As I was reading and meditating on Genesis 1:3-25 last week, I was struck anew by the beauty and goodness of the world God created. The repetition of (And God saw that it was good (vv. 4,10,12,18,21)) and the summary statement in verse 31 (God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good) drives this point home. Yet, I also reflected on the constant temptation to take the good gifts of God and misuse them. This can happen either by exalting a created good to the place of God or denigrating a good gift and thus dishonoring the giver.
As I contemplated these matters, I was also reading a book by Richard Foster called Freedom of Simplicity. I came across the following passage that touched on the paradox of both the goodness and limits of the created order.
A fourth paradox in simplicity is seen in the affirmation of both the goodness and the limitation of material things. The material world is good, but it is a limited good - limited in the sense that we cannot make a life out of it. To deny the goodness of the created order is to be an ascetic. To deny the limitation of the created order is to be a materialist.
The Christian faith views material things as created goods God has given us to enjoy. It does not dismiss material things as inconsequential, or worse yet, evil. The material world is good and meant to make life happy. In fact, adequate provision is an essential ingredient in the good life. In human society today, misery often arises from a simple lack of provision.
Misery also arises when people try to make a life out of provision. While it is an essential ingredient in the good life, it is by no means the only ingredient, nor is it even the most important one. So often the biblical teaching on provision has been taken and twisted into a doctrine of gluttonous prosperity. All the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, coaxing to “love Jesus and get rich” reflects our failure to see the biblical limitation upon things. Incarnated into our theology are covetous goals under the guise of the promises of God. And the interesting thing about all these little gimmicks to blessedness is that they work, they really do work. That is, they work if what we want is a little money; but if we desire the abundance which God gives, they fail.
Saints, let us enjoy and receive with thanksgiving all the good gifts of creation that our God gives to us. But let us guard our hearts so that we not become ungrateful or idolatrous. And one way to do that is to gather for corporate worship and have our hearts reordered to worship the one true God, to confess where we have worshiped created things, and rejoice anew that our Savior in His person and work redeemed us out of bondage to our idolatry. May our proper experience of God’s good gifts lead us to right worship of Him.
