- Feb 5, 2002
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They were the ideal couple, the floor model, the textbook example, the paradigm. They had it all. But they didn’t want to be who they were. They wanted to be different people and, in a bold act of the will, transformed themselves into someone else. And then the wheels came off, not only for them but for their descendants, who all repeat the same mistake with the same results.
Adam and Eve were people who loved God and did what he asked, which wasn’t much. Just don’t eat the fruit of that tree over there. They had fulfilling work to do and spent the evenings walking with God in the garden. They had the perfect life.
Then they decided that in addition to being people who loved God, they were people who needed the knowledge he had kept from them. In eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they alienated themselves from God. No more did they live the perfect life with him in the garden. No more walks in the evening; God sent them away. He would take care of them, in the most astonishing way possible, but they’d have to live the hard life they’d chosen.
They also alienated themselves from each other. Adam, who had been thrilled to have a mate, tries to excuse himself by blaming Eve, as well as God. “You stuck me with her and it’s all her fault,” he said when God asked him if he’d eaten of the tree. (I imagine Eve brought this up later.)
And they alienated themselves from themselves. They lost close contact with the person God made them to be. They could no longer see themselves, see who they really were, as a unique version of the image of God.
And of course the alienation would only grow once the two were out of the garden. Their first born son killed their second in a fit of jealousy. A fratricidal murder just one generation removed from the Garden of Eden, all because Adam and Eve wouldn’t be happy going through life as the persons God made them to be.
And we all do the exact same thing.
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
Adam and Eve were people who loved God and did what he asked, which wasn’t much. Just don’t eat the fruit of that tree over there. They had fulfilling work to do and spent the evenings walking with God in the garden. They had the perfect life.
Then they decided that in addition to being people who loved God, they were people who needed the knowledge he had kept from them. In eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they alienated themselves from God. No more did they live the perfect life with him in the garden. No more walks in the evening; God sent them away. He would take care of them, in the most astonishing way possible, but they’d have to live the hard life they’d chosen.
They also alienated themselves from each other. Adam, who had been thrilled to have a mate, tries to excuse himself by blaming Eve, as well as God. “You stuck me with her and it’s all her fault,” he said when God asked him if he’d eaten of the tree. (I imagine Eve brought this up later.)
And they alienated themselves from themselves. They lost close contact with the person God made them to be. They could no longer see themselves, see who they really were, as a unique version of the image of God.
And of course the alienation would only grow once the two were out of the garden. Their first born son killed their second in a fit of jealousy. A fratricidal murder just one generation removed from the Garden of Eden, all because Adam and Eve wouldn’t be happy going through life as the persons God made them to be.
And we all do the exact same thing.
Remaking ourselves
Continued below.
Living our true identities more fully in the new year
As St. Francis de Sales famously said, “Be who you are, and be that well.” How do we do that when the world is screaming at us to be someone else, someone worldly?
www.oursundayvisitor.com
