Psalm 119 – Teth: And it was good…

And God saw everything that he made, and behold, it was very good.

I’ve often wondered what the world looked like the moment after creation. I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to see a forest full of life, with no evidence of death littering the ground; I’ve tried to imagine the clarity of the oceans, streams, and ponds and how I would be able to see to the bottom of each body of water; I’ve tried to imagine the smell of clean pure air: I’ve tried to imagine how a world without death, disease, and corruption would be, but I have a difficult time reaching beyond what I can see now. I wonder what such a world would look like to my eyes. Would it appear to a be an alien landscape or would it be very much like this world – just clearer, crisper, and more alive?

Whatever it might have looked like to me, it was certainly something beautiful for God looked at it and said that it was “very good.” He didn’t just it was “good” but added the qualifier and said that it was “very good.” But it doesn’t take long for me to remember that it was not a long time before the whole thing changed. Do you ever wonder what the world looked like just moments after the fall? Had it changed during that time between when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit and when they were expelled from the garden and God forbade them from returning? To be sure, things were different as death entered the world, weeds entered the world, and mosquitos (must have) entered the world, for how could mosquitos be part of God’s perfect plan?

Have you ever thought about how it was that at that moment the necessity for God’s son to come and pay for our sins became a reality? The consequences of a fallen world – a world gone bad – was that the world was no longer populated by good things. Evil had entered the world making Christ’s sacrifice necessary. And then all was not good…or was it?

If we split the history of the world into the times when all was good and the times when all was not good, I think we might possibly run into a problem. Paul says in Ephesians 3:7-13 that the mystery of the gospel, hidden for ages, is a thing God planned from deep in eternity past, meaning that prior to the creation of the world God orchestrated Christ’s atoning and unifying sacrifice. Now, I’m not very smart, but when scripture indicates that God knew the inevitability of cross even before he created the universe, the very universe he declared good, I become lost in a mystery.

It is possible God was only declaring the material elements of creation good, and not the moral elements, such a thing could be easily argued. But I think it could also be argued that God makes no real distinction between these two realms. In fact, I believe one of the errors of the mystics and the many monastic movements was their bifurcation of the material and the spiritual, almost to the point where the material realm is seen as evil, leaving only the spiritual to be good. But scripture seems to be quite clear that this is not the case. God took the form of a human, which most theologians would suggest is an eternal union of the material and divine, and if so, then we could never conclude that God’s incarnation is evil on any level. As such, when God declared this world to be very good, I think it is possible he was declaring the entirety of the world good: its past, its present, and its future.

It is good for me that I was afflicted…

I’ve not known many people who look call their pains and struggles in life good. Most of the time they are unfortunate consequences of the fall or an unwanted circumstance of life, but rarely, if ever, are they called good. But it is even less popular to acknowledge that this life’s afflictions were known by God well before the creation of the earth itself. But if God had planned from eternity past to send his son for our salvation, then it must be true that he knew of all the events which would necessitate Christ’s sacrifice. And furthermore, if God could know all of these things and still look at his creation and call it very good, then I ought to be able to look at the grimy details of my life and say, along with the psalmist, “it is good for me that I was afflicted.”

It is not the affliction that is good, (though such a thing might be argued), but it is how the affliction brings about good for us that is good. For whatever reason, and the reasons are known only to God, the path leading us to become more like Christ winds through this beautiful, yet fallen world among many valleys overshadowed by death, dry deserts lacking water, and dark times filled with loneliness, doubt, and depression. And somehow, yes, somehow God knew all of these things before he created the world and yet he still stood back from his creation and declared it all good, every bit of it: past, present, and future.

Before I was afflicted, I went astray…
It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.