At the beginning of Genesis 3, my NIV Bible has the subtitle "The Fall of Man" which I crossed out and wrote, "Man grows up, goes to college, makes mistakes, LEARNS, GROWS—no longer under parents' protection." I'll admit that the NIV has a much catchier title than I do, but it's a misleading title.
Everyone knows this story (or almost everyone). God says don't eat from this tree, the snake convinces Eve to eat from the tree, she eats and shares with Adam, and then they realise they're naked and hide from God. So God kicks them out of Eden. This story is the basis of all kinds of theologies and ideologies I don't subscribe to which say that humans are inherently evil/sinful/bad. If you've been following my blog much, you might have already picked up on how very much I disagree: I believe humans are inherently good-seeking. This story is just as much a "crucial point" in the story of humanity though, even when not read as the moment when we condemned ourselves to hell. So here's what I'm reading:
Just before Genesis 3, we read: "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." (Genesis 2:25, RSV) Ignorance is bliss, isn't it? Adam and Eve are two young people, living a pretty easy life with everything given to them by their parents (God), and they don't have to worry about anything, not even their own nakedness. The relationship they have with God is that of a very young child and their parents: do what you're told, and your parents will take care of you. God is a pretty liberal parent, giving Adam and Eve only one rule: "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." (Genesis 2:16-17) And it sounds reasonable, right? Probably just a poisonous fruit.
But along comes the snake who tells Eve that not only will it not kill her, but it'll actually make her smarter, wiser, and like God. What kid doesn't dream of being like their parent when they grow up? So she and Adam eat, and their eyes are opened. Adam and Eve eat some magical knowledge-granting fruit, and all of a sudden they realise they're naked—ignorant. No longer are they little kids, and yet they're naked. Instead of instant wisdom, what Adam and Eve get is the realisation that, holy crap, they don't know anything. Along comes God, and they do what any human would do if they were naked: they hide.
So after God finds out what happened, God declares some frightening punishments on Adam, Eve, and the serpent which seem to be coming from a wrathful God, but what I read looks a lot more like God explaining the rules of the game to new players. Adam and Eve decide to leave behind blissful ignorance and the protection of home in favour of labouring for knowledge and the struggle for wisdom. God can't magically hand wisdom to them, since it's not a tangible gift, so God tells them the truth about what what lies ahead: it's going to suck. It's going to be hard. They're going to groan and cry out. But there's no going back. And the snake, the catalyst? Adam and Eve are going to hate that jerk forever; they're going to hold a grudge.
It's part tribal explanation for why they hated snakes so damn much, part thought-provoking allegory. Here, the Bible challenges us to question our relationship with God. We don't have the "pre-Fall" relationship with God anymore, but wisdom didn't just fall out of the tree either. We're in that tough, awkward phase of our relationship with God between blissful youth and "real" adulthood. There is a Mark Twain quote (which varies depending on the source) which humourously describes this change in the relationship of child and parent nicely: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Just before sending Adam and Eve out of the garden, God makes them some clothes ("garments of skin"). Even in this moment that is so often referenced as the moment in which God turns from a loving God into a God who is disgusted by us, reviled by us, even hateful of us, God has not abandoned us.
This story isn't perfect. God didn't write it down for us, and even if God did, we still wouldn't magically understand. And that's the whole point here. The Israelites who kept this story in their oral tradition, and then at last wrote it down didn't understand everything either. Adam and Eve started the journey, and it is far from over. We're still learning, still journeying. In this ancient story, the Israelites tell of humans just like them who chose the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom over blissful ignorance. Adam and Eve chose to develop a conscious of their own and think for themselves rather than assume that what they were taught is right. In Genesis 3, moral conscious is born and we become a little more "like God" and a little less like animals. We become aware of our own foolishness and mortality and of the difference between good and evil. What we do with that knowledge is now up to us. God gives us clothes, but this is our journey. God will provide us with the tools we need, but it is our job to make use of what God offers, now that we have left the blissful ignorance of Eden.
3 comments:
The Jewish take human nature is that we all are born with an inclination towards good (a moral conscience) and an inclination towards "bad," meaning selfishness basically ("yetzer tov" and "yetzer ra"). I find both manifest in the world and find the dichotomy of naturally "bad" and natually good-seeking to be a bit simplistic, though i feel optimistic about the peotential of humans to choose good :)
I don't mean to say that humans naturally do selfless things, nor that humans seek to be selfless. I believe all animals to be "inherently good-seeking" in that they seek to do what is good for themselves, their family, their pack, and what is directly theirs. What sets us apart as human beings is our ability to re-define what we consider "ours." I have a really long, complicated explanation for this, so I would rather explain it in a longer post, rather than a comment here. As a note though, I believe selflessness to be "evil," and I also believe Jesus was 100% selfish. His definition of "self" was limitless, and thus so was his love. I believe he loved himself fully, just as he loved everyone else fully; he died as a result of the narrow definitions of "self" others had, not as a result of some grotesque suicidal self-sacrifice.
I look forward to that blog post! Until i read it, i do remember a couple of people telling me in the past that the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself only makes sense if one loves themself, and assumes in a complete sense. I love how your blog creates conversation :D
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