Why Going Against Creation Is Going Against God
Mankind was made to be productive and work hard. As Charles Spurgeon said, “He who does not work is not a righteous man, for he is out of accord with that which makes for righteousness.” Or, as my dad often said, “There’s nothing better than a hard day’s work.” And yet, in our world, it seems more and more people are inclined to opt out of hard work. And often, this is incentivized by leftist ideas and policies that reward such opting out.
God designed the world to be a place of production in which fruitfulness and life are baked into the fabric of the world. Think about it: The natural world is created in such a way that if you plant a seed in the ground, it becomes a fruitful plant. God designed men and women to marry and produce children. We were appointed to work and for that work to be productive so that we may enjoy God’s world. We are called to participate in God’s creational purposes by having dominion and making the rest of the world look like the garden. We are to be fruitful and multiply in a world of hierarchy and harmony.
However, this creational design and our work within it are now cursed by sin due to the Fall. Even the two primary vocational callings of mankind are now under that curse. To the woman, God said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). The design for fruitful marriages now comes with pain. The creational hierarchy of wives submitting to husbands is marked by rebellion and domination.
Similarly, to the man, God said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19). A world that was always designed to contain work now also contains toil, loss, and, ultimately, death.
In Christ, God has restored our dominion mandate to be fruitful and multiply. When we were commanded to disciple the nations and teach them to observe all Christ has commanded, that included how God has designed the world and mankind’s calling to be fruitful and productive in it.
All of this flies in the face of leftist doctrine, which is inherently anti-productive, anti-created-order, and ultimately anti-Creator. When we see a society that advocates for an overturning of creational hierarchies in the name of equality, as we see in the feminist movement, and furthermore celebrates the destruction of the very fruitfulness that God designed in marriage by rebranding abortion as ‘women’s rights,’ we are seeing a society that hates God’s world. When we see a society that suggests that fruitfulness can come from perverse unions of men with men via human trafficking called “surrogacy,” we are seeing a violation of God’s good plan for fruitful multiplication. When workers are not offered their wages but instead forced to pay for those who will not work in the name of ‘care,’ we are seeing a violation of the universal command to subdue the earth.
Everywhere we see leftist policy, from economics and the welfare state, to no-fault divorce, to subsidizing promiscuity, to the destruction of the unborn, we see that it kicks against God’s design for the world and, therefore, “kicks against the pricks.” It does not honor God as the sovereign but instead assumes a view of justice that makes the state God. As Chesterton wrote, “Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God.”
When you see policies that stem from a discordant worldview with God’s creational design, you are not merely seeing policies that are neutral options in the marketplace of ideas. You are seeing open defiance of God’s creational design.
As the church, we must not embrace any part of this doctrine but return to our original mandate. And we can do so in confidence, knowing that our God has removed the stain of sin, beaten death, and defeated the curse. In the words of the great hymn: “No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.”