February 22

Lent Reading Day 2

Creation of Man and Woman

Genesis 2:4-2:25

I've heard, as probably many of us have, multiple negative comments about this text. God is mysoginist - seeming to hate women, and the story protrays the woman as the only "bad" person - the tempter. Others have said that God is unfair, setting Adam and Eve up for a fall, tricking them into being disobedient. Others have said it's just ridiculous to think - in our post-modern, post-industrial, scientific-worldview-based-world, that such a ridiculous story could explain the creation of the world that took hundreds of thousands, in not millions, of years to evolve, emerge, and exist. Plus no one has ever found this "garden of Eden" - so it must be an ancient myth told and re-told be pre-enlightenment peoples to make themselves feel better.

These comments all miss the point of the story - at least how the story of creation strikes me. Yesteday's reading (Genesis 1:1-2:4) also tells the story of creation. So the Bible actually has two versions - side by side - of the story of the beginning of the universe. If the writers of the Bible were trying to offer a conclusive, evolutionary and scientific explanation of the genesis of the cosmos I doubt that they would have included 2 stories - unless their editor was on vacation the week they put Genesis together. The first chapter tells the story of creation as an invitation to a conversation with God - a God who speaks things into being, speaking with creation as co-subjects, equal, and with whom God seems to be interdependent. The second chapter - today's text - tells the same story with a different theological point - that we are created in God's image - but are not God. The man and woman are equal in creation. For God doesn't create Eve from Adam's foot - but from his rib, his side - the part of the body that will be side by side with her when they are standing together side by side. I think this shows God's intention for interdependence, mutuality, and equality in creation from the get-go. (Of course this isn't my idea - it comes from several French medieval theologians). The fruit in the garden - the temptation of the snake - and the evenutal banishment of Adam and Eve are not meant to paint an unloving portrait of the God of the univese as without mercy, grace, and patience, or meant to justify the latest jockey or 2xist underwear marketing schemes. Rather they remind us of the human condition - that we all are part of what a friend calls the "circle of life." We all are born. We all will die. Adam and Eve seek to change that, with some suggestive encouragement from the snake. Curiously the world "devil" comes from the Greek work "diabolos" which means "the one who divides." And isn't that what happens in this story? In the beginning Adam and Eve are living in interdependence with God and with each other...but by the end they have turned on each other (who else do they have to blame in the garden?) and on God.

How often do I - and we - turn on each other when we're afraid or confronted with our own mortality, brokeness, fears, or uncertainties. As mythical, distant, or destructive (read Sam Harris' latest book) we might suspect these ancient stories to be - there is a reason that these two chapters; two versions of the same story, are at the beginning of what became the collection of testimonies about God that we now call the Bible. They remind us that the God of the universe is seeking us out, taking the initative, inviting us into a conversation - a dance of co-creation and interdependence, and that we in our human-ness somehow learn radical mistrust from one another - what the Biblical writers call sin - fearing that there won't be enough for us, to go around for me to get some, or that God will or even has forgotten us. In this second day of Lent - we have to ask ourselves - how does mistust of God, of others, and even ourselves - rule our lives, reign over our decisions and actions, and govern the way our cultures and nations deal with one another?