The Two Cosmic Lies that Devastate the Human Heart – Part 1: The Origin of the Two Lies
I am constantly amazed at the richness and applicability of the first four chapters of the book of Genesis in the Bible to our human nature and condition. In this book we read about the Holy Spirit “hovering” over the formless and empty earth, the creation of light and the separation of light from darkness, the formation of the continents and the oceans, and the creation of life, including man and woman made in the image and likeness of God. Genesis describes our initial relationship with God, marked by unity and fellowship, and the role of humans in God’s creation – to rule over creation in partnership with Him.
Genesis also describes the ‘fall of man’, when Adam and Eve believed a lie, and exercising their free will, disobeyed God. As a result, sin, shame, guilt, blame, and rejection entered into their hearts – emotions previously unknown to them. Ultimately, God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden.
Genesis is also about God’s love for His creation, even in the presence of disobedience, and how valuable creation is to God. In this book we perceive, although dimly, God’s ultimate sacrifice – His Son on the cross to atone for our sins, which began in the Garden of Eden.
It is in Genesis that we first read about evil, jealousy, anger, and murder; and how these are related.
These chapters define what it means to be human and describe human nature and human interactions throughout history. This is because what happened to Adam and Eve is not just about them. Adam is both the proper name for the first human and the designation of humankind. In some way, their decisions and the consequences of these decisions altered their spiritual DNA, creating a new species. These spiritual mutations have been passed down through generations to all humankind. That is why Paul wrote, “For as in Adam all die”, meaning all humanity living in the kingdom of the world (aka the kingdom of self), apart from Jesus, are dead “in their transgressions and sins”, the consequence of Adam and Eve’s cosmic decision. Apart from life ‘in Christ’, we are literally the byproduct of their disobedience. Paul writes:
“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5: 12 NIV).
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15: 22 NIV)
I believe there is another dimension to the spiritual DNA that we inherited from Adam and Eve. Satan, in the form of the serpent, met Adam and Eve in the Garden and whispered into their ears (and hearts) two lies:
Lie 1: “You are not good enough”
Lie 2: “You can make yourself ‘good enough’ by your own efforts – you can become like God”
(OK. If you are critically reading what I wrote in the previous paragraph you could argue that there are, in fact, three lies: 1) you are not good enough, 2) you can be like God, and 3) you can make yourself ‘good enough’ in your own power – the beginning of trying to save myself or earn my way into salvation. For the sake of discussion I am going to merge lies 2 and 3 into a single lie).
Before I explain my thinking about these lies in more detail, I first want to say that I am adding a layer of interpretation to the Genesis text that I haven’t discovered in any of the books on Genesis that I have read. The only one who comes close to what I am about to propose is C.S. Lewis. I am not saying this to claim some deeper spiritual insight. I am saying this to be honest with you – I am writing what I believe God is showing me, but I am really writing about mystery. I feel like I am touching a profound deepness that no man can fathom; in fact, no man is meant to comprehend. But at the same time, God does not want us to be ignorant about these lies. God has given me a passion to write about this, so I am going to do my best to be obedient and faithful to His word. So, with that caveat, lets take a look at these lies.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’ . . . ‘You will not surely die’, the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3: 1, 4 NIV).
You know the rest of the story. They disobeyed God, eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Several things immediately happened:
Their ‘eyes’ were opened – that is, the eyes of their hearts. For the first time they ‘saw’ that they were separate. Before they ate the forbidden fruit, they lived in unity and harmony with God, with each other, and with their world. Now they saw themselves as separate from Him, from each other, and from the world around them. For the first time, they experienced loneliness and shame.
For the first time, they came face-to-face with ‘self’. They saw themselves as individual personalities, with their own wants, needs, and desires.
They had to make a choice. Who would be at the center of their lives – God or this new creature, self? And they chose self! We want to exist on our own, rebelling against God and “doing it my way”. After the fall, no one naturally desires God.
Now that they saw themselves as separate or autonomous they could compare themselves to God. And they understood that in comparison with Him, they were lesser beings. In light of this comparison satan told them, “If you eat of the forbidden tree you will be like God”. In other words, the person you are now is “not good enough”, but you can fix that – you can become good enough, like God.
C.S. Lewis captured the essence of the new Adam and Eve when he wrote the following:
“They wanted, as we say, to ‘call their souls their own’. But that means to live a lie, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, ‘This is our business, not yours’. But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere (meaning small or insignificant) adjectives.”
This is the essence of the lies. Satan told them they were mere adjectives – meaning small and insignificant, “not good enough”. But satan convinced them that they could become nouns. Like a noun, they could become the center of attention. They could become valuable, admired, and fulfilled. They could become like God, or even in their own minds, they could become god. Greed and covetousness entered the human heart.
So, lie number 1 is, “You are not good enough”. You are not a noun, you are a small and insignificant adjective, and you will always be subordinate to God – always less.
Lie 2 is, “But you can become good enough (become the noun) through your own efforts by your own work – “just eat the fruit from the tree”, and you can become like God, in the power of ‘self’.
Why are these lies? First, adjectives are important – they are not insignificant. They give a sentence meaning, depth, and life. The noun ‘man’ is descriptive, but a ‘poor man’, ‘rich man’, ‘tall man’, ‘short man’, or a ‘super man’ give the word ‘man’ additional meaning essential for communication. The noun is enhanced by the adjective. Adjectives are intimately connected to the noun that they modify. The two go together like a hand in a glove. They are partners, although the adjective is always the junior partner.
I think C. S. Lewis captured satan’s meaning with the noun/ adjective metaphor. When satan told them, “they could be like God”, he was telling them that they were “not good enough” – insignificant, unimportant because, in Lewis’s words they were mere adjectives, not nouns.
Second, adjectives can never become a noun. The two always work together; they are united in the sentence structure. But they are inherently different. A noun cannot become an adjective and vice versa. To suggest otherwise is a lie. And of course, if an adjective can never become a noun, the suggestion that, “you can become like God” is also a lie, but one that contains a powerful seduction.
And to make sure that these lies took root in their hearts, he added, “Did God really say . . . “. “Surely”, the serpent implied, “God didn’t really mean to hold you back from making yourself the best person you can become.”
As Adam and Eve listened to the whispers of satan, I believe they made a fateful choice. They chose to come into agreement with the lies! It is because of their agreement that the lies were able to gain power and authority over them, and became embedded in their spiritual DNA. There is power in agreement!
So, I believe that in addition to sin and a corrupted, blasphemous, and self-centered fallen human nature, these two lies were encapsulated in the spiritual DNA of Adam and Eve and passed down to every human being as two seeds, ready to sprout under the right conditions. And what are the right conditions? Devaluing!
(You’re right. The Bible doesn’t say anything about seeds, as far as I know. And no one knows how we inherit from Adam the self-centered proclivity to sin and ‘hate’ God. But Scripture says we do. So, the idea of seeds made sense to me as a way of making the point – we begin life with something in us that is alien, that is not part of who God intended us to be).
“When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created He called them “man”. And when Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth” (Genesis 5: 1 – 3 NIV).
And so, the spiritual DNA of Adam and Eve, a new species, was somehow passed down through the lineage of their son Seth, who was made in the image and likeness (and nature) of Adam, to his descendants – which include all of us. Part of the that DNA were the lies.
When these lies or seeds sprout in our hearts they can rule our lives, drawing us deeper into sin in the kingdom of the world, and alienating us from our Creator, Father God. They inevitably pull us down into negative emotions like anger, broken relationships, despair, depression, want, loneliness, and emptiness; and antisocial behavior like stealing, bullying, hating, even murder. Through these lies we release evil into the world. They are the tools satan uses to “steal, kill, and destroy”. Unless we identify the lies, bring them into the light, and take them to Jesus, even Christians can struggle for their entire lives believing that they are not worthy of Christ’s love and life in the Kingdom of God. And if I believe I am not worthy of Christ’s love, I also miss out on His grace, His power, and my purpose in Him.
Once the lie, “you’re not good enough” takes root in our heart, it acts like a filter through which we see the world around us. It affects all of our choices and responses to opportunities and other people’s words. An encouraging word, passed through the filter in our heart, can be heard as condemnation.
The lie, “you are not good enough” is like something alive – we hear it in our mind and feel it in our heart. It is never far away. The lie is like a negative force that wants to take control of our emotions and our spiritual life. The more we struggle against the lie in our own power, the stronger the lie can become and the deeper we descend into shame, anger, powerlessness, and hopelessness. And self-help is not the antidote to the lies, although self-help schemes might provide some temporary relief.
But the good news is that when we come to Jesus, recognizing these lies, He can replace them with the truth:
“For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1: 13, 14 NIV).
“Therefore, since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12: 28 NIV).
Jesus can set us free from the bondage to condemnation and accusations; slavery to sin, demonic oppression, fear, and anger and other negative emotions that these lies open us up to. When we come out of agreement with satan about who the lies say we are, and come into agreement with God about who we are in Christ, the Holy Spirit can set us free from these lies, and we can begin to live the life God intended us to live – healed and made whole. We can live a Kingdom life – in a Kingdom that cannot be shaken. We can begin to become the unique person that God created us to be. And in many cases, we have seen that this freedom manifests itself in physical healing as well.
In Part 2 of this series, I look more deeply at Lie 1.
Rebuking the lies,
John