This is how he is to be worshiped. This is how he is to be trusted. Yes, bad things happen. We know this all too well! But God is not the villain in our story; he is fighting for us and faithfully planning our blessed future.”

Job fought that same urge and won. Moses had to do battle against the devil’s lie in Midian no doubt, but he overcame and led the people of Israel to leave Egypt and overcome in the wilderness. Those who didn’t make it were those who never got the taste of Egypt’s fruit out of their mouths.

One of my daily follows on X (Twitter) posted this recently and I thought it captured quite well the common struggle of mankind:

What good is the apple when one bite makes your life a living hell?

who told you God made you inferior?

In the first page of Holy writ we are told that humans are made in God’s image, in His likeness. By page two, Adam and Eve are no longer satisfied with that and looking for an upgrade.

The present culture has bullied impressionable minds to think they are not enough. Social media influencers, cultural icons, and even medical professionals have convinced an entire generation they are born wrong, look wrong, or believe wrong.

None of it is new. The satan has been using the same tactics to mar the imago dei in us since the beginning. He laughs at our gullibility. He loves to see us stripped of glory and dressed in fig leaves.

Babies are blobs of cells.

Children are an inconvenience.

Old people are a nuisance.

All men are misogynists.

Women are sex objects.

Gender is fluid.

Fathers aren’t necessary.

Families are a capitalistic construct.

We love our labels. Many of our labels serve no other purpose but to depersonalize others and erase the imago dei from their beingness. And the devil laughs.

who told you God was finished with you?

Did you think your shame defined you?

Did you think it was over for you?

Did you think you were beyond saving?

Adam and Eve were painfully aware they were now defective. The shine wore off. The original pair were like those brand new cars you drive off the lot that depreciate immediately.

This is why humans “cover” themselves with things that hide their weaknesses.

We become defensive.

We have learned how to hide our wounds to avoid the proper remedy.

We become deceptive.

We have learned to lie and, by so doing, have become the lie itself.

We become destructive.

We will burn down the whole house before admitting we are wrong and coming home.

From that point, once the die is cast, Adam and Eve no longer see the supernatural. They can’t see God, they can only hear him coming. Their souls weren’t the only thing that went dark; their eyes went dark too.

But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

But God, in grace, made sure they knew his approach. We are told the very first words after the Fall were spoken by God:

“Where are you?”

He came seeking us. There’s grace in those words! Where are you? They imply they were somewhere they should not be but they still mattered enough for God to come looking for them. It’s the same for every human since.

You’ve messed up but you’re not irredeemable.

Your situation is not the end of the story.

We can’t hide too long without having to come out and face the music. It will catch up with us. We will eventually be outed. Better to come forward than die in the dark.

In Christ, we are not pursued like wanted criminals, but like wanted children, or like wanted lovers, because wrath is replaced by desire.

— Rachel Gilson

Don’t allow the voices and narratives of culture shape who you are. It’s fake news. Some of it has just enough truth to make it sound authentic, but it’s still a lie.

Beloved, God is not done with you. Wherever you’re hiding, whatever you’re trying to cover yourself up with to impersonate the imago dei, just stop. You may not see him, but he sees you.

I’m willing to bet you’re hearing his approach in these words. Why are you here? Who told you these lies? Come out, come back, come home. He’s calling you back to truer things than you’ll ever hear out there.

Selah, beloved.