The Garden and the Journey: Making Sense Out of Genesis.

I have always been fascinated by the attention so many Christians pay towards the book of Genesis. It is a book, like Revelation, that has been the center of attention of biblical scholars for centuries, not to mention the subject of countless controversies. St. Augustine devoted an entire book on the subject, aptly titled “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” in 415 AD.

We all heard the account, either in Sunday school, or as in my case, Catechism. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, resting on the seventh day. His crowning achievement, man, was created on day six, though we’re not quite sure when he created woman. He told the man and woman (Adam and Eve) to be fruitful and increase in number.

Everything was going according to plan until the serpent (Satan) tricked Eve into eating from the “forbidden” tree. Eve then tricked Adam into doing the same, and thus “The Fall” occurred. Adam and Eve were banished from paradise and all their descendents have had the stain of original sin ever since.

Literalists – those who believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis – are convinced that everything happened just like it was written. The heavens and earth and all that we see were created in six actual days; that there were two actual people named Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and that their first two children were Cain and Able; and from these two individuals – both men by the way – all civilization descended.

Those who take a more literary stance, suggest that the biblical account of creation is more a sonnet than an actual historical account, much like popular songs of today with verses and refrains. Adam and Eve are more symbolic characters meant to represent not so much the origin of man like some genealogical lineage but rather mankind in general. The Garden of Eden is less a place than a state of being in which man was given the choice to live under God’s will or to choose to go his own way. The serpent represents the dilemma of free will and the apple represents what happens when we chose unwisely.

The journey that is Man’s is always played out in the biblical account of Genesis, for this is where so many literalists go awry. The Garden is not some mythical place that we need to search for like the Ark. It is found within our hearts and minds. For every day of our lives – in deed every waking minute – we are given the choice to live under God’s will for us, or to eat of the apple and proceed under our own unaided will. The expulsion from Eden is our choice, just as it is our choice to come back into right relationship with God. It is both the blessing and curse of that ultimate gift called free will. We get to choose whether we will live in peace under the guidance of a loving God or to toil and struggle with the sin that exists within our hearts and pay the ultimate price: separation.

The most interesting thing about the biblical account of Genesis that often goes unmentioned is that God could’ve roped off the forbidden tree making it impossible for Eve to get to; instead he left it totally accessible. Thus God introduced temptation to us. And like those two fabled individuals whose constitution failed them when it was needed most, we too fail when tested. Our struggle is not with the forbidden fruit, but with what it represents. Deep down, man has always struggled with submission. We often think of it has defeat. What we have deep down always craved is to be as powerful as God. Our demons are those lies that we listen to that tell us we don’t need any help, least of all from some God who only seeks to rule our lives and kill our joy. We can have it all without any consequences; all we have to is move away from God (eat the apple) and be our own gods.

Simple and equally false. The enemy is not some mythical serpent in paradise but rather our own arrogance; and that arrogance leads to our own individual falls as we misuse that which God gave us freely. In short we are given the keys to freedom but instead prefer imprisonment. But escape, like a get out of jail free card, is available anytime we seek it. For in the final analysis the garden was never taken from us; we walked out of it with our eyes wide open. We can always return to it any time we choose. It is a choice we have been given by a God who knew all too well what we were capable of and who, in spite of our sinful ways, still loves us and wants us back in the fold.