Over the years, I’ve
come to understand the follow-on Genesis creation story of Adam and Eve in a
very different way than how I used to understand it, particularly the 3rd
chapter. This is the part where “Adam” and “Eve” seem to be engaging with God
on a pretty normal basis.
[An Aside: “Adam” isn’t a guy’s name, like “John” or William”… it’s actually
more an adjective. In Hebrew it literally means “Person from/of the earth”,
“Earth-Person”, or more appropriately, “Human Being”]
They’re being “raised” in this place called The Garden of Eden – a place where
everything is taken care of for them, a place where they are not held
responsible for anything (and can’t be held responsible for anything), since
they are pretty much immature children; undeveloped in the moral sense,
completely immature in their ability to distinguish right from wrong. In a very
real and practical sense, both “Adam” and “Eve” are not… in psychologically
technical language… independent moral agents.
They are free to cavort in this Garden as much as they would like, frolicking
joyfully, blissfully unaware not only of their own nakedness (I’ll get back to
this later), but also completely unaware (and certainly uninterested) of how
much energy and time and money it takes to keep the place up and running!
However… and here’s the element in the story that turns this into the story
that it is… God has made a rule – a prohibition… the first “Thou Shalt Not!”
God has told them they are not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of Good and Evil. “You may not eat from this tree, or even touch it…
or you will die!” (Gen 3:3) A terribly dangerous thing this tree is to Adam and
Eve! It could kill the two people God created!
Best to have this
dangerous tree put away some place where it can’t hurt these two innocent
creatures – who of course aren’t responsible for taking care of any of this
themselves! Oh, I know a good place for this -says God-… I’ll put this most
dangerous of things right smack in the middle of the garden!
God wasn't around 24/7…
otherwise the wily serpent wouldn’t have had time to influence them. The
serpent indeed influences them enough to eat from the fruit of the tree… and
not long after this, they recognize they are naked.
I certainly don’t
believe this is a literally true story, but it does have some deeper truths and
fundamentals related to healthy human development. For example, initially Adam
and Eve were not independent moral agents. But after eating from the fruit of
this tree they were, presumably, able to indeed distinguish between “Right and
Wrong”… they started metaphorically “growing up”… their eyes were opened, and
they became… (or were on the way to becoming) fully functional adults!
This is what we are
called to do… to become mature grown-ups. Not only is it within us, but it is
our calling to venture into the maturing process of becoming independent moral
agents… to do our best to become self-responsible, self-aware, self-conscious.
My two kids used to not
really care whether they were dressed on not... when they were really little…
when they really didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. Now, I’m
not saying nakedness is wrong (or right), so much as I’m commenting on the
developmental stages of humans and how, at generally a certain age, we begin to
become more self-conscious, more aware of the fact that we’re not extensions of
someone else… we’re growing into the idea that we’re indeed our own persons.
This journey of
self-responsibility is, and has always been, a challenge to us as human beings!
Just look at the rest of this story: Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the
serpent… they passed the buck.
Oh, how human it is to
“pass the buck” of responsibility! Even so, in spite of our normal tendency to
“pass the buck”, the deeper message of this story is that it still remains our
deeper work to stand up and say, “the buck stops with me”.
While we may see this
story as humanity’s terrible loss of Eden – which many do – (Oh, if it hadn’t
been for that evil serpent [and that wicked Eve], we’d all still be living the
blissful worry-free life of Eden!), I contend this desire to go back to Eden,
to go back to our infantile pre-moral agency, is really a desire to abdicate
personal responsibility… like a theological version of the Peter Pan syndrome.
So, after they eat, Adam
and Eve recognize they’re naked! Well, isn’t that interesting… that’s what
happens to kids as they grow up; they start to become self-conscious! Self
Aware!
This growing-up business
also include us becoming more aware of what’s right and what’s wrong. And… our
own responsibility with regard to right and wrong.
And here we have it all
in the Eden story. If we want to grow up in a healthy way, we must indeed eat
from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we must
indeed learn the difference between Good and Evil, right and wrong.
We must, in essence,
leave Eden! The story continues with God telling “Adam” that he must learn to
live “from the sweat of his brow”, his own toil. Basically he must become
responsible for his own life. And “Eve” will experience pain in childhood.
Certainly there will be joys in life (like in Eden), but the point is that in
the “grown-up” world of self-responsibility… of living a life of
self-consciousness, self-awareness… we humans will also feel the pains of life;
of our choices, of our existence.
After the “banishment
talk”, God then kicks them out of Eden – and they’ve never been invited back!
And to make sure of this, God then places an angel with a flaming sword at the
entrance of Eden to prevent them from returning. Basically, if they really want
to grow up (and they really didn’t – they were sort of forced to), they can’t
do this in Eden.
So, how does this apply
to our call to life our faith in life? Well, how clear are we of God’s call in
our lives? To gain clarity of God’s call in our lives, we discern, we read the
bible… and if we are listening closely enough… we know!
In the Gospel of Mark,
there’s a story where Jesus is in a house teaching and healing. He’s surrounded
by people who want to hear him, to learn, to be healed, and of course there are
those there to challenge him. People everywhere, so many things happening, the
crushing crowd, the noise, the chaos… the story makes it clear there’s just an
overwhelming amount of things happening here.
In the story, his mother
and brothers show up to save him from this madness. They wait outside of this
chaos, sending someone in to pass Jesus a message that they’re here to take him
away. “Hey Jesus, your mother and brothers are here!” Jesus turns to the crowd
and says, “Who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who do the will of
my father in heaven are my mother and brothers and sisters!”
So clearly those who
wish to follow Jesus are called to do “God’s will”. When we do God’s will, we
are following the path of Christ! When we do God’s will we are indeed disciples
of a Living God!
This assumes we have an
idea of what Jesus is calling us to do. This assumes we have an idea of how
Jesus is calling us to live.
When I asked in church
what words might describe the characteristics of this call to life… people used
words like “Forgiveness”, “Faith”, “Grace”, “Love”, “Mercy”, “Justice”, etc.
Lot’s of words like that.
Then I asked… “How do
you know?” How do you know these words actually describe the kind of life we’re
called to live as we follow Christ? We might be exactly right to equate words
like these with God’s call for us… but how do we know we’re right? Well, this
call comes from God, right?? Makes total sense. Just… how can we know for
certain?
Jesus sure seemed pretty
clear about what God called him to do. But you know what… so did the Levites…
and the Pharisees… and the Essenes… and even the Samaritans! They all had a
clear sense of God’s call – and none of them agreed on what that was!
But… but… God is clear
about what how we’re supposed to live!? God is clearly an external, objective
source of this divinely inspired call… this call to a particular morality!
Well, some people do
indeed seem to be very clear about God’s morality. How did they gain this clear
sense of God’s will for their lives? How did they get so clear about this
morality? Well, it’s sort of obvious… God is THE external, objective source!
There is no other source!
Here’s some extreme
examples just to make a point a little more clearly: The people of Westboro
Baptist appeal to this very same external and completely objective source of
morality. Neo-Nazis also appeal to this same external and completely objective
morality.
Granted, these are
extreme examples, but I wanted to make a point.
Most people certainly
don’t interpret their views as legitimate… as divinely inspired, by any means!
And yet the people of Westboro Baptist and the Neo-Nazis make this claim… that
they are just being loyal to God! Just like we claim!
Yes it is true that most
people, most congregations, most denominations, most religions do not interpret
these moralities the way the extreme groups I mentioned earlier. But even among
the “normal”, general Christian world, there still are such huge disparities of
moral views on a whole list of social issues, such as abortion, homosexuality,
race issues, immigration, and many others.
The deeper point here is
that if we all point to this supposedly external and “objective” source and
seem to come up with a whole array of differing moralities… it’s really not a
very objective source after all! Because if it were, we’d all be interpreting
this in the same way.
Here’s the thing, we
really have a hard time stomaching the notion that we have to make our own
choices… that we’re responsible for what we say and do, and how we live, and
what we do. And we’re responsible for our sense of morality!
We want to attribute our
morality to a “divine” source. We want it to come from a sacred, external and
objective source. We want divine rules to live by – not a bad thing in theory.
And even if these rules are in every way healthy, we really like them to come
from something other than us… we have this need to “legitimize” them through a
divine being outside of us. Indeed, how much easier it is to appeal to an
external, objective source for all this.
Who’s to say we’re
right? How do we know if we’re right? If we’re having such trouble agreeing on
what the supposed external and objective source of our morality is saying… how
can we even say we’re right?
Well, for starters… just
because we might have some trouble agreeing, in no way means all choices are
morally equivalent!
In terms of our
perceived calls of discipleship regarding Christ… Westboro Baptist Church and
the Neo-Nazis are NOT morally equivalent to our perceived call of discipleship
regarding Christ!
But how do we know?
In the story of Eden,
God calls us – through the metaphor of Adam and Eve – to become more
self-conscious, more self-aware, more self-responsible… to become more aware of
our choices and just as important… why we make them!
This administration has
a policy regarding separating the children and parents of illegal immigrants. I
get that they are coming illegally… but this is still not moral! It is not
moral, no matter what!
“But they are here
illegally!!” Separating children from their parents is NOT the only option
here! We could certainly start with changing this policy while we re-think
(fix!) our immigration system! We could create special courts and cases at the
very least!
“But we want to teach
them a lesson! We want to make it SO traumatic that they WON’T come back!” THAT
may be the deeper thing! We might win the battle... but lose the war!
Folks, there IS a higher
moral ground!
In my past career as an
Army officer, I went to professional development schools (Military Intelligence
and Chaplain schools), and in these, they told us clearly… “We (meaning the US
military) do not torture. We don’t do this for two reasons… 1- it doesn’t work
(people will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to make the pain
stop), and 2- … we’re Americans… we just don’t this!”
It’s the same with this
current policy of separating children from their parents! We’re better than
this! Maybe we can’t all agree on details of our morality… but doing this is
just the wrong thing!
While there may not be
as clearly an objective source for morality as we’d like to think, the truth is
the responsibility for our choices rests squarely on our shoulders! We may not
be able to all agree on moral pronouncements from this clearly “objective” and
external source… but it’s a very safe bet that the more self-aware and
self-conscious and self-responsible we are, the healthier our views of morality
will be. And as a result, we’ll probably have healthier solutions to moral
issues.
We have to ask
ourselves… what do we stand for? (Remember the “We’re Americans, we just don’t
do that!” story?) I’d like to believe we’re better than this! I’d like to
believe the US can be a safe place for immigrants who are seeking a safe place
to life, in peace, just like the rest of us! I’d like to think that we have
enough smart people in our government to be able to figure out a more moral
solution to protect our borders, to improve to the immigration process.. and
STILL help us be a “Shining Light on a Hill”.
But it takes a depth of
self-awareness and maturity to be able to find these healthier solutions. It
takes us being responsible for our own choices, and resisting the easier choice
of abdicating our responsibility for growing up!
For sure we may not
always get it right, but it’s always a healthier choice to admit error… to have
enough self-awareness to take responsibility…and move towards healthier
directions!
This bible/faith-stuff…
it’s not just theoretical! It calls us to apply the principles and values we
say we believe in. There is a higher moral way! It starts with our diligence in
doing the work of growing up, in doing the work of maturity, in resisting the
urges to blame others for our own problems and issues. It starts with leaving
Eden and seeking the path of self-responsibility.
Just because we may not
all agree on what this “external and objective” source reveals to us about our
morality… this in no way means all moral choices are equivalent! Ironically,
the further we get from Eden… the healthier we are, and the more moral our
choices become!
Who are the brothers and
sisters of Jesus? Those that see through the lenses of growth and maturity and
self-responsibility… those that uses this lens to see Christ in others, that
listen for the word of Grace, and Justice, and Mercy, and Love… these are
Jesus’ brothers and sisters!
This is the Gospel call!
And it IS a higher way!
