Very often we hear people lamenting the state of the world—the animals suffering, the oceans being polluted and filled with garbage, the trees being cut down. Yet there is still such a disconnect between this pain and frustration in us and understanding that this desire for restoration is exactly what God is speaking to.

God has been working to show mankind how the world is broken. And while we can see this in a polluted ocean, or a battered animal, we often don’t go full circle in understanding that it is God who is the one who is speaking to all of this.

God is the one speaking to us about a lost paradise, and how our souls long for a perfect world. God is the one showing us the injustices and wrongs that exist in the world. Where people wrong one another, are indifferent to the needs and rights of others—all of these things are sin.

Sin has so much baggage around it that we can so rarely see how this word helps us, describes what the world is facing, and what we are experiencing over and over that we hate.

Sin becomes this word of bondage and religious oppression in our mind, when the whole point is it is a word that describes all the bitterness and harm we see around us. That is the fallout and cost of all sin does in this world.

And God speaks to all of us that it is right that we desire this restoration and redemption of all things, that we hate these dark and evil things—that is the very thing He is promising to us to do something about. That is our very hope He seeks to give us in Himself.

The challenge with this is that sin and sorrow don’t begin and end with our own experiences or ideas of it. We must allow God to define what is sin as well as what is good. Many are deceived because they see sin in part and think they fully see. They are satisfied in their “self-righteousness” and wisdom. And because of this they don’t go beyond this, they don’t go to God.

And so, while we might hate sin in one way and discern things here and there, we do not see how sinful it is to rest self satisfied in this. To not think we should pursue a goodness and righteousness higher than our own selves. Where we have at first had a seed of something good in us—an anger against sin and injustice, a desire for something better and good—this can turn to a stronghold of rebellion against God, because we take this up against Him, as if not needing Him.

We also do not see how small our desires can be. To desire oceans to be clean, but not equally desire the oceans of all human hearts to be clean. To not desire the true knowledge of God to fill this world and for all people to truly do what is good and right. These things along with a pure and clean world. A world with no suffering and harm. But when our desires for restoration only end with self satisfaction and pride, our own little ideas and plans of making some half form commandments to put on others in the name of this, only end in desires for nature around us, but don’t go deeper, into a desire for the Creator, a desire for sin to be removed from all people around us and all sin from within us, then we don’t know as much as we think we do.

God doesn’t say this to us in disrespect but in a humble yearning for us to turn to Him. And for those who have turned to Him, to stop imagining they understand the depths of God’s purpose when they’ve only stepped inside the doorway.

(This is an excerpt from the Genesis 1 commentary.)