Stephen
Terry, Director
Creation
and Fall
Commentary
for the October 6, 2018 Sabbath School Lesson
“So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work
the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed
on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing
back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:23-24,
NIV
In the Genesis account, mankind is created in God’s
image.[i] Now for some, whose image
of God may be more like the mythological Zeus, that
might imply being long-haired and bearded, thunderbolt throwing and being a perpetually
angry god who is looking for any excuse to decimate humanity. Even Jesus is
often portrayed as a milder version of this hirsute image who still is not
above throwing tables about and making whips. But how correct is our image of
God when we examine the text. Is he indeed looking for any excuse to catch us
out? If he is, that certainly lets us off the hook somewhat for we can use his
anger as an excuse to turn from him in disobedience. Many do turn away for
precisely that reason. Is God the eternal nay sayer? Is he someone always
opposed to our happiness and comfort?
Something that flashes out from the Hebrew text of the
creation account and we can even get glimpse of in our modern Bibles is the
plurality of God. We see this in the word “our” when God is making mankind. It
is also very clear in the use of the plural Hebrew word “Elohim” for “God.”
Some have shared in the past that they felt this refers to God in the character
of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, who were all present at the creation
of our world. At the beginning of Genesis, chapter one, we are told that the
Holy Spirit is hovering over the waters.[ii] We are also told by the
Apostle John that Jesus was present as well.[iii] He tells us that nothing
was made without Jesus. Interestingly, the metaphor of Jesus as the Word of God
harmonizes well with this, for the Genesis account tells us repeatedly that it
was God’s word that spoke everything into existence. Unfortunately, while
metaphors can help us to understand some perspectives, they can also often
raise more question than they answer. Hence, we still, so many millennia later,
struggle to understand how God can be plural, yet one. Historically, many lives
have been lost over that stumbling block. Too many have assumed that this
representation of God was about his physical form, but it may have nothing to
do with that. As is often the case, in spite of our denseness, he may simply be
trying to share with us his character.
Understanding his character is important, because it is foundational
to all of Creation. That which functions in harmony with God’s character
endures, that which does not experiences entropy, declining into disorder and
chaos. So what is the character that God is trying to teach us? If we turn once
again to John, who seems to be the most in touch with God’s character, we are
told the simple equation, God = love.[iv] Unfortunately, this does
not move us much closer to understanding for several reasons. Two of the most
pronounced reasons are first, the definite lack of love seen in some of God’s
followers, and second, our failure as human beings to understand that
four-letter word “love.” In the English language, we love everything from our
spouses to hot dogs and chocolate cake. We use the word so loosely that it has
lost any profundity it may have once had. Some languages try to be more precise
by having words for different types of love. Biblical or Koine Greek had more
than one word for love, but apparently Jesus felt that the understanding was
still lacking for he attempted repeatedly to bring his flowers a little closer
to a correct understanding. He spoke of love’s willingness to sacrifice all for
another,[v] even going so far as to
demonstrate that on a rough wooden cross on Calvary. He told us that love meant
treating others the way we would want to be treated.[vi]
In spite of these many lessons, Jesus was faced
continually with squabbling among his disciples as each sought to gain
pre-eminence over the rest.[vii] Perhaps this is the most
profound and most often overlooked message of the Creation story. Creation was
a co-operative event. While God may have been Father, Son and Holy Spirit at
Creation, each of these co-operated in the genesis of our world. If this is the
image we were created in, then God created Adam and Eve to co-operate with one
another, giving deference and relevance to one another’s needs and ideas. We do
not know how long such co-operation existed between them, but notably, it was
when such co-operation broke down that things fell apart. Eve wandered from
Adam and placed her individual perspective above that of their joint
well-being. Without approaching the problem of the serpent in the tree
co-operatively, she found herself a victim of the serpent’s trap. We are not
told why she wandered from Adam. Perhaps she was bored or even peeved over some
disagreement. So many modern Adams and Eves respond to challenges in their relationships
by tuning their partner out and walking away to their eventual detriment. While
there are situations where one must do this to preserve life and limb, this is
likely not the case for so many that approximately fifty percent of marriages
end in divorce.
Too many follow the path of Adam and Eve. We are
slighted in some way, and then the person we loved to co-operate with
previously is now blamed for every affront to our own comfort and ease. We
would have swum oceans and climbed mountains for the person previously, but now
we cannot abide how they forget to turn a light off, or forget to walk the dog.
As cooperation breaks down and a couple becomes more distant, others may enter
the picture and temptation sets in. Like the serpent in Eden, they claim to
understand and identify with our feelings of being prevented from experiencing true
happiness. They may have experienced the same thing we are going through and so
know just what to say to speak to our hurts. But such behavior will not give us
the paradise we imagine. As it did for Adam and Eve, it may prevent us from ever
rediscovering the joy of co-operating with someone we love. Even if we are able
to enter into a new relationship, the brokenness from the previous one may
prevent us from ever being able to find the ability to trust again like we did
before. Instead we may spend our time constantly watching for flaws in the
relationship and if we have not learned otherwise, when we find them, we may
begin to distance ourselves from the new partner as we did the old one.
Too much of how we relate to one another is founded on
this brokenness instead of on the cooperation of God’s character, the character
he created us to share with him and with each other. Instead we dwell on the
flaws. For example, we look at the results of our failings and come to believe that
those failings are normal, and we may even enshrine them in our lives. We may
look at God’s statement that man would rule over woman as a result of the Fall,[viii] and then feel it is our
obligation to keep women in their place, since that was what God said. We fail
to see the need to cooperatively consider her needs and ameliorate that effect
of sin. It strikes me as strange that we should do this, for we seem to have no
problem doing what we can to ameliorate the pain of childbirth, mentioned in the
very same verse. Perhaps it is because alleviating labor pains does not
threaten our status anywhere near the degree that treating women as equals
might. Even worse, it seems our world has turned everything upside down to find
justification for oppression in God’s statement of what sin would bring to the
lives of men and women. It seems tantamount to institutionalizing sin and its
effects. With sin as its foundation, such an attitude will naturally further
the descent into chaos as co-operation continues to erode and unity will be the
last thing that could ever expect to blossom in that ground. Instead thorns and
thistles will be the crop that springs forth continually from that field.[ix] We will find ourselves like
Paul, who sought to establish unity by eliminating dissent. On the road to
Damascus, Jesus even asked him why he continued to “kick against the pricks.”[x] Perhaps the results of sin
identified in Genesis, chapter three, were never intended to be
institutionalized, but instead are meant to guide us into different paths that
are not so prickly and painful. Wouldn’t that be a much nicer path for all of
us?
