The NIV 365 Day Devotional
The Crash
“The Fall,” theologians call it, but the event this chapter describes is really more like a crash. Although Adam and Eve have everything two people could want in Paradise, still a thought nags at them: Are we somehow missing out? Is God keeping something from us? Like all of us, they cannot resist the temptation to reach out for what lies beyond them.
Journalist and author G. K. Chesterton said, “There is only one doctrine that can be empirically verified: the doctrine of original sin.” Genesis gives few details about the first sin. Many people mistakenly assume sex is involved, but something far more basic is at stake. God has labeled one tree, just one, off-limits. The real issue is: Who will set the rules— God or human beings? Adam and Eve decide in their own favor, and the world has never been the same.
The underlying message of Genesis goes against a common assumption about human history that the world has been gradually progressing toward a better and better state. According to these chapters, that assumption is not accurate. On the contrary, humanity crashed against the rocks of its own pride and stubbornness long ago and is still doing so today.
Neither God nor anyone else has been satisfied with human beings since that time. Genesis helps us understand why the universe is so strikingly lovely, yet so terribly tragic. It is lovely because God made it. It is tragic because he entrusted it to us— and we failed.
Taken from the NIV Student Bible.