'She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat'
Genesis 3:6, King James Version
Our church lent group started today; in a series called 'Growing through Lent' we will be re-examining the various stories which feature in the readings throughout Lent and attempting to bring new and different understandings to them.
Today we (as might be obvious) were looking at the story commonly known in Christian theology as 'The Fall'. We were asked to listen again to the story of the Garden of Eden from the perspective of a particular character in the story (Adam, Eve, Serpent, God), and afterwards we discussed whether this gave us a different view of the story.
What emerged from discussion was a teleological understanding of the Genesis narrative as an explanation for things being the way they are rather than an exposition of original sin (an interpretation I have always preferred... probably the English Lit student coming through, metaphors make everything better).
This got me to thinking of the Garden narrative as a metaphor for the transition of childhood to adulthood. As children we are innocent, as Adam and Eve were in the Garden, carefree and unashamed (come on, we all have those pictures our parents took of us running around the garden in a state of dishabille). As we grow older we learn more, our curiosity drives us to learn more, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we learn to be ashamed of our bodies and seek to cover them up, we no longer follow God with the purity of a child's faith. Our knowledge of the world around us, our curiosity leads us away from God* as much as towards God. Women go through puberty at which the pains of childbirth start in our periods, and men have to go out and work (well, we all do now, but when this story was written men went out to work, women ran the home).
Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden, an idyllic, childhood utopia where everything they need is provided for them, and must instead struggle to provide for themselves. We leave the protection of our parent's house, to make our own way in the world.
The First Letter to the Corinthians states: 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (1 Corinthians 13:11), but this so often includes our childlike faith, our unstinting trust in the love and will of God, and it is this we must (as Jesus pointed out) always be seeking to reclaim, despite all the pain and hardships that come with being human.
*SIDE NOTE: A case in the argument for a gender neutral English pronoun... they/them works in most situations but would have confused this one, yet I dislike gendering God as either feminine or masculine.
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