Living in a Pandora World

If you don't know the Greek myth of Pandora, you should.  It speaks poigntly into the current secular world view.  Here is the myth in a nutshell:
Pandora (whose name means literally "all-gifted," but can be translated "well-endowed") was the first woman.   She was created by Hephaestus (the god of craftsmanship) at Zeus' command.  She was the then granted wonderful gifts by the other gods to honor Zeus (beauty from Aphrodite, music from Apollo, etc.).  As humanity begins to grow, Prometheus has pitty on them for they live more like beasts than gods and so he steals fire from Mount Olympus and gives it to them.  Zeus now fears that man shall become like the gods (are you picking up some Eden-type themes here?).  Zeus reasons that man's curiosity and self-determination will be insatiable, and decides to play on that.  He entrusts Pandora with a jar (not actually a box) with a warning that it contains great power and should never be opened. Pandora is indeed overcome by her curiosity and upon opening the jar releases into the world all manner of evil and violence.  But Zeus' greatest revenge is not in the loosing of evil, but in what lay on the bottom of the Jar.  As Pandora realizes what she has done she quickly replaces the lid to the jar trapping its final component: hope.  Thus the world was plunged into a hopeless struggle with all manner of evil.
   This view of the world has held to our present day.  People live lives of despair and hopelessness as they realize that evil does appear to be winning.  But here is the difference between truth and the lie.  God has dealt with our Pandora reality, by birthing hope into the world.
   For it was into this world of hopelessness that a baby was born.  He was a child unlike any other.  All children bring with them a sense of hope for the future, but this child did not bring hope, this child was hope.  In Jesus, the Father loosed hope into the world.  Jesus came to set the children of God free.  He would take the evil loosed upon the world in the fall of mankind into Himself, bottling it up forever, and in turn He would release hope from the bottom of the jar into a world that desperately needs it.  The truth is that Jesus reversed the curse.
  I am not claiming that the Pandora myth is true, but its parallels to the fall of mankind in the garden is striking, at least as far as the consequences are concerned.  And what a beautiful illustration it makes that Jesus looses the hope bottled up in our hearts, that it might be free to reign among us.  That we might be the people of Hope in a Pandora world.
   This was the basis for my Christmas message this past December.  You can hear it at www.risenchristlcms.org and click the sermons button.