The Restoration of Innocence

The Restoration of Innocence Commentary by Clover Xuesong Zhou and John Camden Cite Share Show Bible Passage Fung Chunlan’s photograph I Don’t Know about Tomorrow features a boy in an outfit of ginkgo leaves standing against the backdrop of an ominous storm. As part of a traditional ethos of harmony with nature, Chinese people have long cultivated the ancient ginkgo tree for myriad medicinal uses. Fung’s selection of a classical Western painting style for the stormy background of the photograph is perhaps a comment on the Western origin of the Industrial Revolution, the executioner of global cultures and habitats which has left the gingko tree an endangered species. Likewise, the storm perhaps connotes the inevitable loss of personal innocence. Terrifying prospects confront us all at individual, cultural, and global levels. For parents, this hits particularly hard. The letter to the Ephesians opens by describing God as ‘Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1:3) and ‘the Father of glory’ (v.7). It declares that ‘the saints who are … faithful’ (v.1) have been chosen to be ‘holy and blameless before him [the Father]’ (v.4) through ‘the forgiveness of our trespasses’ (v.7), ‘for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ’ (v.5; all ESV). The language of parenthood and adoption reassures the letter’s addressees of God’s will to protect and restore the holy innocence of believers against the storms of life in the world, even if—or perhaps especially because—the storm is the sum of ‘our trespasses’. In this light, the title I Don’t Know About Tomorrow could be read in two ways: yes, the innocent are unaware of the storms which haunt their horizons, but, conversely, those who are crippled by the weight of an uncertain future in a broken world also ‘don’t know’ something: God’s unfolding restoration of innocence.