Adam and Eve: Part 1

Let’s break down the story of our creation and original sin (Adam and Eve) piece-by-piece. This story is absolutely imperative to Christianity’s claims because it represents our creation and the direct context of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus is claimed to have saved us from our sins, so in order to believe in His divinity, you must believe in the concept of sin. And in order to believe in the concept of sin, you must believe in the story of original sin as a historical event. As I have mentioned before, many liberal Christians like to take Genesis as figurative, metaphorical, and/or poetic because of the modern contradictions of science, but to me that is nothing more than a cop out. The church often teaches original sin as literal history by saying, “man fell from God when Eve ate from the tree”. Otherwise, what is there to understand the origin of sin and why we are all condemned with such a thing? What did Jesus save us from? Genesis offers the only explanation, so I say it must be taken at face value.

I would recommend you to refresh your memory and reread Genesis 2 through 4 (I myself am reading from the New International Version (NIV)). It is only a few pages. Upon my rereading of this Scripture (because I did not remember the details), I was honestly shocked at what it actually consists of. It does not reflect the sugar-coated story of Adam and Eve that society portrays. I will gradually explain what I mean: 

According to God’s words through Moses (the claimed author of Genesis), the Lord creates man in His image and in His likeness and gives us life as a gift in His grace (Genesis 1:26-29). He grants Adam the breath of life and creates the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:7-8). Then the Lord is so gracious as to give Adam a helper. He creates Eve to help with the garden, since none of the other animals God created are capable enough (Genesis 2:18-22). I wonder, though, if Eve’s purpose was to help Adam with the landscaping, fruit-picking, and horticulture of the garden, then why would God not simply create another man? God’s true intent for Eve must be for our reproduction, so why not say so? 

Anyway, God then warns Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” – Genesis 2:16-17. It is implied that God warns Eve as well. I wonder why God does not want them to gain that wisdom? He should have nothing to hide if He is on the side of good. Should not Adam and Eve know of evil so that they could have the voluntary choice (a.k.a. free will) to avoid it? And the obvious question: why would God even put this tree in the garden in the first place? Why give this pair of Homo sapiens the temptation of what He considers to be sin? He would have known ahead of time what that would lead to, being outside of our space-time reality.

Regardless, Adam and Eve go about their day doing as they were told (while naked, by the way) since they do not know anything otherwise. All they know is that they should obey the Lord, or else they will surely die (physically or spiritually). Is that how parents should treat their children? Should children be threatened to be killed or to be banned from the household if they disobey a single time? That’s called controlling others with fear, and it has nothing to do with love. God wants Adam and Eve to obey Him with blind faith and without questioning His authority. He does not give them a reasonable explanation as to why they may not gain the knowledge of good and evil, and prohibiting such wisdom is only censorship.

So, one day, a serpent (often attributed to Satan) comes along and approaches Eve with a very convincing argument regarding the forbidden fruit: “You will not surely die… For God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” – Genesis 3:4-5. So it then became truly apparent to me that, prior to eating the forbidden fruit, Eve does not even contain the knowledge of the concept of good vs evil, right vs wrong, or obedience vs defiance because that is what they gain when they eat the forbidden fruit. Eve could not possibly have known that the serpent was evil because God did not allow her to know. It was a perfect catch-22; Eve would have had to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in order to gain the knowledge of why she was not allowed to. 

Eve does recite the command that “God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’” – Genesis 3:3. So, she is aware that she should not eat of it, but she does not know why. Since she has free will, she has the ability to make decisions based on reason. The serpent deceivingly told her that she would not die and that she would ‘be like God’. Without having the knowledge to comprehend that this serpent was God’s adversary, Eve understandably fell victim to its reasoning. Why should she not want to be like God if she admires Him and worships Him? So, she tried the forbidden fruit quite simply because she “saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” – Genesis 3:6. Does that sound like a decision deserving of punishment for all of mankind? I beg to differ.

Obviously, God was using the tree as a test of Adam and Eve’s devotion. But why would He have allowed the serpent to become involved??? Let’s back up to the initial situation where God had given Adam and Eve the command to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16-17). Imagine there was never a talking serpent and that Eve eventually made the choice on her own accord to eat from the tree for any reason. In that case, there would be no arguing that Eve made the conscious decision to explicitly go against the word of God, comparable to sinning. If God created the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as a test of Adam and Eve’s faith, then would not it be fair enough to simply leave them to themselves? Once the serpent is introduced, then the whole situation becomes lop-sided against obeying God, especially since Adam and Eve are not aware of evil. 

The obvious question: how did the talking serpent even come to be in the Garden of Eden? Why would God have allowed such deceit against His word? “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made” – Genesis 3:1. How did this serpent come to possess a brain capable of such craftiness? And why was it out to deceive Eve? God must have created the serpent and its intentions, right? Christians like to attribute it to Satan, but God even created Satan, right? (I will discuss Satan another time).

Regardless, there are three possibilities as to how this serpent was able to approach Eve in the garden:

1.  God did not know of the serpent’s craftiness, so He is therefore not omniscient (all-knowing).

2.  God was not able to prevent the serpent from approaching Eve (whether or not it was possessed by Satan), so He is therefore not omnipotent (all-powerful).

3.  God was fully aware of the serpent’s craftiness, but He sanctioned it to deceive Eve and test her devotion, so He is therefore not benevolent (kind and loving).

God punishes the serpent afterward, so it can be inferred that He did not sanction its actions. That leaves the first two possibilities. So, not only was the serpent able to deceive Eve, but also the Lord God Himself. I do not understand how God could have allowed the serpent to play the role that it did, and then punish it afterward for doing so. 

God allowing the serpent to play such a role is only manipulative and extremely unfair to Adam and Eve. They were set up for failure, and fell victim to the serpent’s deceit. Eve listened to the serpent’s sway of reason and questioning authority, rather than the Lord’s sway of fear and blind faith, so I can only admire her for her decision to gain wisdom.

I will continue my thorough breakdown of the story of Adam and Eve for the next couple of weeks.