Gospel of Wealth – Chapter Four

Out of the Garden

Outside of the Garden of Eden was a kingdom of poverty and death. Separation from God made everything difficult. Soil that once sprouted at the slightest mention of a harvest now refused to germinate anything but weeds and worries. Wisdom and knowledge that used to fall from trees evaded Adam with every step and stride. His mind dulled. His mouth gathered dust. His eyes pasted shut. Outside the Garden was a different world. Barren.

This man who was raised in pure privilege now stood naked and stripped of all power. Everything he knew about living revolved around God and God’s glory. He lost his key to wealth and life. Kicked out of the Garden into a strange ‘new’ world, he was naked and afraid. The height of his mental acumen that day would be a fig leaf loincloth – pitiful.

Being outside the Garden might have been tolerable had God said, "you’ll have to work hard for awhile and then I’ll let you back in," but he didn’t say that. He said, "you’re going to have to work hard, real hard, sweat, and then die."

From now on Adam’s way would be the hard road of trial and error. Without God the work of Adam’s hands would be natural and limited and full of problems.

God’s words echoed ominously in his ears. "You’re going to have to work." He didn’t know the meaning of the word. Work with my hands? What could God have meant? This made no sense. God’s power had done all the work before – divine intelligence and spiritual exploit occupied his every waking thought. With God’s hands in the Garden everything worked supernaturally and superabundantly. Never had he heard such a thing. The word WORK grew in his mouth, gagging him, like a piece of rancid meat. Work was the original four-letter word.

Adam had no choice it was work or die. Even worse, it was work and then die. Life began to rot.Out in front of him lay a world unforgiving and brazen with the unexciting prospect that it would kill him in the end. Working to survive became the norm and promised a life colored in shades of gray. What used to be bright exotic colors infinite in spectrum through his heightened sensory perception now became boring, dust coated, and bland.

No accomplishments beyond the daily hand to mouth routine would be tolerated. He once was renowned for the naming of newfound species, now he was inextricably connected with the failure of mankind. He went from light to fig leaf, from life to death.

Working to provide became the norm for every generation to follow. All would loose the meaning of what it was like to be provided for by the glory of God. Life became a striving to survive, a climbing of ladders, a clamoring over others, and fighting to succeed. Not only must people now work they must work for a new master. The one who saw his opportunity and exploited it, Lucifer (Satan). Adam’s loss was Satan’s gain.

Satan became, at once, the god of this world. He took control of the kingdom in true dictatorial fashion. He punished insubordinate people with the stripes of sickness and kept them down with the blinding force of ignorance and poverty. His diligent deception turned common sense upside down. Even today some religious people think that sickness comes from God and poverty is a blessing. In Satan’s perverted theology poverty becomes a prerequisite of holiness. Religious propaganda ruled. Truth was forbidden. Language was changed to root out everything righteous.
Darkness was the greatest of the Devils tools. He turned fear of death into a profitable enterprise. Man through fear of death became subject to every type of bondage.

Adam’s sin separated everyone from the presence of God. Original sin made it impossible to live a holy life. Every generation after Adam was handicapped from the start. They grew further from the Most High every day.

No one on Earth needs a lecture on life outside the Garden of God. Poverty, sickness, strife, hatred, famine, drought, destruction, mental illness, demonic influence, wars, oppression, political instability, and injustice all stem from Satan’s dominion on the Earth and mans inability to love only good. Even the so-called wealth that rich people have accumulated is riddled with problems. Nothing is good, pure, perfect, and holy anymore. Except maybe death.

Adam had it harder than anyone did for he knew what he had lost. We, on the other hand, have become used to this predicament like an animal raised in captivity – we know something is wrong but the bars don’t bother us anymore. We’ve never known the freedom of God’s glory, but the free creature captured enters a living hell.

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