Eden Needs Weedin'

To dismiss the Bible as a fairy tale with no divine inspiration is more wrong-headed than to accept it as literal truth in every detail.

Many people have an aversion to the Bible because of the often-warranted aversion to religion. The Bible and organized religions are not the same thing. The latter evolved from the former for a variety of reasons, not all of those reasons being holy, shall we say. The Bible should be studied and analyzed despite one’s adherence or abhorrence to a particular or to all religions.

Quick, now: Who asks the first question in the Bible, and what is the question?

The question doesn’t appear until the third chapter of Genesis. Declarative sentences plod one after another up until that time, delivering an uninspiring account of God’s creating everything.

It isn’t till the question is asked that the Bible suddenly gets off the history lesson and into a plot.

Give up? OK, the one who asks the question is the serpent, that slithery rascal that called Eden home, along with its new tenants. And the question he asks gets everything finally off static mode. Had he not posed this question, there would be no need to read the Bible any further.

The serpent asks Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” A simple request for clarification of what God had said. What could be more benign?

The Bible doesn’t say the serpent is Satan. It doesn’t even say that the serpent is evil, merely crafty, subtle. I’d say this is a metaphor for a lawyer. Significantly, the serpent never tells Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

The serpent taps into the human being’s doubt, which is the product of curiosity, but the serpent hasn't put curiosity into the woman. It is already there. And that means that God is the source of disobedience to Himself.

Why did God give man curiosity if it could lead, as it did so quickly, to disobedience? A bit perverse of Him, don’t you think?

Or, and this is what Solomon finds most intriguing, did God not know that when He created man just what all it was he had endowed him with? Let’s explore that idea by looking at the second question in Genesis.

It’s just a few paragraphs later, when God is walking through Eden in the cool of the day (Note: Was God subject to sunburn and discomfort in His own creation? He seems to have been a most short-sighted god if this is the case.), that God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”

I don’t think it uncharitable to point out that there are now six or so billion people on the planet whom God is supposed to be watching out for. However, when there were only TWO, he couldn’t keep track of them! Again, this does not speak well for His management acumen.

As almost all parents find out quickly: Creation is easy; control is impossible.

I think it would have been a lot easier to appear omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in those early days than it would now, so it seems a big opportunity was missed by the Almighty. If He had really been supervising the writing of the Bible, He surely would have excluded the fact that He lost control of His creation really from the get-go.

The third question in the Bible follows quickly. Adam responds to God’s question that he was ashamed to meet God because he was naked, to which God angrily asks, “Who told you that you were naked?”

Now, isn’t this a curious response from the Mighty Father? I mean, who does God think COULD have told Adam he was naked? There are two, count them, two people on Planet Earth, but the language genie, as evidenced by the first question, was already out of the bottle and in the repertoire of three (Adam, Eve, serpent) and who knows how many else.

Had God already lost control of who would have language? Had He pulled off another creation somewhere else that He feared had gotten to Adam? Just who does He think slipped Adam the info that nakedness in humans is not to be endured on formal occasions, with the possible exception of entertainment award shows?

Now, of course, you could say that God is being rhetorical, is speaking for effect—after all, He has been known to throw some interesting tantrums. But then the question becomes an apostrophe to some higher force, just as prayer is affirming a belief in spiritual matter.

If God is being rhetorical, then what force is higher than He? This would be indicative that there is a power He is subject to, that He is not the be-all and end-all.

Then God asks the fourth Biblical question, directed to Eve. “What is this you have done?’ Now, that is like a parent walking into the midst of his child’s mess and yelling, “What have you done?” Isn’t it obvious?

Now, I think Eve should have defended herself a little more vigorously, though, this being the beginning of the world and without precedents, perhaps she didn’t know that the best defense is a good offense.

She should have thrown this right back into God’s face and told Him that He was responsible, since He wasn’t doing His godly duty of watching over His creations. Wouldn’t a little vigilance on God’s part at this incipient stage of human development been common sense?

From the very first, we have God taking a laissez-faire approach to creation and then throwing hissy fits when things don’t go as He hopes they will! Did He expect everything to go perfectly from the start? Boy, from someone who’s supposed to be omniscient, an awful lot goes under His radar.

With these four questions, we are able to come to an understanding that God, though powerful, is not all those “omni” words. Clever, mysterious, creative, vindictive, exasperating, and clueless—that’s our God. But not infallible. Not by a long shot.

It seems as if God is competent in His abilities to create, but that He becomes over-confident and overreaches when He creates man.

And just why does He create man? Well, the answer, not expressed in the Bible, is one of vanity, pride. God needs a being of rational intelligence and spiritual ability to be able to appreciate all this creation. God needs to be told how well He’s done.

So he effects the overreach of all creations—He duplicates Himself. Oh, He thinks He will have a creation that is innocent but aware, subservient yet powerful at the same time—but life is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates when He made man. He didn’t know what He was going to get! (No, no, Solomon knows that Forrest Gump didn't make man--this is just awkward grammar.)

His two apostrophizing questions to Adam and Eve are to the force that He is subject to—FATE. Oh, yes, God sells Himself as being beyond all forces, but He isn’t. Fate has always been His Achilles heel, and it trips Him up in what has been called OUR fall. “Our” indeed! It is God’s fall! Sucker punched by Fate.

He has created something LIKE His equals so they can appreciate His Brilliance. The problem is that we are so much like Him that there is only one thing more we need to be identical to Him. And if we get that last thing, there will be nothing separating US from HIM! Oh, the infamy. To be so powerful, and now to have to share equal billing with His own creations! What price vanity!

God must have been tasting a lot of bitter gall about then. He allows Himself to vent with a string of dire curses—among these Lamaze childbirth and non-mechanized farming—but then the Bible gives us the truly unique insight into His psyche. Everything you need to know about God and our creation is in the one and only incomplete sentence in the entire Bible.

Do you know that the only incomplete sentence is uttered by God Himself? Yes, it’s Genesis 3: 22. “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever--”

If we can live forever, we will be truly gods--and the secret is right there in Eden. But God becomes so horrified by this idea that He doesn't even finish His sentence. He knows that if man has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it won't take long for him to make a beeline to the tree of eternal life (don't you get the idea that God didn't plant this garden Himself?).

Faster than you can lock the door when people wearing suits and dresses are coming up your front walk, God closes Eden. He unceremoniously kicks Adam and Eve out, locks the gates to the place, and puts an unblinking, unchanging sentry to defend it, not to be confused with Joan Rivers.

Think of it, my fellow humans: We came THAT close to being gods ourselves, but He couldn’t take the competition. He took away our godlike status by keeping immortality for Himself. Well, sucks to be us, I guess, but that's why we invented medicine and science--we'll get back into that Garden, if not by the front door, maybe by the virtual one that we can conceive of. I think it's our Fate.

Well, we shouldn’t take God's vindictiveness too hard, I guess. I mean, every man whose son comes close to equaling his old man is duty-bound to sabotage the little whippersnapper. And we have this on the highest authority and from the best of sources that life has always been this way.

Remember the first commandment is to have no other gods before us, but we would all be gods if things had gone a little different back there at the dawn of creation. It would have made waiting in line impossible. Seems Someone wanted to have the number one position all to Himself. (If we were all gods, would there be any atheists?)

I wonder if the all-seeing eye has noticed that there are a helluva lot of people burrowing under the fences around Eden. Also, I wonder who's been doing the weeding in there in our absence. Surely you don't think He has!