Far from thinking that sin has narrowed God’s purpose, Reformed Christians assert that
his purpose – which was always an expansive and dynamic one – stands. While some
Christians tell the story rather like this:
Once upon a time God made a beautiful though immature estate and gave it to humankind, instructing Adam and Eve to fill it up and make it even more beautiful. He told them what he wanted where - a lake there and a golf course there, some water-colours in this room, a mural in this one and some portraits in oils here. But then Adam foolishly opened the gate and the wild beasts of sin took over spoiling everything and seeking to kill the people of the estate. So God said (with a certain franticness in his voice), “Hurry, hurry, get inside the panic room and call for help and I’ll let you out when the beasts have been killed and then we can start again elsewhere.” And when some people asked, “but what about the golf course and the lake?” God said, “Never mind the golf course, there’s no time for that now – and the beasts would tear it up anyway. I’m not interested in golf courses, I’m just interested in getting people into the panic room. We’ll have to leave the estate-glorification project until much later.”
the Reformed are more likely to think like this:
Although we are in the thick of a long and bloody war and although victory in that war is the single top priority for us, yet military engagement is not all that we are to do. Never mind the falling bombs, at four each afternoon we shall take tea in the drawing room, drinking from bone china cups and doing the crossword together. Poems, plays, and novels shall be written, symphonies composed, roses trimmed, and the sick visited. To abandon all activity other than direct military action against the enemy would itself be to surrender to that enemy because it would be to adopt his worldview, his sense of what matters and what works, and thereby to lose the very civilization which he is attempting to destroy.
