The world is a hostile place. The garden stories in Genesis give voice to an ancestral memory that it was not always thus.  These stories also articulate the Iron Age theology the permeates much of the scriptures, that the difficulties humanity faces must be their own fault. Yet the world is also a glorious creation celebrated by the psalmist. Yet the gospel makes clear that there are very real dangers in the present world that are the consequence of human evil, greed and grasping imperial ambitions while the epistle assures that in all these things God is with us and for us.