Background Jefferson Bethke is originally from Tacoma, Washington and has authored several books, including Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough. He was speaking at Liberty University’s Convocation for the second time. Notes Jefferson starts out asking the audience members if they are a Genesis 1 or Genesis 3 Christian, and explains that a lot of people focus so much on the sin and brokenness in Genesis 3 that they tend to forget about the beauty of the original creation in Genesis 1. Being created in God’s image is a very important part of our story because even when we do sin we can be saved because we aren’t defined by that sin, we are defined by Him and He created us (as well as the rest of Earth) to be good. He explains that the other problem that stems from undervaluing Genesis 1 is that it shifts focus to sin management, therefore making God’s purpose seem like it is only to tend to your individual sins when is reality he does so much more than that. He also presents the idea that Genesis 1 is thought to resemble the same framework used to build temples. He uses the imagery that the last step is to put an image of God in the temple and that mankind is the image of God and the Earth is the temple. This means that we are all image bearers of God and it is our job to reflect that image outwards to other people as well as gathering it and reflecting it back to God. His most important point however is that while it is great to try to not sin, God continues to love us and want a more intimate with us even after we sin. Mankind sinned and instead of pulling away or shutting us out, he manifested himself in Jesus to walk on Earth among us. We kill Jesus, and instead of giving up on us he puts the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us. Despite our sins, God’s main goal is for us to have a more intimate relationship with Him. This sermon was trying to encourage us to really examine our individual relationships with God and to strive to make it a more intimate one. Jefferson pointed out that so many people go through the motions and try so