Before you read this, I want to invite you to read the first three blogs of this series if you haven’t. You might understand my thoughts more if you do. Click on the links below to read them…
The Fall of Kyle
The Fall of Kyle: I Don’t Trust You
The Fall of Kyle: I Don’t Trust God
In my last couple blogs, I have been looking at the story of the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. I have been comparing it to my own life and have discovered so many similarities…a lot of the similarities that I found have made me a little uncomfortable.
These similarities seem to point out the lack of trust that I have for people and for God. I can’t express how good it is to realize all of this now. It has really challenged me to check where my heart is and where it needs to be.
A lot of my thoughts so far have been about where my heart is at. Before I get into where my heart needs to be, there is still one more thing I need to look at. And that is, besides hiding from people and God, how does this lack of trust damage my relationships with people and with God? What does this lack of trust lead me to do?
Let’s go back to the story of the Fall of Man in Genesis 3 to see what the man and the woman start to do once they start to lose trust in each other…
So a quick recap of what has happened so far…God creates an absolutely amazing thing. There is a man and a woman. They are both naked…physically as well as emotionally and spiritually. There is complete trust and love that flows freely between the man the woman and God…and it is perfect and completely beautiful. God is great!
But then the man and the woman eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the one thing God asked them not to do. When they do this, their eyes are opened to a new world. They realize that everything about them is exposed. They start to judge and feel judged. They feel dirty, so they try to cover up their dirt…their mistake, their sin, and all of these new thoughts of judgment that are racing through their minds. They try to cover up everything like nothing happened. They want to look pretty for each other. They want to look good in both their eyes and the eyes of the other. They don’t want to look flawed. Then God comes along, and they get scared, so now they try to hide from God.
The beautiful trust that God created and gave them starts to fade. As it keeps fading, it starts to affect other parts of their lives and more things start to fall apart.
Back to the story…
The man is hiding from God and God asks, “Where are you?” The man comes out and answers,“I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
Again, questions from an all-knowing God… why…there must be more to the questions than just the actual questions. Because I believe that God knows exactly what has happened.
He can see them slipping. He knows they have made a mistake. He also knows he has the power to control and force them to change…but God doesn’t love like that because that isn’t what love is. Love doesn’t control and force. Love is 1 Corinthians 13, in verses 4-8 it says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” This love always hopes for the best…and this love gives them the power to choose.
He asks questions to let them chose what they want to do next; keeping in mind that God loves them more than they can imagine.
And God still wants to maintain this amazing relationship with the man and woman.
He still wants trust.
He still wants open communication.
He still wants honesty.
He still wants His love to flow freely.
He wants to give them a chance to make good for their disobedience.
He wants them to rip off the suit of fig leaves they are hiding behind.
He wants them to be exposed.
He wants them to own up to their mistake.
And in order to do that, He needs to hear the truth from them. So He asks a question…and He wants a confession.
So in Genesis 3:12 the man confesses, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Then in Genesis 3:13 the woman confesses, “The serpent deceived me and I ate.”
Ah…they came clean…they told God the truth…just like me…end of blog…thanks for reading.
Wait a second…
Did they tell God the truth?
I guess “technically” they did tell the truth.
But when I look at what they said, I feel like something is a little off.
I get the sense that they were unsure of how God was going to react to what happened. They didn’t want to completely expose what had happened…because they know how awkward that makes them feel when their dirt is exposed.
They still know that they should do the right thing, something deep in their heart tells them this, but something is now going on in their heads that says something different. It is challenging their heart. It is questioning their heart and wondering if there is a different way. This fruit of the tree of knowledge is giving them ideas. It is making them very crafty.
So they start to think…some of the ideas probably look like…
…”don’t lie, don’t lie, don’t lie…oh, got it, I can just expose some of the truth…”
…or “I can tell the truth but I can try to word it so that I can downplay the whole situation…”
…or “I can tell the truth but before I do, I will make sure I tell God everything everyone else did that is wrong first, so that I can redirect God towards the “real” problem.”
And with these thoughts, they decide to “technically” tell the truth.
So let’s pick up where we left off…God was talking to the man.
In my head the man is looking all flustered and confused. He is still nervous. He is trying to come up with the right words to say to God. And this is where we get introduced to, literally, the oldest excuse in the book.
In Genesis 3:12, he manages to say, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Did he just say what I think he said?
Let me back up and read that first part again. It says, “The woman YOU put here with me.”
Notice the first thing out of his mouth has to do with something that someone else did.
This is the man pointing the finger at God. Wow…someone woke up feeling awfully bold today.
But why stop there, if you are bold enough to blame God, you might as well keep going …right? So with this mentality, he decides to take it a step further.
The next words out of his mouth are, “SHE gave me some fruit from the tree.”
This is him pointing the finger at the woman.
Now that he has attempted to shift the focus onto others, he is comfortable finally whispering under his breath, “and I ate it.”
So what comes out is “technically” the truth, but what he is saying to God is…”you put her here and she gave me the fruit. It is your fault and her fault. What you did is so much bigger than what I did! What she did is so much bigger than what I did. All I did was eat some fruit.”
He tries to minimize what he did by maximizing something they did. He is trying to justify what he did by saying that what they did is worse…and using this line of thinking, he convinces himself that what he did isn’t really that bad. In his mind, he was justified in what he did…so he thinks that it was actually ok that it happened because what God and the woman did is worse than what he did.
The man had a chance to expose the truth about what happened. But he chose not to completely expose himself…so God looks to the woman.
In Genesis 3:13, the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”
This is God giving her a chance to expose the truth about what happened. He wants her to choose the right thing to do.
She is also a little nervous and flustered about talking to God about what happened, but in Genesis 3:13 she says,“The serpent deceived me and I ate.”
Ahh…the second oldest excuse in the book.
She points the finger at Satan.
Again, technically the truth comes out. But she is trying to maximize what Satan did while minimizing what she did.
Please don’t get me wrong. I will agree with you that Satan is one bad dude. But still, I don’t think she can blame him…even if he did tempt her. She tries to justify her actions by saying that what Satan did is worse than what she did…which makes her feel like what she did is actually ok because she is convinced that Satan’s actions were worse than her own.
The woman had a chance to expose the truth about what happened. But she too chose not to completely expose herself.
They both have a chance to come clean. And they kind of take it…they tell the truth. Technically, God did put the woman there with the man, the woman did give the fruit to the man, and the serpent did deceive her. But God wants them to focus on what they did. He doesn’t want them to be making excuses and shifting blame towards others.
He just wants the truth…but they give him a twisted version of the truth.
They both chose not to be exposed…and this was the beginning to all sorts of other things like excuses, manipulating that situation, justification, pointing fingers, judging and blaming others. This is what happened when trust starts to disappear.
So I ask myself…is this what I do? Am I full of excuses? Do I manipulate situations to avoid consequence? Do I try to justify what I do, to make myself seem better to myself and others? Do I point fingers at others and blame them for what I do?
Yes.
In fact when I look back on my past, there is such a huge pattern of me doing this. In fact, I used to be convinced when I was growing up that everyone was the same…kinda. I used to think that the difference between the “good kids” and the “bad kids” was that the “bad kids” got caught. I drank, I did drugs, I made a lot of mistakes with girls, I stole stuff, I cheated in school, you name it and probably did it, but I was a“good kid” because I didn’t get caught. I mastered the skill of making up excuses. I was sneaky and crafty. I was very observant of my surroundings so if we got busted, I could escape and hide and the “bad kids” would get caught. I could manipulate situations so well. I could always justify why I did something and I could convince others that I was right. I never did anything wrong and everyone believed me because I was a “good kid”. And if I did almost get in trouble there was all always a bigger fish to fry and if you let me go, I could tell you where they were.
I have so many excuses. I manipulate situations so well. I can avoid consequence like no other. I can justify anything I do, most of the time with a ridiculous argument. And I know exactly who to point the finger at.
But more recently, my actions have changed. God has given me the strength to resist some of the actions I used to get caught up in…but that hasn’t changed my ability to make excuses, manipulate, avoid problems, justify, judge, and blame. In fact, now that I don’t get involved in some of the same stuff I used to, I feel like I have gotten better at doing them.
I realized that I do this in Cambodia.
I just want to point out that again that World Racers have issues. We are nowhere near perfect. We get into conflict pretty often.
It was through conflict that I realized that I do this with people. It all went down like this…
I was in multiple conflicts. I was so mad. I was frustrated. I was sitting in a room by myself trying to cool off. I knew that I needed to address these situations and try to fix them. We were only two months in to this race and we were going to be around each other for a long time still. So we needed to change some stuff or there was going to be a huge eruption.
I found myself sitting there thinking that things needed to change. But how? I kept thinking about what had happened. I thought about what I did. I thought about what they did. I found myself getting more wound up. Then I started to think about what the other person was going to say to me. And in my head, I was building my defense. I was justifying what I did. I was making excuses. I was thinking about all the things I did wrong and I came up with a reason, justification, or excuse.
After I had my defense planned out, I found myself planning my offense. I was prepared for this showdown. If they wanted to handle this nicely, I would. But if they came out guns a blazing, I needed my guns ready too. So I started to load my guns so I could shoot back. I got all my ammo ready and everything that they did slightly wrong was a bullet in my little finger guns. If they came at me with their finger guns pointed at me, I was ready to point my finger guns back at them and start firing away. Because in my mind, I was convinced that what they did is worse than what I did. In fact, they were the cause of what I did; their actions caused me to react.
There was a time when I asked myself if this is how Jesus would go into this conflict. Would he have his guns loaded, the safety off, with his finger on the trigger? Or would he be going into this conflict willing to lay down his life for the sake of the other person…no matter who is right or who is wrong.
This is when I realized that something in my heart is way off. I am approaching this from the way wrong direction.
I realized how much I make excuses. I realized how much I manipulate situations. I realized that I will try so many things to avoid consequence. I realized that I love to justify what I do to make it ok in my eyes.
Even with these realizations, I still find myself saying, “But this is what everyone does.”
Look at my last comment carefully…more justification…more excuses…more finger pointing…
And it doesn’t stop…
…because right now…I don’t trust you…I don’t trust god…and it’s your fault…
Something is very wrong with this picture…
I am beginning to see that I am part of what is wrong…and really, that is the only part that I have any control over…all of the excuses, manipulations, finger pointing, judging, blaming, it is all my way of trying to get others to change to make my life easier. It is my way of saying that I am right and you are wrong. But I am realizing that I am not nearly as right as I think I am. I am realizing that I don’t need to be trying to change others…I think my own heart and mind that needs to be transformed.
I recently found in Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.
All right God…it seems foolish for me to continue being this way…I am ready to listen to your advice…speak to me…
Please join me in my next blog as I share with you how God is speaking to me and stripping away my fig leaves…
Click the link below…
The Fall of Kyle: Being Stripped
