I wish that someone had been there for Eve when she was tempted to jump the fence in Genesis chapter 3! Little did she know that God’s command was a guard rail of ginormous proportions with eternal consequences for all humanity.
Rebels, all
How many times have you seen a sign that says “Wet Paint – don’t touch” and wanted to just check if it was really still wet? You don’t need to, but there’s always something that compels us to test what we hear or read.
Think of a little child: you’ve just said “don’t touch that, it’s hot and you’ll burn yourself”. How many of us can relate to the child then reaching out and touching it, probably while watching for your reaction, until either you rescue them, or they get hurt?
We all seem to have that desire to verify what we’ve been told, and in fact that concept is prevalent in our society. Why should we do what someone else tells us? Can it really be that bad? We are in fact encouraged to test things for ourselves.
Yet there are many guard rails in place for our protection. Road rules, for example. There’s a good reason why we shouldn’t speed in a school zone, yet often we may be in a hurry and think it’ll be all right.
Australians sometimes pride themselves on being rebels. Our convict heritage comes out very strongly: most of the first white Australians were sent to Australia as punishment for breaking the law in England. Many of their crimes were pure survival mode – stealing a loaf of bread, for example, because they had no food. Or taking part, as many did, in an uprising to bring about justice in an unjust society.
So there is an historical tendency among Aussies to eschew authority. On the surface, there seems good reason for this rebellious attitude. Having been sent to Australia against their will for mainly petty reasons, the Poms (Prisoners of Mother England) found Australia a harsh place, unrelenting in posing challenges to merely eking out a living.
Convicts needed great resilience and strength of character to survive not just the physical conditions but what was often abuse from the authorities.
We need discernment to tell if authority is true and the fence is actually a guard rail, and when it is just someone’s means of control. The issue of rebelling against bad or unjust authority is a different matter altogether. In that case the authority is not a guard rail but a fence, and we need different strategies to deal with it.
God’s guard rail has a safety net
In the big scheme of things, when God put the guard rail up in the garden of Eden (don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or you will surely die) he knew what would happen. Knowing that, he put in place a safety net to catch us!
God sent his only son, Jesus, to die in our place so we wouldn’t have to. It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction. It was deliberately ordained from the beginning.
God’s got our back
Just like he planned to send Jesus to be our safety net after Adam and Eve sinned, so he can cover us for our stupidity or deliberate rebellion.
The inescapable, wonderful thing about being a Christian is that regardless of our lapses, God does want the best for us and he is constantly working towards that.
Of course he needs our cooperation to do that. We need to be humble enough to ask his forgiveness and accept the consequences of our actions, but even then God is working for us. He is not repulsed by our stupidity or mistakes. He loves us, understanding our weaknesses.
There are heaps of passages in the Bible that talk about God’s protection and care for us. For example, Psalm Chapter 91, verses 11 – 12: For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; 12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
It is good to look back and see how we have experienced God’s guardianship of our lives, as the angels have obeyed His commands. It is good to remember how liberating it is to obey God in a particular circumstance, ie to treat the guard rail seriously and not jump over it.
It can indeed be a challenge to perceive the fence as a guard rail and not to jump over it!
Aira Chilcott is a retired secondary school teacher with lots of science and theology under her belt. Aira is a panellist for Young Writers and indulges in reading, bushwalking, volunteering at a nature reserve and learning to play clarinet. Aira is married to Bill and they have three adult sons.
Aira Chilcott's previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/aira-chilcott.html
Aira Chilcott is a retired secondary school teacher with lots of science andtheology under her belt. Aira is an editor for PSI and indulges inreading, bushwalking and volunteering at a nature reserve. Aira’s husband Bill passed away in 2022 and she is left with three wonderful adult sons and one grandson.
Aira Chilcott's previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/aira-chilcott.html