A Few Addendums to My Previous Post

I just read my last posting on this blog, and . . . let's just say I was surprised at the lack of quality it exhibited and leave it at that.

Let's begin again by quoting the entire text (as I have been going over it so far) from Genesis 4:

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD." Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground, so it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.

And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard, so Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

There are 2 levels of meaning we need to consider in this text:

(1) the meaning it held for the culture which originally produced it

(2) the meaning it holds for us today

As I mentioned in my previous post, this story is part of an oral "encyclopedia" of ancient Israeli culture that was passed down from generation to generation via nothing but the human memory. The use of genealogies, repeated phrases, and concrete, easy-to-understand concepts and imagery all point to a narrative that was intended for memorization and recitation. Hence, in this case, the story of Cain and Abel served a double purpose for the culture that recited it:

1. It established the fact that, as I strongly suggested in my posts on Genesis 3, the line between attempting to be "like gods" and destroying everything around us that lives is very, very slim. Whether or not we believe that the story represented in Genesis 4 was the human race's first murder, it is important for us to respect the fact that the ancient Israelis believed it. Therefore, it is of great concern to us that, for them, the story appears only one generation (and barely a dozen verses) from the human race's first sin.

As we see all too often today, dictators (like Hitler, Amin, and Pot) who attempt to grasp the throne of godhood often overwhelm their cultures and eras in tides of blood. After all, one who assumes the "moral authority" of godhood must, by necessity assume to oneself the right to decide who is worthy of life and who is not--hence, for one reason or another, almost every war that has been fought between cities and civilizations has been termed a "moral" war in which the "enemy" is "evil" and worthy of extermination in the name of "justice."

However, no war, including World War II, has ever deserved this claim. Those who assert that World War II was a divine judgment against Hitler's Nazi regime are, I think, quite right--after all, the Bible does point to the downfall of regimes at outsiders' hands as the judgment of God on evil--but the self-interest which spawned the United States' contest with Japan, as well as the Allies' embrace of the depredations and imperial ambitions of Joseph Stalin, give the lie to the perspective that our "side" was "holy," "just," or even "good." Moreover, as we will see, the Bible describes a God who evaluates the instruments of his judgment as closely as he evaluates the targets of his judgment.

2. For the ancient Israelis, this narrative underscored the importance of following God's strict prescriptions regarding the form and nature of ritual sacrifices. This is a point which is virtually lost in all of the evangelical Protestant sermons and literature on this text, and yet it is of singular importance, because it provides the "why" behind the laws recorded in Exodus and Leviticus regarding ritual sacrifice for sin. Cain's offering is not approved because he did not ask the Lord how it should be given--it is as simple as that.

Cain's rebellion, then, echoes Israel's rebellion from God, recorded in far greater detail later in the Old Testament--it is, essentially, his mad act of defiance against a God who, in his opinion, is unjust for even asking him to follow a prescribed plan for sacrifice in the first place.


And this, ladies and gentlemen, leads me to my final point:

We are as guilty in Christian circles of this brand of rebellion as Cain was.

From Christianity's beginnings, it seems that there has been a push from within to abandon the simple doctrine of obedience to Christ for something more flashy, worldly, and more importantly, the way we like to do things. We take God's grace, evidenced in the cross of Christ Jesus, as a sort of "getaway car" we can use to allow the worst sorts of sins, evils, and abuses of scripture to manifest themselves in our lives, families, and churches.

The ancient culture in which this story was produced, for example, would have shuddered at the very notion that God would, in any way, be "happy" with a 60% divorce rate amongst his chosen people. As we will see, this was a society which was taught to stone to death anyone who was caught in adultery--and which viewed marriage, and sexuality, as deadly serious business. The institutional Christian culture, however, which attempts to trace its ancestry to that which produced the Bible, would have been considered worthy of stoning and extermination by its "forbears" on this basis alone.

I am not saying this to condemn anyone--but I am saying this as a warning, that the God we so often invoke in our prayers and our church services is, as the Bible strongly indicates, a God who has every one of our heartbeats in his fingers. Dare we, then, to presume that he will overlook our attempts to establish our own mode of worship and sacrifice?

Genesis 4--Dystopia Sealed (continued)

Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Eve gives birth to two sons--a narrative that occurs over and over again in the book of Genesis. The ancient Israelis, perhaps more keenly than any other nation in the world they inhabited, understood the concept of family as one in which healthy and unhealthy patterns occur.

For example, the family of Adam and Eve was one which started only after they had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, only after the "fall." The consequences of the events recorded in Genesis 3 included a complete realignment of masculinity and femininity as they had existed in Adam and Eve before--obviously, this would have had a profound effect on something so basic as the establishment of a human family. The ancient Israelis understood, as we intuitively understand today, that the ways in which families often function do not correspond to an ideal of love and community that, deep inside, they must have sensed should be central aspects of family life.

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions, and the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering--but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard, so Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

Remember here that (1) this is a narrative that served, in part, as the "encyclopedia" of Israeli knowledge 3000-4000 years ago, and (2) that this particular portion of it occurs one generation (and one chapter) after the "fall." The latter is important because it establishes (and probably established in the minds of the people who heard these words recited) that the seemingly "harmless" divisions between man, woman, the animal kingdom, and God have consequences both immediate and deadly to our species.

Cain, having inherited the knowledge of good and evil that his parents had essentially stolen with the express purpose of becoming "gods" themselves, sees God as unjust for preferring Abel's offering to his own, without even bothering to inquire why God would have done so. The fact that a reason is never given only serves to underscore the point that to Cain, the reason was unimportant. It is clear (and probably would have been to the story's original audience) that Cain did not concern himself with discovering what he could do to more effectively please his Creator--he only wanted the "blessing" of God, whether or not it was merited in God's eyes--and in the spirit of his mother and father, he attributed it not to his own actions or motives but to God's "lack of judgment."

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

This, in essence, is the "moral" of the story.

Cain, having been raised by parents who rebelled against God, knew what both "sin" and "obedience" were. As I have mentioned before, he also had the ill-gotten knowledge of good and evil twisting its way inside his heart, prompting him to engage in the same evil practices they had modeled only a generation earlier. Therefore, it was important for him to discipline the inclinations of his heart.

Unfortunately, like so many of his parents' descendants today, Cain failed to discipline himself, and instead allowed his thoughts and feelings to assume any direction, regardless of its credibility. It is this failure, above all else, that leads Cain to, instead of talking with God, as his mother and father had done, to stand silently at the altar while God attempts to convince him to see reason. It is this failure, also, that leads Cain to conclude that his brother, not the selfishness in his own heart, is the problem.

Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

From the first sin to the first murder . . . the brevity of space (generationally and textually) between these two events would have been significant to the ancient culture that produced the book of Genesis. Those who heard this verse (and the ones that preceded it) understood, clearly, that any act of disobedience against God, no matter how inocuous it may seem, will have deadly consequences--particularly for one's offspring. Later, we will see the following refrain over and over in the Torah:

visiting the sins of the fathers on the children to the third generation of those who hate him

The Israelis who lived 3 or 4 millennia ago understood the family as not only the unit containing parents and children but a line spanning generations. No one's actions were considered to be isolated--instead, they were potential points of direction for the spiritual vitality (and quality) of a family line and, thus, of central importance to that line's maintenance. It was understood that a wicked man's actions would taint his family line, prompting the Creator to dismantle that line.

Cain is, in essence, committing exactly the same sin that resulted in his parents' exile from the Garden of Eden--in a far more brutal and callous way.

Genesis 4--Dystopia Sealed

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD."

Genesis 4 begins a transition from the archetypal narrative of humanity's "fall" from utopia to the narrative of Israel's departure from the God of the Torah (and its eventual self-destruction) . . . but as we will see, the "transition" is not synonymous with a "stop." Remember that the book of Genesis was part of a 5 book encycylopedia of what it meant to be an Israeli 3000 years ago--and as we will see, a defining characteristic of this book is the lineage (or genealogy) it presents. In this case, Genesis 4 begins with the first birth of a new human being--a promise of hope which Eve must have clung to after the events of Genesis 3.

Indeed, with the birth of every new generation, there seems to be a new sense of hope that a culture or time period will become better, that much-needed changes will occur. Genesis 4, however, establishes clearly what almost anyone older than 25 can readily understand at a passing glance--that far from bringing new hope and promise, each new generation seems to excel at creating new ways of inflicting pain.



These words were written at the beginning of a week when my wife and I were preparing to move from Texas to South Carolina, and they have even more relevance for both of us today than they did 12 days ago.

Genesis 3--The Consequences

Until this moment, there had been no war, no disease, no conflict between animals and animals, humans and animals, humans and humans, or humans and God. Humans had a subject place to God as stewards of his creation, caretakers of the animals and tillers of the soil--and more importantly, they had harmony with God. "Adam" and "Eve," unlike their descendants, did not originate without a clear knowledge of who they were and who their designer was. They had no reason to ask the question that so often torments the minds and hearts of every one of us today: "Why am I here?"

To be one with God, to understand the reasons you were created and to experience the Creator . . . the joy I'm describing here of being able to talk with God in "the cool of the day" rather than having to undergo the pain and torture of allowing ourselves to be conformed to his likeness from a state that is less than holy, this joy is not imaginable to anyone in a society whose postmodern cultural notions and technologies have made it possible for human beings to ignore this fundamental quest for truth and meaning within their souls.

The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life--and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel."

Whether or not the "serpent" in the minds of the ancient culture that heard these words symbolized an actual animal or something more sinister, it is clear that human beings and animals began to exist in competition with each other at this point. Serpents do, after all, strike at the heels of human beings in order to defend their territory (and themselves), and human beings instinctually know that killing a serpent is simple--destroy the head, and the body dies. If there was a literal "serpent" in the Garden (which I doubt) talking with "Adam" and "Eve," it would not have originally been designed to slither along the ground.

I suspect, however, that the ancient Israelis (or at least the ones who finally wrote these scriptures down after reciting them for generations) understood the "serpent" to be a symbol for the evil "it" I spoke of in my previous post. If so, then at this point, it is important to highlight the fact that this evil, whatever it is, is a subject creature. The words "cursed are you above all cattle" equates this force (or "Satan") with everything we know to be created by God. Moreover, God's words to the effect that this "creature" will be doomed to crawl on its belly and eat the dust of the Earth place it firmly in a subject position to God, just like animals, plants, and humans.

This is an importnat point because, while institutional Christianity has almost given "the devil" a position of deity in popular culture, the Bible makes it clear that whatever he is, he is a creature just like we are. Later, in the New Testament, we will see that Christians--and indeed Christ himself--identify Satan as an angel who (along with his cohorts) denies the authority of God and instead attempts, through subjugation and terror of God's creation, to be a pseudo-god himself.

It is not, however, his fault that his plan for the Garden of Eden succeeded.

It is ours.

To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children--yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

This verse has become excessively controversial these days, and it is important to note 2 things:

1. Childbirth through the centuries has always been an arduous--indeed dangerous--process, and one that throughout much of human history came without the comforts of anesthetics, hospitals, or even sterilization. Women during the Middle Ages, for example, were often grateful for the option of becoming nuns, not because of their lack of desire for sex but because of a palpable (and plausible) fear that they would die in the process of bringing a child into the world. Again, within our genetic code, we seem to understand that this level of danger, pain, and terror associated with pregnancy and childbirth are not what should accompany the beauty of new life. (This inner sense is what has prompted the use of midwives, hospitals, and surgical wards over the past few centuries--the purpose of which is to make labor as "painless" as possible.)

2. As we see in the classic story of the girl who runs away with a man who catches her fancy, a woman's desire is for her husband, and (in a sense) her husband does rule over her. I do not mean this in a dogmatic sense--the husband being the head of the household--but rather in a more fundamental, essence-level context. As a result of the "fall," the very core of feminity itself changed in relation to masculinity.

This final aspect of God's "judgment" of Eve can be seen in the great wealth of literature on the problematic dynamics of sexual relations between men and women during the past 6000 years of human history. Divorce, homosexuality, and suspicion between males and females had their precursors in the bizarre sexual behaviors of the ancient civilizations (such as Babylon, Greece, and Rome) from which our own cultural matrix springs. Every man and every woman, it seems, has a "heartbreak" story--a reason to distrust and suspect the motives of the opposite sex--and these suspicions manifest themselves in almost every facet of human interactions between the sexes. Yes, a woman's desire will be for her husband, but that desire, by necessity, leads to pregnancy and childbirth, which are at once wondrous and terrifying for women--this dichotomy has bred a great many heartaches, divides, and focal points of hostility between men and women, a logical consequence of a "fall" in which the first man and woman found themselves at each other's throats when confronted by the presence of God.

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it,' cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you--and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you will eat bread 'ill you return to the ground, because from it you were taken--for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

We often forget that these "judgments" spoken to Adam and Eve were actually designed to be methods of bringing them--and their descendants (this means "us")--in subjection to their Creator. For example, women--desiring husbands and enduring terrible pain in pregnancy and childbirth--are forced to trust in the Lord for two things: (1) that the husband who rules over them will be a good one, and (2) that their pregnancy will not end in death or a debilitating physical condition. Similarly, men (who have been "given" rule) must trust the Lord to bring about good produce as they apply their fortunes, sweat, and blood to the soil of the Earth in the name of feeding their families. God also pinpoints another reason for increasing (by magnitudes) the amount of work required to plant, raise, and harvest a crop--it is to remind us that, while we may pretend in our hearts to be gods, we are not far removed, both cosmically and genetically, from the soil we till.

I have said in previous posts that human beings are, genetically speaking, not far removed from the soil of the ground--in fact, the molecules that make up our cells are of the same "family" (carbon-based molecules) as the molecules and nutrients that inhabit the "dust of the Earth." It is a fact most unpleasant to our species that when human beings die, they decompose and (essentially) break down in form until they become indistinguishable with the soil in which they are often buried. The use of objects such as vaults and caskets to preserve the form of the dead simply slows this process--it does not prevent it. We understand--regardless of who we are or what we believe about God--that the mortality of human beings is the one aspect of our species in which we can never be "gods."

Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

This is the first point in the Bible at which one of the two human beings in the Garden are named. It is important here to note that "Adam," the name generally associated with the man, is not really a name--it is simply the Hebrew word for "human" and applies both to male and female members of the species. (Thus, we see the "rule" of men implied in this verse from Genesis 3--the man names his wife, just as he had spent time naming the animals in Genesis 2.)

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

It is significant here that "skin" is used to clothe "Adam and his wife." For the first time in human history, blood was shed between humans and animals--and animals were used, and destroyed, for humanity's needs. The enmity that has existed between humans and the other animated species of the Earth begins in this verse.

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil--and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"--therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out--and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

Two things to note here:

First, the "Us"--as we will see, it is used later in the book of Genesis in the context of the dividing of the human race into tribes and nations. If God is singular, how can He be referred to as "Us?"

Simple: The New Testament clearly outlines a Godhead that is Father/Son/Holy Spirit, or what we call the Trinity. God is one Person, but He is also Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct identities. The Hebrew Bible uses the word "Elohim" in Genesis 1:1 to refer to God, a word which is plural--yet the ancient culture in which the Bible was produced had the saying, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one." It is therefore not a contradiction for God (in the Hebrew Bible) to refer to Himself as both "Me" and "Us," and neither is it a contradiction for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to refer to each other in the New Testament as three distinct entities, even though they are understood to be the same God manifesting Himself in different ways.

Now for the harder concept: Why is humanity's acquisition of eternal life so dangerous in the eyes of God?

Remember the impulse for attaining the knowledge of good and evil in the first place--to be like God. The fruit of this tree was not taken with God's permission or consent--the action was simply a product of humanity's arrogant attempt to assert its powers of reason, deduction, and free will. In addition, the outgrowth of our knowledge of good and evil over the past 6000 years has been a plethora of depredations, tyrannies, and institutional matrixes, each more insane, destructive, and idiotic than the last.

What would the outgrowth of immortality--taken without God's permission or consent--be?

If the existence of fallen angels serves as any indication, it would make our species irredeemable. After all, the "fire reserved for the devil and his angels" in Matthew 25 is the only logical answer to an immortal creature's obstinate refusal to subject itself to the will of God--and if we were to adopt immortality ourselves without acknowledging our Creator's right to order our bodies, minds, and souls as He sees fit, we would in an instant earn the same fate. It is not our potential to harm or "rival" God that the Creator is concerned about here but rather our potential to harm each other. Immortality, in the wrong hands, can be abused to such a degree that humans would essentially have (in their minds) final authority over other humans, simply by obtaining a quality that their brethren lack. Unfortunately, our species seems heedless of this prospect of eternal desolation in its continued quest to prolong life by gaining power over the atom, electricity, and even the human genome itself.

Genesis 3--Utopia Fallen

This chapter of Genesis is central to the Bible's discourse about evil, about the fallen condition of the world in which we live, and about the love of God for a world which, as-- we turn page after page of the Bible (and page after page of our history books) spins more out of control with each passing day. And whether read as a literal event or as a metaphor, its message is still the same: the rift that took place between us and God, between us and creation, and between us and each other, is no one's fault but our own.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

The serpent . . . evil, the devil, Satan, whatever you want to insert in this particular "blank," the point is clear--something was amiss in the order of creation, and whatever it was wanted to manifest itself in the actions of human beings. I'm not sure what origins evil had, and frankly I'm not sure any of us can know this side of Christ's return, but the character of evil is constant throughout the Bible and, I would argue, throughout human history. It is (1) innately hostile toward God and (2) eager in its attempts to pervert whatever God creates.

Whatever the "serpent" is, whatever it represents, it poses a question that, for the first time, accesses the full range of human free will. After all, if humans bear the stamp or image of God, it is certainly most evident in our exercise of the will, a faculty which (as we have discussed in the previous posts) animals simply do not have. Free will, however, is utterly meaningless without the room to exercise it, and what better situation in which to exercise free will than in the choice to obey or disobey God?

The serpent, then and now, is the "other side of the coin," the agent who attempts to elicit a response contrary to God's will and design. As the first person to make the choice between God and the serpent--between her design and an attempt to pervert that design--the woman had the privilege (and dreadful responsibility) of setting the tone for the entire human race.

The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat--but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

Notice that the serpent's first question is a direct contradiction of the command God had given both the man and the woman in Genesis 2--this is the first ploy of the tempter, to divide us from our Creator, taking away from us what Jesus would say in the book of Matthew to be what humankind lives on: every word that comes from the mouth of God. The ancient Israelis, a culture that lost its own holy books over and over again through the centuries, would have keenly understood the signficance of being divided from the "word of God." Hence, to an Israeli listener, the woman's response should have been, "God has said, 'You shall not eat from it, or you will die.'"

The "and touch it" in these 2 verses is very significant--it indicates that the woman, at this point, is vulnerable, either through her inattentiveness to God or through her surprise at the serpent's twisting of God's word.

The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

This is the second ploy of the serpent--after attempting to divide the woman from the word of God, he then offers a tantalizing "goodie" in reward for disobeying God. The Hebrew Bible is replete with stories like this one, and everyone within the context of the culture that recited its words would have understood that the lure of evil is not destruction for destruction's sake but a promise of something "good," "pleasurable," or "useful" in return.

In this case, it is the one thing that human beings seem to have been unable to resist throughout their history: the temptation to become gods. Whether it is called "deciding your own destiny," "becoming your own person," or "being a free thinker," the temptation is the same . . . to become our own gods, to adopt a position of final authority (even life or death) over ourselves and others. The knowledge of good and evil has wrought more harm, more pain, and more misery on the generations of the human race than any other idea, force, or concept in our history--because it is never motivated by a desire to do the right thing but a desire to assume a position we neither earned nor deserve.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate--and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked--and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

These verses form the core of the tragedy that the Bible recounts in its pages. Instead of remembering the words of God, the woman utilizes her own faculties of reason, assuming a place of equality with God (even though she has neither created the Earth on which she lives or herself) in her critique of his logic for banning the tree from them in the first place. She sees that it is "good for food," that it is a "delight to the eyes," and that it is "desirable to make one wise"--in other words, what we have here is the prototype of every sin known to humanity. Lust, for example, is based on these three precepts--consumption, visual appeal, and utility . . . and so are all the major religions of the world.

Yes, religion is one of the manifestations of this prototype--and I would even go so far as to say that institutional Christianity is a manifestation of this prototype as well. As the above verses indicate, it is our knowledge of what is right and wrong that gets us into trouble most of the time, and generally, religion (while claiming to serve as a force of moral instruction across cultures and time frames) aims to subjugate one person (or group of people) under the rule of another. The Hindu caste system, for example, is buttressed by all of those wonderful concepts of karma and reincarnation that have become so popular in American media, and in many countries around the world, Buddhism also creates a caste system in which a priestly class is essentially worshipped and treated as demigods.

Christianity, however, even Protestant Christianity, has been one of the worst offenders--and this is unfortunate, given that the Christ of Christianity dismantled--through His words and actions--the very systems that allow men and women to be condemned by human beings, governments, and institutions on the basis of morality. Our depredations during the Middle Ages and beyond are obvious--the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and all of our internecine acts of violence against both adherents of other religions and each other--but institutional Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, is no less inclined toward self-deification today than it was centuries ago. Anyone, for example, who argues that a pastor or priest has final authority over the well-being of someone's soul, or demands that a person conform to a particular culture or perspective without making recourse to Christ as his/her final authority, is in disobedience to God.

This may sound harsh, and I know that there are those reading this blog who would quote passages from Paul's letters in order to refute me, but Paul, more than anyone, understood that ultimately, whether a man or woman is in good standing with God has more to do with that man and woman's personal priorities than with any badgering, cajoling, or threats that a deacon or overseer may utilize. In that respect, his letters to the Corinthians are particularly tinged with grief, because he sees a group of people who are hardening their hearts against the Christ they adopted, and they are choosing to slip away. Paul--a man who would have been more motivated than anyone else to do anything, right or wrong, to avoid losing even one soul for Christ--understood keenly that what a man or woman prioritizes in his/her heart will guide the choices he/she makes, no matter what anyone else--even God--says . . . and he knew that the Corinthians, for good or ill, were beyond his control.

They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"

Obviously, the story personalizes God to an extent that ancient Israeli listeners and reciters would have understood--and remembered--this story, but what is importnat here is that the man and woman separated themselves from God.

I have heard a great many pronouncements in Protestant Christian circles that sin (an inanimate idea) separates us from God . . . but this verse demonstrates it to be actually humans who separate themselves from God. Intimacy, communion . . . these things are the first to go whenever we decide, in our hearts, to pursue something that is against the way we were designed--and we are the ones to discard them. I think it is emblematic of our culture today that 50% of marriages end in divorce--and that the statistic is actually higher in institutional churches. We are, as any foreigner can readily attest, an anti-relational society, right down to the Gameboys, Blackberries, and other assorted gadgets we have invented in order to give ourselves an excuse not to talk to each other.

He said, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself."
And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"
The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate."
Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

In this section of dialogue, we have history's first blame game--at least as the ancient Israelis would have understood history. Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, which God was giving them a chance to do, the man and woman point fingers at someone else--and in the man's case, they even subtly point fingers at God ("the woman whom You gave to be with me"). The road to maturity in ancient Israel was understood to be a road in which one takes responsibility for his or her actions--to assign blame to "society" or "God" or "events from my past" is not enough. It was understood among those who first heard this text that the ability to make decisions entails an ability to understand, at least unconsciously, their consequences.

Again, we live in a Protestant Christian culture which uses the word "sin" as an escape hatch--it is "sin" which separates us from God, not ourselves. The Bible, however, is clear--if we are separated from God, then it is no one's fault but our own. We have chosen to hide ourselves from Him--either to conceal something we did and knew was wrong or simply because we don't want to deal with a conversation that will end in our discipline--and though He may seek us out (as He is shown doing here), it is our choice to respond either with honesty . . . or with lies, obfuscation, and blame.

Yes, we have evil in the world . . . a serpent, devil, Satan, or whatever you want to fill in that particular "blank," but that agent of temptation is not responsible for all the suffering and misery that have been, and continue to be, peculiarly indicative of human history.

We are.

Until we begin to recognize this fact, we will continue to stumble in the dark, not knowing who we are, at war with ourselves, each other, and ultimately, with God.

Genesis 2 (yes, still continued)

Before I move on with the story of the creation of woman, I'd like to take the opportunity to make a couple of brief notes on Genesis 2:5-6 and Genesis 2:10-13. This aside is largely the result of my wife's input--she looked at my last post and thought I did not focus enough on what a correct or appropriate handling of these verses should be. (After much hunching of my shoulders and a series of "but"'s and "I meant to"'s, I agreed that she was right about what she was saying.)

Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

My wife has been studying ecology this semester, and she said it was possible that the Earth's biosystem was originally intended to bring water to the soil in this way. It makes sense to me (although I was much less agreeable yesterday) because the Earth's present system (in which rain comes down upon the ground in a variety of downpours, thunderstorms, and severe incidents of weather turbulence such as hurricanes or cyclones) does not seem to fit the harmonic description of a paradise created by a God of order (both in Genesis 2 and in the song recorded in Genesis 1:1-2:3). One of the Bible's constant themes, as we will see in the coming months, is God's unchangeable nature--why would a God who, according to Hebrews 13, is the same yesterday, today, and forever create a weather system as erratic as the one that exists on Earth today?

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon--it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good--the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon--it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris--it flows east of Assyria--And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

I mentioned in my last entry that the above verses have become the stuff of a great deal of speculation among people who (to be quite honest) have far too much time on their hands . . . but what I didn't cover was the significance they had for the ancient Israelis, and the significance they should have for us 4 millennia later. The ancient Israelis, it seems, had a fairly good idea where the Garden of Eden was--it seems that to them, given verses 11 and 12 which describe a place that was real and commonly known to the Israeli society of the time (obviously a place in which precious metals were mined and/or traded), the Garden of Eden constituted more than a convenient story to tell little children but a memory passed down from generation to generation. To them, the Garden of Eden was a literal place--it existed, it had form, and it was a location that would have been identifiable to the Israelis who heard Genesis 2 recited.

What does this mean to us?

I've studied the origin stories of several ancient civilizations, and all carry the same theme of a paradise that was destroyed or lost due to a rift between human beings and "the gods." Whether or not you believe Genesis 2 and 3 to have been a literal event in the history of the human race, it is impossible, in my view, to take all of these stories as mere fairy tales. Indeed, even today, humanity carries inside of its core the fundamental awareness that disease, death, and natural disasters are wrong. What scientists and secularists have taken to be a sign of humanity's inventiveness (the stories of ancient cultures) may instead be an expression of an unconscious memory, the memory of a time in which the natural rhythms and processes of the human body and soul existed in harmony with creation and Creator, free from the constraints of infirmity, old age, and physical collapse.

With these notes in mind, let us turn our attention to the story of the creation of woman . . .

Genesis 2:18-25 is the crux of the Bible's teaching on men and women--everything the Bible says about sexuality, about social relations in and outside the home, and about families and marriage derives from these 8 verses, which serve as the "why" behind the rest of the Bible's coverage of these topics. It has become a great deal harder these days to determine the veracity of claims by this or that faction regarding the "true intent" of the Bible as it relates to men, women, and sexuality--particularly in a culture whose "bible" is the corpus of products distributed by entertainment companies--and I think that even a cursory reading of the Bible demonstrates that, to a certain extent, all sides battling for supremacy in what has become known as America's "culture wars" are in error.

Let us first consider Genesis 2:18, which serves as the reason for the creation of women:

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone--I will make him a helper suitable for him."

If it is one thing that social scientists have conclusively proven (though they seem to have proven little else), it is that human beings are, in their terms, "social animals." We live, we thrive, and we conceive ourselves in relation to one another--sons to fathers, wives to husbands, workers to management, and so forth. The preponderance of human civilizations, large and small, demonstrates that we cannot live isolated, bereft of human companionship. The occasional soul who divests him-/herself from communities and social ties to seek a life of solitude is rare, and usually the products of their isolation are fraught with misery and pain.

However, I think an even more fundamental point about our species needs to be made here. Genesis 1:27 says

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him--male and female He created them.

Male and female cannot exist apart from one another--they are essential qualities that can only have meaning in the shadow of the other. Men generally perceive their masculinity in a sense that is not female, just as women through the ages have perceived their sexuality and identity as not male. Both male and female, moreover, bear the stamp (or image) of God--so a reading of Genesis 2:18 in light of Genesis 1:27 implies that in God's eyes, humanity was incomplete without both masculine and feminine qualities. (I know that, to some extent, this is a mundane point, but you would be surprised at the number of people who lack even a rudimentary understanding of this dynamic as it relates to the human soul. To me, it is no surprise that a culture which has essentially tossed aside every concept of masculinity that it once possessed--however imperfect--is experiencing the explosive development of GLBT communities. Human beings cannot exist as "asexual" entities, and any attempt to bring about a culture of "asexuality" will foster alternative sexualities that are, at their core, unconscious attempts to restore the essential division between male and female.)

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them--and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

These verses are important in the narrative because they establish (clearly) that for human beings, male and female coexist together within our species. Again, this is a rudimentary point, but it also reveals a fundamental understanding among the ancient Israelis who heard these words recited: that the human soul, in both its male and female aspects, is essentially different from the life qualities of an animal. As I said in my previous post, there is a "something" about human beings that is qualitatively different from animals--and this is not always good.

A female donkey, goat, or lion can neither appreciate, nor be appreciated by, a man in the same way that a woman can be. The reason has less to do with differences in anatomy than in the fact that human beings, in their sexual relationships, look for love, a concept that animals neither understand nor are capable of giving. Let's face it--love, as we generally understand it (and always have understood it) is the complete joining of two human hearts together as one . . . anyone who has ever owned or caref for animals knows that the mating of male and female birds, cats, dogs, cattle, and lions bears little resemblance to our homey concept of the human family. Cats, for example, mate without regard to any semblance of a family unit--the male "boinks" with the female, then leaves her (presumably for another female) to raise a litter of kittens which will leave her care in a matter of months.

Something inside of us revolts at the idea of considering the above scenario to be right, good, or normal for human beings, regardless of culture or historical time frame. To the extent that we look to sexual relationships as a source of genuine affection and love, we prove that, at its core, the human soul is (both in its male and female qualities) different from the life of an animal.

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept--then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.

Two things to note here:

First, this verse was the inspiration for the modern surgical procedure of anesthitizing the patient before opening his/her body. The fact that human beings perform a version of this procedure on each other demonstrates the likelihood that a man could have been rendered asleep by God, opened up, then "sewn" shut again.

Second, the theory that women have fewer ribs as a result of God's "surgery" is . . . false. (Medical science has conclusively proven that both men and women have 24 ribs.) However, it is also a given in medical circles that a rib can grow back in its entirity after removal from the human body, in the span of approximately 2 or 3 months, so for those people who are looking for some sort of "evidence" that human beings were created by a divine originator, this verse will simply prove to be a waste of time. (The ancient Israelis, by the way, were no less intelligent than we are, even if they did not have the surgical technology we have, and I am sure they were well aware that men and women had equal sets of ribs.)

The Bible, at its core, does not give human beings easy formulas. Instead, it invites the human soul to reconcile itself to the God that the Bible celebrates on the basis of one thing: faith. This quality is severely lacking in our culture, which is unfortunate, because without it, one cannot appreciate this text, nor any other portion of the Bible, in the ways in which it was designed to be appreciated.

The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.

The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man."

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife--and they shall become one flesh.

The core of the Bible's discussion of human sexuality derives from these three verses in Genesis 2 (verses 22-24). These are verses which Jesus himself quoted in an argument with the Pharisees over divorce (see Matthew 19:1-12) and which Paul quoted in reference to the ideal relationship between husbands and wives (see Ephesians 5). They are, in addition, the wellspring from which all of the sexual commandments in the Torah originate.

We practice this concept even today, though in a somewhat different fashion than what conservative Christians may like to imagine. The scenario in which a man leaves the home of his birth to seek a relationship with a woman with whom he lives as a common-law spouse is a story as familiar to individual experiences as it is to our culture's entertainment products, and I might hasten to add that the union between man and woman, or what the ancient Israelis would have referred to as "marriage," differs greatly from the institutional model we see in our society today.

This verse--and all the other passages about sexuality in the Bible--make it perfectly clear that to the ancient Israelis, and to first century Christians, sexuality--and ultimately, marriage--was a bonding together of two souls into one. Any reading of the Bible that treats marriage as a ceremonial union involving paperwork, the lighting of candles, and a house with a white picket fence utterly misses the original meaning of the text as its original recipients would have understood it. As I mentioned earlier in this blog entry, humans over the millennia have always sought one thing over all others in their sexual relationships: love. What is love other than eternal union of two souls as one?

If it is one thing that Christianity has mishandled, it is this concept . . . a principle that lies so deeply within the core of humanity's consciousness that it is accepted as a given across cultures and time frames. According to the Bible, one is not married to someone simply because he/she engages in a ceremony but because he/she, for whatever reason, unites his/her soul with that person. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is what essentially happens during the sexual union--not merely a uniting of bodies but a uniting of hearts, minds, spirits, and souls.

This is why the Bible treats of sexualities that do not respect this principle with horror--not because they represent attempts by individuals to overturn a social order but because they (in effect) bring about the uniting of hearts, minds, and spirits that are not designed to be united. Only a couple suited and designed to be together can, in good conscience, do as the first man and woman are said to have done in Genesis 2:25:

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2 (still continued)

Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.

These two verses (Genesis 2:5-6) were the springboard of some very weird speculations in the charismatic circles I frequented for several years in DFW, Texas. In particular, I remember television personalities saying (with straight faces) that these verses indicated the method through which God brought all of the floodwaters upon the Earth (see Genesis 6-8)--essentially breaking the firmament of the heavens so that instead of dew, full rain showers would fall upon trees, hills, animals, and human beings. I think that one luminary even connected these verses with Genesis 1:2, suggesting that Creation was the first great struggle between God and Satan for control of the Earth (i.e. that the Earth was formless because Satan had laid it waste).

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when your spirituality is derived from television.

Not to offend anyone who believes these ideas (and others like them), but Genesis 2:5-6 clearly states that the "mist" fell before human beings were created--ergo, when the first man and woman appeared, rain fell on the ground. Anyone with even passing knowledge of the Earth's weather systems understands that rain is part of Earth's biosystem, not an aberration of it. Worse, this area of speculation fosters exactly the kind of mis-reading of the Bible that has become so endemic in our age--taking 1 or 2 verses out of their original context, and using them to generate a wide array of bold new doctrines.

The point of these verses in the original text is simply to provide the background for the more important event which follows:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life--and man became a living being.

Today, we know that human beings are, essentially, made up of molecules similar to those that exist in the ground . . . I am, of course, referring to organic molecules. What human beings, animals, plants, and the soil all have in common is that our molecules all contain one specific element on the periodic table: carbon. The presence of carbon (or lack thereof) is what distinguishes an organic molecule from an inorganic molecule, and thus, given the existence of this element in us and in the soils of the ground, the link between human beings and the dust of the earth is not inconceivable, even if it is somewhat difficult for minds steeped in postmodern secularist ideologies to imagine.

As for the breath of life, the metaphor we normally imagine in terms of this verse (mouth-to-mouth resuscitation) does not capture the essence of what the writer(s) were attempting to convey. The whole point here is that human beings were given "the breath of life"--that quality, that attribute, that soul which distinguishes us as thinking, breathing entities with minds, personalities, and hearts--not how it was given to them. Anyone with a passing knowledge of human civilizations knows that there is an essential core quality in our species that allows us to exist as more than mere intelligent animals. Our ability to make buildings, communities, love, and war is not in any way similar to the capabilities and inclinations of animals to mate, to build nests, and to defend their territory.

I wish I could say that this statement is necessarily a compliment to our species--in fact, I think it has borne out to be our greatest source of shame. After all, the destruction caused by animals is generally random, with no concern for anything except for instinctual goals. The destruction caused by human beings, however, is far more self-conscious, purposeful, and overtly evil.

The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden--and there He placed the man whom He had formed.

This verse was the springboard for even more weird speculations within the charismatic circles I once frequented. They would use this verse and the following verses from chapter 2 to engage in a flurry of wild theories about where we can "now" find the Garden of Eden:

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon--it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good--the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon--it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris--it flows east of Assyria--And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Of course, the failure to consider that time, tide, and erosion might have been used by God to destroy and/or hide the Garden of Eden from prying human eyes, not to mention (assuming that one takes these stories, on faith, as having actually occurred) the rising of floodwaters over the surface of the Earth, undermines these theories to the point of absurdity.

I'd like to mention, at this point, that the following verses

The name of the first is Pishon--it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good--the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.

are personally significant for me.

My first moment of departure from the nonsense I was accepting from charismatic circles (in particular, television and radio programs) occurred when I was listening to my stereo one day to a talk by a well-known African prosperity preacher. His text was Genesis 2:11-12, and as he read these verses, I could hear him intone the word "gold" with emphasis. The entire atmosphere and spirit of the talk--in which he essentially propounded the notion that aligning oneself with God will result in unimaginable monetary and financial bliss--were so overtly demonic that I actually got up and turned the radio off 20 minutes into the show.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you base your spirituality on the products of radio or television.

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Yes, I skipped Genesis 2:9 earlier. ;)

This verse establishes what becomes the crux of the Genesis 2-3 narrative: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The following question, of course, arises from contemporary interpretations of the text: "Were these actual trees?" For the purposes of the story . . . yes, they were actual trees. Remember that stories orally passed down from generation to generation generally have a very "concrete" feel--real items, real things that human beings see every day, became resources in the telling of the story.

As for whether or not they were real trees, I think such conversations miss the point. After all, mankind's fall from utopia (and its condition over the past 6000 years) derive not from "little" things, like eating the wrong apple from the wrong tree, but from an overdeveloped sense of self-righteousness that justifies (in our minds) actions that are destructive. This, ultimately, is what upset the balance in humanity's relationship to its Creator--not the biting of an orange or banana but the idea that our God-given stewardship of the Earth gives us the right to be gods ourselves.

Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely--but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

Again, this has essentially been the result of humanity's unwillingness to be contented with the subject position of stewarding the Earth under the authority of God. It is neither the Bible nor Christ but our own self-righteousness that has been responsible for more wars, more atrocities, and more spiritual, emotional, and physical abuse than anything else in our benighted 6000 years of history. Our pathetic notions of superiority--particularly moral superiority--have bred genocide after genocide, horror after horror, across the face of a world whose soil has been covered in human blood.

Yes, we have surely died, over and over, as our world reels from the devastation of human wars, depredations, and greed.

Genesis 2 (continued)

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven.

Thus begins the textual account of what we know as the biblical story of Genesis--the line of ancestors through which ancient Israel was originated.

Remember that the verses above Genesis 2:4 comprise a song--equivalent to a modern children's Christmas song--that ancient Israeli men, women, and their families must have recited regularly. This song recounted the days of the week, established God as the creator of everything--including us--and encapsulated in verse form the position that humanity held in the larger order that God made out of the emptiness of non-existence. (It is of some note, I think, that the Bible's terminology describes the earth as "void" or "empty"--a metaphor which I think would have been the most apt one that ancient cultures could find to describe the "nothing" out of which God created stars, galaxies, and human beings.) This song also established an order in the heavens and on Earth which has been routinely broken over the past 6000 years, thanks to the continual depredations and idiocy of human civilizations--an order in which humans and animals lived in harmony, without the competition for habitats and food that we have seen ever since.

It is a standing assumption in a lot of Christian seminaries that Genesis 1 and 2 represent a classic case in point of the Bible--the infallible word of God--contradicting itself. As you, I hope, are beginning to see, this assumption rests on 2 false premises: (1) that the two narratives--Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4 onward--serve the same purpose and (2) that indicating a contradiction within the text does, by necessity, negate the claims of divine authorship associated with the Bible.

Personally, I think this perspective--and the arguments it has generated--is evidence of a postmodern, indeed post-Christian, tendency to read the Bible as we would read The Wall Street Journal. While perhaps a practice with some merit, given the spiritual decay occurring in the United States, reading the Bible in this way does not allow it to speak to us in the same way it spoke to the ancient Israelis who read it, weeping at the extent of their sins. They read the Bible as more than a text, more than an "account"--to them, the Bible not only was a repository of cultural, spiritual, and sacred knowledge, but it was a fundamental, conclusive statement of who they were as a people.

As for divine authorship, I think that no further argument need be made than to point out that wherever the Bible appears, spiritual awakening and ferment result--indeed, wherever the Bible is read, it seems to inspire one of two responses: (1) reconciliation with God or (2) denial and abandonment of even the concept of God. My question to you today is this: Why would a collection of texts 2000-4000 years old either utterly attract or utterly repel you if the God it celebrates were not its author?

Would you be so convicted--whether as a secularist or a believer in Christ--about the Bible's possible origins (and their implications) if it were a text on the order of Hansel and Gretel?

As we continue with Genesis 2 and 3, I want you to think not only about what this text meant to the ancient Israelis but also about what it means to you, personally. Do you think there might be some sort of message in this text for you, and if so, what do you think it is?

Genesis 2 and Some Notes on the Fall of Man

I am heartbroken today over the Christian community's lack of concern for the men, women, and children around the world who are crying, starving for some litle morsel of truth, love, and hope. Why is the church in the United States, for example, more content with guns, bombs, and soldiers making their way to the Middle East, when what the peoples of the region need, more than anything else, is a drop of Christian love? Why is it that conservative Christians, who talk so forcefully about the need for America to return to Christian values, cannot find it in their hearts to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and (maybe) reach out to the Osama bin Ladens, Nasrallahs, and Ahmadinejads of the world?

Jesus said (as quoted in Matthew 24) that in the last days, the love of men would "grow cold." In an age when Christians would rather turn on their TV sets, watch "Praise the Lord," and vote Republican than address the very real spiritual decay that is occuring both around the world and within our own borders, perhaps we have moved even beyond coldness . . . to a complete lack of interest in love itself. When we have lost the ability even to allow our hearts to soften in the face of the suffering, the lonely, and the afraid, we have lost any semblance of what it means to have Christ inside of us--the same Christ who touched lepers, the same Christ who was mobbed by beggars, sickly people, and disreputable vagabonds and criminals and said not a word of exasperation or disdain.

We should all be on our knees, begging the God whose name we invoke whenever we lie, steal, or covet not to cast our souls into the abyss . . . quaking with fear before the Christ whose sacrifice we demean by using it as our personal escape clause.

That is the point of this blog entry--to highlight the fact that, in spite of 6000 years of recorded history, in spite of the Bible's record of a God who is trying--and failing--to get a humanity interested in its own desires to wake up and allow itself to become mature in its relationship to its Creator, and yes, in spite of all our technological advances, we are no better today than the people recorded in Genesis 2 and 3 were. In our ignorance, we look at the story of Genesis 2-3 and wonder why the first man and woman could have walked away from God in their hearts, when we are busily hungering after the same fruit they ate, and the same promise of elevation to godhood.

If it is one thing that the Bible shows us, it is that we are fools. We may try to avoid this ugly truth about ourselves by taking verses out of context or even dismissing the Bible altogether, but its message--and that message's implications--still stand. As we look over Genesis 2, 3, and 4, may we also examine ourselves, and see how deep and how wide and how monstrously undeserved is the love of the Christ we invoke so frivolously.