The Road to Eden

Introduction

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.

(C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

Disintegration

Whatever we believe about the Genesis story, no one can deny that mankind longs for paradise. From Avalon to Asgard, Heaven to the Happy Hunting Ground, Shangri-la to Svarga Loka, Valhalla, Nirvana or Jannah; every culture and tribe throughout world history seems to have some variation of desire to exchange the ordinariness, the hurtfulness, the alienation and the sheer hard work of everyday life for the elusive paradise of our hopes and dreams.

Somewhere in the human soul, it would seem, there lurks a distant memory of paradise that once was, or should have been, but is now lost. Why else would a desire, so unfulfilled, be so universal? The Bible affirms that mankind did indeed begin life in paradise: a perfect and beautiful garden—the Garden of Eden. The tragic spectre of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from that garden, heads hung in shame and despair, resonates with the sense of loss and alienation already present in our own hearts. Too well do we know that road out; too poorly the road back in.

As for the Garden of Eden itself, there are two commonly held views: One, that there really was a literal, physical, historic garden—perhaps on the borders of modern-day Turkey and Iran, between the Caspian Sea and Lake Urumia, near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—and that Adam and Eve lived there, circa 5400 BC (or, by Ussher’s chronology, 4004BC). And, two, that the whole Genesis story, including Adam and Eve eating forbidden fruit and being expelled from the Garden of Eden, is poetry and metaphor with profound meaning, a ‘spiritual’ story. Some thinkers have polarised strongly one way or the other, but the mainstream of Judeo-Christian thought has always held that both are true.

The separation of the two views is itself caused by being out of and away from Eden. Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the last event in Eden, was an act and a choice ‘out of’ the God who is life and truth and ‘into’ the kingdom of a liar and murderer. The ‘out of Eden’ predicament is that of living under both the curse of lies, where words, meaning and reality can be separated, and the curse of death, where the spiritual departs the physical. The separation of words, knowledge and reality—the road to death and the road out of Eden—is the essence of the forbidden tree.

Understanding or even agreeing with this, however, can only be the very beginning of a solution or way back in. Good art, literature, cinema, music, poetry, culture and the beauty in nature may seemingly weld a temporary union of symbol, meaning and reality, taking us back to Eden for a moment. But in the end the vision fades, the music cadences almost out of memory and the grasp of ‘life’ or ‘spirituality’ flows out as surely as the tide.

The Two False Loves

Additionally, two false solutions present themselves: One, covetousness (equivalent to idolatry), which seeks a direct connection—through ownership or worship—with the physical world we find ourselves in but feel disconnected from or ‘outside’ of. (Poetically, this is an attempt at ‘over-the-hedge’ access to the garden.) And, two, lust, which seeks direct connection—through worship of another person—with the God, Creator and Father we no longer know, but sorely miss. (Poetically, this is ‘eggs in moonshine’ or ‘the land behind the looking glass’ because people were, after all, created in the image of God.) These two false solutions—I call them ‘the two false loves’—find ubiquitous repetition in the pagan fertility cults and in everyday life and culture, from ancient times to the present day. Far from being slight corruptions of love, these false loves are in fact diametrically opposite to love.

The Four Loveless Powers

Nor do these false loves ever turn into love, but rather always flow in the direction of power: friendship with the ‘world’ instead of friendship with God; choosing again and again, along with Adam and Eve, to eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge without reality, words without truth, theology without anointing; and power without love. These worldly, loveless and serpentine aspirations throughout history have taken the form of military power, religious power, political power and financial power. They are sometimes called ‘the four winds of the earth’. (Ref: Rev 7:1) I call them ‘the four loveless powers’. John lays out the choice starkly: ‘If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.’ (I John 2:15) Others have succinctly framed our choice: ‘the love of power—or the power of love’.

The Cross & Resurrection of Jesus

For those who seek love and reality, the only true solution to our ‘out of Eden’ dilemma is found in another great literal and historic event which also has profound poetic and spiritual meaning: the death of God’s own son Jesus Christ on a Roman ‘tree’ and his subsequent resurrection in a garden near Jerusalem, circa 33 AD. The original and perennial lie is about the character, motives and love of God; the serpent’s lies, in Eden and subsequently, have cast God as a self-seeking despot who puts himself first. (The four loveless powers are founded in this deception.) The death of Jesus on the cross, God in Christ, the greatest of all loves laying down his own life, demonstrated the exact opposite and established the truth literally and historically as well as spiritually, metaphorically and poetically throughout earth and heaven for all time. In the death of Christ, we find sight at last for our blindness to God’s goodness—relief from the lie. And there too we find death for our own covetous and lustful selfishness—relief from slavery to loveless desire, the false loves.

The resurrection of Jesus proves in every time and realm, that the love of God the Father is greater than the power of sin and death. In the resurrection of Jesus, the emptiness, fear and heartbreak of death are finally vanquished, and the grace of all-conquering, unfailing love is given. The gates of death that Jesus broke through, on the way in as He died and the way out as he rose again, are the same gates that we can now also walk through into life and love: the vast world of the heavens, and, in the fullness of time, the unity of heaven and earth. (Ref: Ephesians 1:10) This is where meaning and words and action and reality are always in perfect union and harmony. And that, even beyond Eden as it once was, is Eden as it was always destined to be.

The Holy Spirit

Opening our eyes to see God as he truly is and the transformation of desire, from selfishness to true love, is the road to Eden and the subject of this book. But the journey is not just a mental, theological exercise; it is life in the Holy Spirit, which, by its very nature, defies being tidily framed or communicated in plain statements alone. Knowledge without reality and theology without Holy Spirit anointing is the lie; it is dead religion; it is hypocrisy; it is the old ‘out of Eden’ problem—even, ironically, if that knowledge is about the death and resurrection of Jesus. (The definition of a door is a very different thing than actually opening a door and walking through.) The early disciples, who literally saw Jesus physically and historically live, die and rise again, were not changed by the facts alone; they were still ‘out of Eden’ until the coming of the Holy Spirit with the fiery anointing at Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit, also called the Spirit of ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, came to Earth in power fifty days (i.e., Pentecost) after the Cross and brought the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection to the first disciples. The same Holy Spirit can bring the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection to us now. He resists the separation of ideas and reality (lies) and the separation of the physical and spiritual (death and meaninglessness) with joyful diligence and precision. And He awakens us with His own beautiful desires so that we can live life from the heart as we were meant to; rather than trying to keep external laws and principles out of fear, determination or pride. Through the Holy Spirit, the tangible love or ‘desire’ of God is poured into our hearts. (Ref: Romans 5:5) The road to Eden is to walk in this Holy Spirit love; the anointed reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

There are three ways through which life in the Holy Spirit is the Road to Eden: One, in Him we have legitimate direct access to God our Father. (Ref: Ephesians 2:18) Now we can walk in the twilight of this world in friendship with him as Adam and Eve did at the beginning. Two, in the Holy Spirit we can have lust-free and un-controlling connection to, and true love for, all the beautiful people around us whom we previously wrongly desired—i.e., as slaves to our covetousness and lust. Now they can be our brothers and sisters in Christ—true family, bonded to us in the Holy Spirit. And, three, in the Holy Spirit we can join with the longing, the elusive memory, beauty and fading glory in the physical world around us, and gain at last legitimate connection with the creation; not ‘over the hedge’ by covetousness and idolatry, but through friendship with the creator, designer and restored head over it all—Jesus. For in Him ‘...are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ (Colossians 2:3) And those treasures are more than just facts and information; they are the realities that all knowledge and wisdom pertains to—that is, everything! In Jesus, heart and treasure, heaven and earth, can finally truly unite for us. (Ref: Matthew 6:21, Ephesians 1:10)

Time & the Father’s Heart

In the union of heaven and earth and the treasures in Christ, there is a mystery to do with time and space that I will be teasing out as best I can. That mystery—as I experimentally understand it today—exists within the synergy, fellowship and love we share with our brothers and sisters and God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Ultimately, God is not in time or space—and still less outside them—but all places and all times are in Him... and more even than that; all places at all times are in Him—though He doesn’t hold them in a single conscious thought, as is sometimes suggested, but in the vast expanse and depths of His heart.

The crux of the mystery plays out like this: because true love, by definition, does not control responses but gives freedom, the future is not absolutely established in every detail; there are still some ‘future contingencies’ dependant on human (and perhaps angelic) choices. This means the future is not ‘set in stone’ and cannot be known in every detail; God ‘holds it open’, we might say—though of course many things have already been settled, established and already ‘...fixed by his own authority’. (Acts 1:7)

The idea of future contingencies can be challenging enough—but let me take it a step further. Those friends who walk the twilight of Eden with Father, Son and Holy Spirit also begin to know that the past holds contingencies as well. This means that even some things in the past (far fewer than in the future, I think) are held open by God and are therefore unknown, intrinsically unknowable; contingent upon choices and decisions unmade, and prayers not yet prayed.

The death and resurrection of Jesus—the Cross—remains the ‘evergreen’ centre in the heart of God upon which all these contingencies, future and past, are being resolved. Much of history future, and some history past, remains a living dynamic field that God our Father opens up to his sons and daughters: those walking in the death and resurrection of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. For this reason, we should preach the Cross in the present, preach the Cross into the future and—peradventure we are given access in the Holy Spirit—preach the Cross into the past as well. The desire and mystery of this seems to me like the deep pool, the overflowing fountain, and the tree of life itself at the very heart of Eden.

Integration

Here, logic ever yields to love, and words can do no more than bring us to the beach beside the great sea; the edge of those eternal waters upon which all that we are, and know, and ever could know has been founded. Beyond that we must each weigh our own anchor and set our own sails, for the only way to truly know God’s love is to live God’s love in the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the last word of the ‘Word’ himself (i.e., Jesus) brought Peter to that beach and launched him onto a journey that offered the eventual attainment of the deep true godly love (Greek: ‘agape’) he desired. (Ref: John 1:1, 21:1-19)

In what follows, I seek to merge poetic meaning with literal history: my own story, journey and testimony woven with understanding and experience of God. Thankfully, marriage—the only pre ‘out of Eden’ institution we still have—and the God-ordered family of Dad and Mum raising children, remain as a tangible and visible starting point in our journey. Opening eyes; seeing God our Father as He truly is—His very face—began for me with the sight of my own earthly father’s face. And transforming desire—true love—in the Holy Spirit began for me in the atmosphere of my mother’s worship of God.

Chapter 1 - Opening Eyes

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us...

(C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

First Openings

Five times I have seen a human child open its eyes for the first time. The third child looked at his mother and me with a knowing little smile that seemed to say, ‘So that’s what you look like!’ The fifth child, with wide eyes, surveyed each of her four brothers in turn as if at last to connect a face to the known voice—it had become a game to say to the maternal bump, ‘Hello, little baby in there!’ Now each of the brothers gave their welcome and baby answered each of them, one after the other, in her own way, with big acknowledging baby eyes.

From the moment of first light, each of us humans grows into the consciousness that we have entered a scene, not at the beginning, nor at the end, but at some indeterminate point in the middle. We are given no explanation and are hardly likely to understand one if we were. If we are fortunate, our early hours, days and years will contain answers for our hearts that our minds will not soon, if ever, grasp: namely, the distinctive beauties of masculine and feminine love, shining in the faces and flowing through the hands of the man and woman who hold us. If our minds do grasp answers, it is logical to expect those answers to fit with what our hearts already know. The creator behind it all must be something like Mum and Dad—the creator’s love must be both masculine and feminine—or why else would life be ordered as it is?

But of course not every individual life was ordered in that way. Some lives began without love. For some babies there was neither face nor hands of love—masculine or feminine. The deficit of that love compounds our ‘out of Eden’ predicament by reinforcing the lie that God doesn’t love us. To begin to unravel that lie and to find the road back into Eden, we will go back to the day the human race got itself outside in the first place.

The Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve

When Eve stood by the forbidden tree, listening to the serpent one day in Eden, she was shown something very similar to what Jesus was shown many years later in his wilderness temptation. This follows from the truth that Jesus was ‘the second Adam’ and that he faced and overcame everything the first Adam failed in. What Eve and Jesus saw was a vision of ‘...the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them...’ (Matt4:8) And Luke adds: ‘...in a moment of time.’ (Luke 4:5)

Perhaps the fantasy and spell the serpent wove went something like this: Eve saw a future scene—the glory of the world’s kingdoms in a moment of time; a glimpse into a possible future. She saw all her children and children’s children before her with their great accomplishments in culture, the arts, exploration, learning, and the conquest and development of hitherto untamed nature. Great cities filled the earth, and in each were palaces and households of great beauty. Tables were laden with plentiful feasts. The charming, the beautiful, the dignified and the wise mingled, chatted and danced. Then she saw herself honoured above all: Eve the mother of all the living; eternally young and beautiful; always the first and most honoured... or was it... worshipped? Oh, yes, and the pleasures in her own body, the sexual delights of endless variation were beyond her wildest dreams. But what was it just to the side of her view? Who was building all these cities and palaces? Who was bringing all that delicious food and drink to the great feasts? Who was clearing up after it all? Who was taking care of the babies and children? And what were those empty blank