Genesis 1:27
Mankind is Made in God's Image
27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 3:1-5
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Matthew 13:44-46
The Special Merchant and His Pearls
44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Matthew 20:16
The Last Will Be First
16 "So the last will be first, and the first will be last."
When we fell from grace, the evil one told us that we would be like God...But things went terrible wrong after Paradise...We weren't anything like God...The evil one had lied to Eve and Adam...There were many other things the evil one left out in telling us what eating the fruit from the tree in the garden would do...We get lost so often, and lost in so many things...And the evil one wants us to get caught up, as often as we can, in trying to be first or the greatest...So we often get lost just in the busyness of life itself...We can get caught up and bogged down in many things...Mankind's history has been tainted with wanting more land, building empires, special architect, wars, bigger buildings, building wealth, having poverty, more and different ambitions, being famous, prostitution, putting people in classes, slavery of people, invention -and we have progressed, and we call our times modern...There has been this long sad history and story of humanity searching for that next thing to make us happy and happier...And we like material things, more and more of them...And so might ask ourselves, have we progressed?...
Another question we need to ask -Can we be happy without God?...Can we be apart from God and happily be our own masters?...Jesus tells us in the Parable of the Special Merchant and his pearl finding, that very few people find this Special Value about the Kingdom of Heaven...We fail to recognize its real value and its utmost and great and significance importance...Only a few Special Merchants have recognized its true and sacred value...The Merchant knew where joy is found in life...The Merchant must have been one of our Saints...Saints know this Special Value of the Kingdom of Heaven...
I think C. S. Lewis explains the Fall of Man, God as our Creator, and recognizing the Kingdom of Heaven, very well and said it in this way..."Here, no doubt, we ask a question to which human beings cannot give an answer with any certainty...A reasonable (and traditional) guess, based on our own experiences of going wrong, can, however, be offered...The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the center—wanting to be God, in fact...That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race...Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake...What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God...And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy...The reason why it can never succeed is this...God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine...A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else...Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself...He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on...There is no other...That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion...God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there...There is no such thing...That is the key to history...Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong...Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin...In fact, the machine conks...It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down...They are trying to run it on the wrong juice...That is what Satan has done to us humans."...
God created us...He is our Father, from the Creator's sense...He completely knows each of us...Since we are made in His Image, we are meant to seek Him and be as near to Him as we can be...And one of the treasures of earth He teaches us is that we feel good when we serve others...If our soul is unhappy, we are unhappy...We cannot think our way into happiness or invent something new to make a lasting happiness...Our soul is made to be close to God...He Himself is what brings us this happiness...Happiness is not wealth, more wealth, sex, ambition, the next new things, in a chair behind a big desk, or something found in a new job...Even after man has attained all these things, he asks himself "Is that all there is (to life)?"...After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of God...The Kingdom of Heaven is where God and His Son are...There lies joy and happiness...