AND HE SAW THAT
IT WAS GOOD
Jeremy Wang
How should a Christian view the world? A simplistic
answer: since the world is corrupted by sin and already
passing, disregard it completely in favor of eternity with our
perfect God. John the Evangelist makes this quite clear when
he exhorts us to “not love the world or the things in the world,”
since “if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not
in him” (1 John 2:15, ESV). Yet, if we flip back in our Bibles
but a few hundred pages, this same John writes of our holy
and perfect God: “He so loved the world that He gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish
but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). What then are we to do?
We will explore here just a few of the many perspectives that
Christians, those who believe above all that God deserves
glory, take to address this problem, centered around the
inherent goodness of creation and the corruption brought
about by sin. Left untouched will be the thorny topic of the
Christian creation story, which is undoubtedly important
but is also, for our purposes, a distraction from the actual
characterization of creation. 1 Having constructed a small bit
of theory, we will also briefly discuss an application in the
area of environmental stewardship, something which modern
Christians often disregard.
Let us first cast our minds back to the last time when we
consciously enjoyed life. For some this might be with friends
at a dining hall table, enjoying the warmth of good company.
Others might recall the startling beauty of gloomy Rhode
Island when suddenly drenched in sunlight during golden hour.
1 The interested reader is encouraged to explore Hope
McGovern’s “What the Bible Doesn’t Say about Human Origins”
in our Fall 2019 issue.
Regardless, set aside for a moment the difficulties of life and
the moments of mediocrity (we will come back to these soon
enough), and remember that the world can be undeniably,
irrevocably good. That this is true should not surprise the
Christian; after all, God Himself approved of this creation
even as He made it, saying again and again “it [is] good”.
And once His work was done, He looked upon it all and
proclaimed it “very good” (Genesis 1).
So we accept that the world can be good. But a question
naturally arises: good...for what exactly? Does the world
exist so that individual humans might enjoy the company of
friends, live peaceful lives, and contribute to the betterment
of humanity? While certainly noble and beautiful goals,
these are insufficient and indeed not even the primary focus
of God’s act of creation. For more complete answers, we
may turn to just about anywhere in Scripture. Reveling in
the presence of the Lord, David declares that “the heavens
declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his
handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night
reveals knowledge,” (Psalm 19:1-2). Elsewhere, the prophet
Isaiah records the very angels of God singing, “the whole
earth is filled with His glory!” (Isaiah 6:3). And even as the
apostle Paul confronts God’s wrath, he stops to remind us that
“His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine
nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of
the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20-
21). Finally, the North African church father Saint Augustine
summarizes the whole of Genesis in one beautiful sentence
of worship: “For you, Lord, made the world from formless
matter, and that formless matter that was almost nothing at all
you made from nothing at all, intending to create from it all
14 Fall 2020