Genesis 3: the Fall
Part 7: The destiny of dust.
Previous essays on Genesis 3:
The first couple, after imbibing the proscribed fruit, are now presented with the consequences of their rebellion:
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
Pain and suffering; the corruption of creation; ruptured relationships with God and one another: the fruits of their disobedience in ghastly rendition. And this: the manna provided from heaven for their provision, sustenance, and enjoyment, now lost, replaced with arduous exertion to produce the most basic source of subsistence, bread.
And the very focus of their ardor to exist, now itself their destiny: “to dust you shall return.”
Death.
Did they even understand what that judgment meant? Do we?
Death.
Most of us spend our entire lives denying our inevitable fate. It is, of course, the fear of suffering, of pain, of prolonged disability, of hopelessness. More terrifying is the isolation, as friends and even family — themselves terrified by the visage and embodiment of their own future — abandon us. So we “rage, rage against the dying of the light:” we desire and demand that everything be done, no matter how fruitless — or expensive — it may be. The unfettered hope of the hopeless!
And underneath, unspoken, unresolved: what then?
At best, perhaps, something like sleep, unconsciousness, non-existence. No reward for our self-inflated beneficence. No justice for our unpunished evil, far vaster than we acknowledge. Or better, an eternity of Bacchanalia and debauchery, the pursuit of endless pleasure without purpose or consequence. Heaven? Boring, hanging out with angels and do-gooders, preachy and judgmental, bowing down to an ego-tripping deity. Damnation? The tool of the clergy to control fools and the feeble-minded, to be sure.
What then?
“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Yet we were made in Imago Dei, the image of God. Are we no longer in His image? Have we lost the love of God? What darkness is this?
Is there any light in this hopeless calamity, this deadly sentence?
Maybe if we work harder, give a few dollars to charity, recycle our plastics, donate our old holed socks to the poor, vote for justice and peace, we can get back in God’s good graces. Maybe then He will reward us (if He really exists) with a peaceful, painless death. And after that, who knows?
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Or perhaps instead, He will shed blood to cover our shame. Perhaps He will pour out His judgment in extraordinary torture and death on an innocent One, in our stead. And perhaps He will raise Him — and us — from death, to recreate us in His image again, that dust be not our destiny, but life, again, in Him.