The World is not Broken

The Third Discourseman

I wonder if you’ve ever heard a Christian, even a conservative evangelical, tell you that we live in a broken world. I guess this says something helpful, namely that the world is not functioning as it originally intended. But I don’t really like the phrase. It’s like, ‘Oh no, the fridge broke, we need to get a new one.’ ‘Whoops, I just broke a plate, sorry.’ Most of the time when we say something is broken, the way it broke was either incidental, some sort of fault we were completely unaware of, or accidental, some sort of clumsy mishap.

‘Oh no, the fridge broke, we need to get a new one.’ ‘Whoops, I just broke a plate, sorry.’ ‘Darn, we just disobeyed God and are now cursed with frustrated life, ending in painful death, and being booted out of Eden.’ It just doesn’t ring true. The brokenness of this world is neither accidental nor incidental- it is very much our fault.

Of course, we don’t always use ‘break’ when talking about accidents or eventual wear and tear over time. It can be deliberate- ‘Mum, Jimmy just broke my necklace’, or something like that. So can we talk of a broken world if we remember to mention we’re the ones that broke it? Sort of. But even then- are we the ones that broke the world? It was Adam’s disobedience that brought curses on humanity. But it was God who cursed it. So if anyone broke the world, it was God. And did he really break it? It still exists, and in many ways it still works. Life has been frustrated, for sure. But life still goes on. Humanity is as much called to multiply in Genesis 9 after the flood as in Genesis 2 before the fall. And God still intends for humanity to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. People still eat, work, marry.

Much easier to speak of a cursed world. Easy first and foremost because this is the actual language the Bible uses. I’ve yet to see the phrase ‘broken world’ in my Bible reading, though perhaps some translation somewhere chooses it at some point.

But secondly because it removes doubt as to cause and blame. If something is broken, that could be an accident or simply the inevitable deterioration of something over time. If the world is cursed, then someone cursed it, and if God has cursed the world, that begs the question, ‘Why?’. I think this may well be why people opt for ‘broken’- it’s just a bit less offensive, confrontational. Sure, it acknowledges that something has gone wrong somewhere. But in a way that could make it sound like nothing more than an unhappy accident.

And cursed is a more accurate description. In many ways the world is not broken. Humanity still does all of the things God created us for and gave to us in Genesis 1-2. Plants, birds, seas, sky, sun, moon, day, night all still exist. We still work the ground and produce food. We still marry and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion. We are still made in the image of God. And while not all do, it is still possible to call on the name of the LORD to be saved, to have eternal life, to be blessed.

But all of these things (excluding the last set) are cursed- life is finite, childbirth is painful, work is tough, nature fights back, and for many God’s wrath still looms.

The world is not broken, it’s cursed. So let’s make sure we tell people. And that we tell them who cursed it- God. And why- because of our sin. And how this curse will be reversed- through the gospel.