Who Told You That? Awe, the Garden, and the Lie That We Don't Belong | Who Told You That? | Chad Belew

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How many people watched "The Artemis 2"?

You see any videos of it?

Pink?

There's that message

from astronaut Victor Glover

was

just incredible.

There's an Easter message that was taught on Easter, honestly.

There's this thing

that happens, and I haven't been into

space stuff my whole life, right? We took the kids to NASA

a while back, and it was cool. There's definitely been times where

Marty and I've been sitting and we're like, "Did they really go to the moon?"

That's just because

there's a lot of things we could fix

if we're that good at technology.

But there's just

crazy thing about this picture.

The Artemis 2, if you don't know, NASA just sent a

crew, I think it was 250,000 miles away from Earth.

It's the furthest that anyone's ever gone into space. This is on the other side

of the moon taking a picture of Earth, and you can see how small

Earth looks.

And it's just

it's pretty incredible to look at. I think here

Victor Glover talked from this kind of vantage point where he's

seeing this on Easter of all days.

And it reminds us that we're

he tries to remind us that we are one.

That we need each other.

That love of neighbor

is not optional. It's

like the way that this world is supposed to work.

It's the only way that we're going to make it through this together.

And I think he lays this out beautifully.

I'm going to

maybe get that

gut feeling like I do when I see it, but

does something to me. Because when you zoom out

like our astronauts got the opportunity to do,

a lot of things that feel huge down here start

looking to look different.

Borders start looking smaller.

Categories start looking smaller. Arguments start looking smaller.

Tribes start looking smaller. And what starts looking bigger

is the fact that we're all here together.

All of us.

Not just us in this like all of humanity is here together.

Floating on this little blue ball in the sky.

One human family, one fragile

home, and one shared life.

Over the last

several years, psychologists and

astronauts have got together and they've talked about this thing that

Victor Glover experienced. What he was sharing with

us from Artemis.

They call it the overview effect.

It's this shift that happens when

astronauts see Earth from space and suddenly they experience this

overwhelming sense of like beauty and fragility and

unity and connectedness.

It's not just that the Earth looks beautiful.

The vantage point that they are at, they realize how

artificial so many of our divisions are.

And they realize how connected we are.

They realize how much of what we fight over depends on

being too close to the ground to actually see clearly.

And

it's part of why I wanted to kind of begin there today.

Because last week at Easter we started

opening up some big things and I

know that some of the things I said landed differently for different people

because I got your messages.

For some of you maybe it felt freeing, for some of you maybe

it felt new. And for some of you maybe

it stirred up some questions and honestly that's good because at the arsenal we believe

that growth happens in the questions and so we want to ask those questions.

Bless you.

He sneezed like me.

But

the thing is I don't want to just throw out big ideas

and just keep moving like none of that matters.

Some things I think need room that one Sunday

doesn't give us the opportunity to really like talk about

even though I talked for like almost an hour last week which I'm not supposed to do on Easter.

They tell you don't do that.

But I didn't have enough time to expand on a lot of these thoughts. So over the next like

eight weeks or so we're going to slow down together. And

I want to be honest and look through some of the things

that we're talking about and some of the things that I brought up

some of these things are they're not brand new to me but

they're newer in like my larger arc of my

faith journey.

And so we're going to wrestle with some things together.

There are things that I've been wrestling with like

rethinking, unlearning, revisiting, sitting with,

studying. So first of all I think I've told you guys this before

if you're new here you'll hear it now. Like

this is not me up here saying I solved

it all. I don't ever want to be the answer guy

that's not my job I think is a pastor.

I'm not here to give the answer. I can tell you where I'm

where I'm working through. I can invite you in to the conversation. I want to stir up questions.

I want growth to happen in you.

And so I mean if you've got like simple questions

like math stuff I might be able to help you.

But I want us to learn to ask better questions

together. That's the hope of this. And the question over this whole series

is who told you that?

Who told you that? And the subtitle here says

"How Fear, Shame and Bad Religion Distort the Way We See God."

Who told you that?

Because sometimes the deeper question I don't think is

what do I believe? Sometimes it's

where did that come from? Who taught me that?

Who told me what God is like?

Who told me that what people are like?

Who told me who belongs and who doesn't? Who told me who is my enemy?

Who's supposed to be my friend? Because one of the things

that we've talked about for a long time and what the overview effect

is, is this experience of that emotion

awe. And what it does, it helps us

expose how many of the lines we live by

were handed to us before we ever really examined them.

Dr. Keltner, the guy that I talk about all the time,

psychologist who studies awe. He talks about how awe changes our perspective.

It makes us feel small, but not in a bad way

and in the best way possible. In a freeing way that

it widens the frame. Think of an astronaut flying out

into space and seeing how small Earth begins to get

in their perspective and their vantage point. This is this experience of,

expanding your view, zooming out.

It reminds us that we're part of something bigger than our own fear,

our own ego, our own tribe,

our own little world.

And I think, I think this is why the overview effect is such

like a powerful image of this message because what astronauts are describing

is not just beauty. Like if you listen to

Victor and if you just put in the overview effect and

astronauts in YouTube, NASA actually did this

series where they interviewed astronauts. I was going to show it today, but it's like 8 minutes.

I want to talk. I'm just kidding.

I was going to play it, but I have another video later.

But they all say the same

thing. When they zoom out

things just, the perspective just changes. We can't see

all the separation that we're so used to.

All we see is this

ball. And when they describe it, it's

pretty cool. When they talk about like, depending on where they're at

what's on the moon or where at in space, they can see

the atmosphere, the ring around her. It's like green or

blue. And I think in the video later,

Christina will talk about it.

They say like we're all inside of this thing together

floating on this little ball through earth together. And

what happens on one side of the earth that maybe we can't see on the ground but from up there

they can affect what happens on the other side. Like there's

it all works together.

And they're not just describing

beauty when they talk about it. This beautiful earth, they're describing

belonging.

It's the shock of remembering that we are all connected.

And this is what "aw" does.

"aw" teaches us what fear

made us forget. And that's

where I want to start this series and this conversation. Not with like the

rupture of trust. Last week when we talked about the

garden, Genesis 3, we're going to talk about that today.

The trust rupture in the relationship between humanity

and God. We're not going to start this with

that trust rupture or with guilt first but with kind of the bigger

picture. We're going to zoom out a little bit. Because I think one of the tragedies of the human

story is that we become so used to

looking at life like from ground level. Most of us

that's the only level we can be at unless you can fly.

I haven't figured that out yet but

I tried to fly a helicopter a while back. Paid money

go out. Like Jayden and I went. My 21 year old. We were like

let's go learn how to fly helicopters. That is not easy. I was like I don't know

I thought I wanted to do this. I love flying in helicopters.

There's so many things you have to do. We almost died.

And we were like probably 20 feet from the ground.

I don't know if it felt like it. The instructor was like

all right you're going to hover so I'm going to let go and you can hover

and so we were like I don't know how far we were. We weren't very far.

But to hover you have to like use your feet and make sure nothing moves

and like a slight movement and you're like

you're gone and Jayden was better at it than me.

I'm old. But we haven't figured out how to fly yet so the only

vantage point we get is ground level. And that's kind of

it's fear level. It's tribal level. It's

we no longer even notice how

small our vision has become. And then

I started thinking about Paul.

And what Paul talks about on this because Paul in his own version of overview

gives us some explanations on what this looks like for us.

Paul says that we're

all in Adam.

So we go back to the starting point and he starts with this idea that we are all that humanity

is in Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15-21

Paul says for since death came through a man

the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

22 says for as in Adam

all die. Now Paul is talking about humanity here.

He's comparing Adam and Christ.

As in Adam all die. All of us are in

one man, humanity. And when you

go back to the beginning in Genesis 3 we talk about

last week the idea that this is a moment

where not just Adam and his relationship with God was

broken but humanity's relationship with God is broken.

Humanities trust and God was broken.

And Paul says because when Jesus

said if you do this you will surely die Paul says that in Adam

all die. So in Christ all will be made alive.

Now if we're all that it's humanity we are connected

there's all of us together in one man

in one man.

I think this gathering of connectedness

matters. Because Paul's not

telling a story about isolated individuals that

are just floating around out in

earth or out in the atmosphere

or that are just spiritually disconnected

from God and from each other. But he's telling a story about

connectedness, about solidarity, about a shared humanity,

a shared wound that happened. And then a shared rescue that happened.

We were all in Adam.

We were all caught up in this trust rupture in the relationship with

God. And in Christ Paul says

grace reaches all the way into

the human family.

So even there, both sides

of the story it's not just personal.

We've turned this thing into just our personal relationship with

God. Right? But if you really, if you zoom

out, if you pull this perspective back, if you step back and

you look at the story of all of this, it is not just this

personal relationship. It's communal.

It's shared. It's connected. I think

one of the deepest things that we have to recover

is that when humanity lost sight of our union with God

we also lost sight of our union with each other.

And that's why this moment in the garden

matters so much. It's why this thing that we call the fall

of man matters so much.

Because the fall is not just a story about one bad act.

It's a story about what happens when human

vision narrows.

It's what happens when fear replaces trust. It's what happens

when shame replaces openness, when accusation replaces

communion, when separation becomes the story that we live inside of.

And when you go back to Genesis 3

it's exactly what begins to happen. This is the

starting point for us. The serpent enters the story

and doesn't begin by telling

you to just do some action.

Just behave. Just take the fruit.

He begins with distorting God.

The serpent says, the serpent was more crafty

than any of the wild animals. The Lord God

that the Lord God had made. I always cut there. I don't know what.

Every time I read this I put a comma. I'm like, there's no comma.

Anyway, he said to the woman,

"Did God really say

you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" The woman said to the serpent

we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden but

God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree

that's in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die.

A serpent? You'll not

certainly die. What does that statement say?

Now God's a liar.

You're not going to die. God's lying to you.

The serpent goes on to say to the woman, "For God knows

that when you eat from it your eyes

will be opened and you will be like God knowing good

and evil." God knows

what's going to happen. God lies to you. It says you're going to die because

God knows what's going to happen. And obviously if God knows what's going to happen then he doesn't

want you to experience that. He's keeping something from you.

Did God really say God knows

what's going to happen? In other words, can you really trust this God?

Is God really like for you?

Is God holding on

to you? Is God holding out on you?

Is God safe? Is God good?

And that's the first

fracture between humanity and a relationship with God.

Can you trust God?

Not the bite of the apple.

It's the lie.

When humanity began to believe

the serpent changes the story. And once this false

story about God enters the relationship everything else begins to unravel.

That's right. I said before

I'll say it again that the lie came first then

the biting of the fruit. The lie came first then the

disobedient act. But the believing of the lie is what led to

anything else.

Richard worse says it this way. The fall is not so much about doing wrong

as it is about seeing wrongly.

I think this helps

clear up some lines in Genesis 3.

This is not about an act of doing

wrong. It is about what do you believe and what are you seeing?

This was the shift

in the relationship. It's not

denying the disobedience that happened because that happened.

But something real happens before that.

Trust is ruptured. Consequences are real

and then the exile is real where God says you can no longer

stay here. But Roar helps us see that underneath the

act is a shift in perception.

It's a false way of seeing. And once that

lie is believed they don't just see God differently.

They see themselves differently too.

That's what Genesis says that they were naked and unashamed in Genesis

225. They were naked and they had no shame.

They were open, relationally exposed

and they had no shame.

They didn't know what that meant. Because shame is to think

that you are bad. There's something wrong

with you. They didn't have that.

The relationship trust was all there.

And then suddenly in chapter 3 they're covering

themselves. They're hiding themselves. They're afraid.

They're blaming each other.

Daniel, go back to Genesis, or you're already on it, my bad.

They were both naked and they felt no shame. Shame is a belief.

It's an emotion but it is driven by

how you believe, what you believe about yourself.

And then you go into Genesis 3 and the belief about themselves changes.

And when it changes

another act happens. They have to cover themselves. They've got to hide.

Before any of that happened

openness was natural.

The relationship was good. But now openness feels dangerous.

Before that presence was safe. Just to be in the presence of God

was the safest thing for them. Now in Genesis 3

presence feels threatening.

And that right there is the narrowing of the perspective

of the trust of the relationship. It's the rupture point.

It's human story and like

miniature. Like we can see us

right there. This is us. Do we trust this?

Because what happens is

sin narrows our vision into

separation. And when we talk about

all, all widens

it again into belonging.

So we're going from separation, what we're trying to do is get back to belonging, to understand

that we do belong in relationship, that we are in relationship, that we are at peace with

God.

And for some of us this type of language

sounds different.

So are you saying that

Adam and Eve didn't sin? No

they did sin.

It was a while ago one of the things that we discussed and talked about was

what is sin?

Who told you what sin is?

Who told you that? The Bible did.

Somebody told you it. Somebody read it to you. Somebody told you

what to see. But what is sin?

For a lot of us it's

the word for sin. It's an archery term.

Anybody heard that? It's about

missing the mark.

To sin is to miss the mark. Now what

happened for most of us is we were told what the mark is.

What's the bullseye?

If sin is missing the mark, what is the bullseye?

Perfection.

Right actions.

Not doing the things that the Bible tells us not to do.

Is that the mark?

Because when I look at it from a

relational perspective, when I look at it from a perception

of relationship, when we look at it from Genesis 2 and Genesis 3

where they go from unashamed to shame and hiding

there is a mindset shift that happens.

They no longer believe they are safe in a relationship with God.

And if you're not safe in a relationship

what do you do?

I can't let you know what's wrong. What I've done wrong.

I can't let you know that. So what mark did they miss?

Was it the action? Was it not doing?

Or was it doing the thing that God told them not to do?

Francois de Trois says that sin is to believe less about

yourself than God believes about you.

To believe less about who you are

than what God says about you.

That sin. And now if we go to that

as the mark, as the bull's eye

now when shame enters

and I no longer believe that I am everything that God says I am I have to hide.

You guys have heard this

in the difference between guilt

and shame. Guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is

I am wrong. There's something wrong with me. It is a belief about me.

In this story in Genesis 3 both of those

things happen. Guilt, Adam and Eve

did something that they were told not to do. Guilty.

But the bigger issue here is the

shame that entered in. It's the

disbelief and distrust of the relationship with God.

Because in a healthy relationship

if you mess up, you can come to the person

because you trust them and you say I messed up.

And that person

can do a multitude of things but in a healthy

trusting relationship and depending on how much you hurt them

they can say well let's figure this out.

Let's just work through this. I still love

you. You're not broken.

We just got to fix that. For so many of us

the actions that we do are

a ripple effect, a manifestation,

a symptom of a disbelief about who we are.

If I don't believe that I am everything that God says I am that I have to prove

that I am better than you.

And to prove that I'm better than you when performance becomes the thing

I can't tell you when I mess up. So then we, what do we

do? We all take a bunch of fig leaves and we

sew them together and we hide. We hide what we're struggling with.

We hide the things that we are doing that are wrong.

That's a symptom.

The disease that entered into humanity in the fall in Genesis

3 is the misperception of who God is.

It is a distrust of the character of God. And when that

disease entered into Adam and if we are all connected

and all one it enters into us and Jesus comes and says

I'm going to fix this.

I'm going to show you who you really are.

Because

in Genesis 3 the human family

experienced a trust rupture with God.

With the Creator. And what happens there?

It creates division.

We see each other differently now.

It creates an us versus them.

It creates enemy thinking.

It creates suspicion of everything and everyone including God.

It creates the need to label,

to sort, to separate, to exclude, to draw

borders and boundaries and say these people are wrong and these people

are right and these people are good and these people are bad.

At some level this all

the fall, the brokenness, it all begins

to lead us aside that we can define good and evil

from inside of fear and apart from trust.

And that's what God says to Adam and Eve. This is the tree

of the knowledge of good and evil.

Don't eat of it.

Because you're not going to get discernment there. There's no wisdom

there. It's judgment just soaked in separation.

And once that consciousness enters

into the story then everything starts fracturing. The self-fractures

relationships fracture, communities fracture, nations fracture.

And one of the clearest memories that I have when I was in Iraq

this is my first deployment. I was sitting with a source

an Iraqi that I was working with. He was a Shia Muslim

and we've been working together for like eight months.

I think I've told you guys about lucky. We call him lucky because he got shot five times

and he survived. That's lucky.

Lucky was Shia and we were sitting and talking and

he was like going on and on and on about some neighbors that lived

in the neighborhood adjacent to his neighborhood and they were Sunni

Muslims and so Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims they believe a little bit different thing about

Islam and their religion. So

he just like there was like a hatred. And I was like

lucky like

why don't you like them? He's like because

I don't. But why don't you like them?

Well because we don't.

It's a push a little bit like but why? And he looks at me and buddy

who was like probably in his 50s I think I don't know he lived a rough life he could have been like

27. But

he finally said I really don't know

it's just what I've been told my whole life.

And that sounds crazy

but we all have that.

How many people

have we been taught to distrust? To dismiss? To fear?

To judge? To other?

Who told us that?

Who told us those people were the problem? Who told us those neighbors

were the threat? Who told us that division was normal? Who told us

that we were supposed to live this way? Because we do.

We do it in religion and politics

with race, with class, with nationality, sexuality, denominations, ideology.

We do it with whole groups of people we don't even know.

Or that we barely know.

A lot of the time if we're really honest the answer would

be the same as buddies. I don't actually know why. That's just what I've been told.

And this is why I think this emotion

of all matters so much this idea that is zooming out.

Because it makes us step back it makes us widen the frame it reminds

you that reality is bigger than the categories that fear taught

you to live inside of.

And I think when I saw the video of Victor Glover

I think that that is what he's trying to describe to us.

These astronauts that they see earth and they suddenly the lines disappear.

Not because pain isn't real. Not because conflict isn't real.

Not because justice isn't or doesn't matter.

But because from that vantage point the deeper truth becomes

harder to ignore that we belong to each other.

And when I hear them talk about it I can't help but think about

Jesus in the gospel.

Because Jesus says things that only makes sense if separation

is not the deepest truth for us.

Jesus tells us things in the gospel where he says to love your

enemies.

And we've talked about this. It's one of the most impossible things Jesus ever says.

If enemy is the deepest reality in our lives then to love your

enemy is crazy.

But what if enemy thinking itself is part of the

fallen imagination? Because if we are all connected and we are all one then I can't be

more enemy because we're one.

To hate you is to hate me.

And I think in that, we've talked about this a while about

in that conversation where Jesus says to love your enemy I think he is trying to

explain to us that when you love someone who you think is your enemy they won't be your

enemy for very long. Because I don't think Jesus

is saying fake it till you make it kind of thing.

You say like love them. Because when you do you're going to realize that they are

human just like you. And they are struggling with

their own identity just like you. And when you begin to

remind each other of who you are and that you

are loved not because of what you've done or not done but because of

just being human. Being created by the creator

that is love. When we begin to see each other is that way then

we can't have enemies.

I think he's teaching us to return to the reality of the garden

because in the garden there were no enemies. There was

communion, there was openness, there was union, there was shared life

and Jesus comes into the world built on

an us and them mentality and he says no no no love

them your enemies. Why?

Because love is the refusal to let

separation have the final word.

Are you going to Jesus' words in John 17?

Before he goes to the cross he's praying.

That they may be one. I ask not only

for these disciples but also for all those who will one day believe in

me through their message. I pray for them all to be joined together as

one. Even as I as you and I father are joined together as one

I pray for them to become one with us so that the world will recognize

that you sent me. I pray that they will know that they are one.

He prays for oneness.

Jesus doesn't pray for a tighter tribe. He doesn't

pray for cleaner categories. He doesn't pray for people to

get better at dividing the world.

He prays for oneness. Not sameness. Not control.

Not forced uniformity. Oneness.

Because that's the healing that the human story needed.

Who told you? Who told you that?

Who told you you were supposed to live afraid of each other. Who told you that

division is wisdom. Who told you that your enemy is your enemy forever.

Who told you that being human means living cut off from

love. Who told you that separation

is normal.

The fall teaches us division but love

teaches us we belong to each other again. They were working

in this together and when we work in this together might

actually start to experience the love and the connectedness and the oneness

that we had in the garden in the first place. The mark

of perfection was oneness and

love without separation. We're going to end with a video

from another astronaut that was on Artemis II.

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Planet Earth, you are a crew.

She says that we're all in this together and if we're doing this together for each

other then we will reach the destination that we all were made

for. So the lie of the garden of the fall is

separation then the truth of the gospel is that we belong.

And we belong to each other. No more

enemies, no separations, no us and them. This is what Jesus was teaching us over

and over and over again. I love what

awe does because it zooms out.

It says all these divisions that you've created are just ground level

things. Pull back a little bit

and see that the human across from you no matter what they believe, what they say, who they

are is part of you.

You're all in a crew together and we got to learn how to love each other.

But it takes a lot because this

lie has been going on for a really, really, really long time.

And the only way to change the lie is to do what we

say every single week when we leave here.

To love someone well, especially someone who thinks that you're not going

to love them. Because that's what Jesus did. He went

to the ones that didn't believe they were lovable. They were told by society

over and over and over again they were not lovable. They didn't belong and Jesus went to them and said

you do. And I love you and I'm here to show you why you do

that. That is what removing ourselves from separation

and stepping into trust with God and understanding that we belong. We are at peace with

God that we are loved by God. Now we get to go love people

well. Because that's what we were made to do.

So go do that. Bring the garden

to earth and go love each other well.

We'll see you next week.