Retelling the Garden

So I’ve been working on a Manifesto.

I’m using the word “manifesto” because it paints the picture of a wild-eyed, crazy revolutionary…which I love!

The Manifesto is going to be 21 (maybe) 5 to 15 page pamphlets.  As I finish sections of it I will put them up on the blog for free downloading.  I worked on The Manifesto! (its better with an exclamation point) yesterday a ton, which kept me from blogging in the morning, so I thought I would share some of what I wrote.  I have no idea if this will make the final cut or not….but it was fun to write.  Enjoy!

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Growing up I was taught that God spoke everything into existence out of nothing.  The story started with this incomprehensible, transcendent deity who formed the world from a distance.  He was untouchable.  He was pure awesome power.  He was the prototype of glory who created perfection.   All of creation was perfect.  He had made it exactly how it was supposed to be…except maybe for us.

He created us from the dirt.  In the story we were these weak, insignificant, ant-like things.   In an inexplicable act of grace He breathed life into us…well…into man first.  But it quickly became clear that man needed help, so then the voice in the sky created woman to be man’s helper.  And while woman completed man, she was somehow less than man because man came first and woman was created for him – like a boss who hires a secretary to handle the administrative stuff he can’t get to.

Growing up it was always affirmed to me that we were originally created “good”, but that was short lived.  God had only one rule.  Don’t eat from this special tree in the middle of the garden.  That’s it.  But because we were dumb, disobedient jerks, we were incapable of following that one rule.  We immediately fell under the serpent’s spell.

Did I forget to mention the serpent?  Oh yeah.   There was this ancient evil snake roaming the garden.

None of my Sunday school teachers were sure why the snake was there; or how if God was in control of everything it was even possible for people to disobey; or why, if this tree was so important, God put it in the middle of the garden without putting a wall around it or locks or something.   But they thought it was all part of God’s plan.  I was unintentionally taught over the years that this was the standard answer for anything we didn’t understand about the Bible or life – “God has a plan.”  As if that phrase was some kind of magic wand it was okay to wave whenever tough questions arose.  But I regress.  “God’s plans” are something we will come back to later.  Returning to the story.

So we quickly fell under the snake’s spell.  He tricked us into eating the apple.  And let’s not forget that the woman ate it first (insert women ruin everything joke here).   The most horrific part of the snake’s trick was that when we disobeyed God, we had to leave.  You see, the transcendent, pure awesome power of God could not stand to be around our disobedience.   We broke one rule and suddenly we became disgusting to Him.  His holiness could not be tainted by our ugly sinful nastiness.  He had to toss us out of the garden and fast, before we started infecting everything else.  We broke the one rule and somehow because of our disobedience perfection was at risk.

In summary:

• God = awesome power concerned primarily with His rules being obeyed.
• Snake = crafty-crafterson who tricked us into making God angry.
• People = stupid disobedient jerks who deserve to be destroyed completely for their one act of disobedience.

Alright.  Let’s put that telling of the story aside for a moment and look at it with new eyes.

It’s not as if that telling of the story is completely wrong.  There is a lot about it that is right.  God did speak the world into existence.  He is pure awesome power, prototype of glory, the incomprehensible amazing creator.  And we don’t do well alone.  We do need one another.  And we did disobey.  And there were consequences.  But there is a lot missing that gives a completely different tone to the story.  So let’s look at what is often left out.

“So God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground’…God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it…”

Genesis 1:26 and 28

Again we have this all powerful God speaking things into existence, but His transcendence is not the point of the story.  Rather the point are these beautiful relationships He establishes between three parties – God, people, and the earth.

The first relationship is between God and people.

God made humanity in His own image.  There has been a lot of debate about what this means.  I’ve heard some said it is that we are creators like God is a creator.  Others have said that it is about God being three (Father, Son, and Spirit) and us being three (Soul, Mind, and Body).  But I don’t see either of those here.   God doesn’t immediately tell us to start creating more plants and land and etc.  And the broken-in-three vision of people doesn’t play out in the rest of the narrative.

So we are left with the conundrum of what does it mean to be created in the image of God.  Really the question is “what is the image of God?”  If we had to describe God with a brief sentence that defined Him, how would we do it?

Don’t freak out.  The Bible actually does this for us.  Much later in the story we are told that “God is love.”  (1^st John 4:8)  To be created in the image of God means that we have the capacity to love.  It is what we are created for.  It is the defining characteristic of our relationship with God.  He loves us and we were created to love Him in return.

A little later in the story we see God breathing life into the man, caring that man is lonely, putting man to sleep and molding woman from his rib, and then walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  This is a picture of a very personal God who, while His is all-powerful-awesomeness, is love as well.

His role in this love relationship is to bless, or to give good gifts.  People’s role is to be faithful to God in love.  Sure there are rules, but they are for our protection.  They themselves are a blessing.  And they are not the point.  The point is love – God loving us and us loving Him.

So this is the first relationship.  God loves us and loves to bless us.  We love God and stay faithful to Him.  The Biblical narrative will later refer to this as righteousness – living in right relationship with God.

The second relationship is between people.   Before we are told the whole “woman created from man’s rib” stuff, we are told that both are made in the image of God.  This is not a greater vs. less than partnership.  There is equality in this story.  And it makes sense if we are created in the image of God, and that image is love, that we would be incomplete without a peer to practice love with.  We need each other because love is not a solo.  It’s beautiful unique voices weaving together in intricate harmony in which we exist to help one another become better than we are.  It is when we sacrificially seek what is best for others.  The Biblical narrative will later call this justice – living in right relationship with one another.

The final relationship is between us and the land.  God gave us dominion over the earth.  But remember that we were created in the image of love, so this dominion is not about oppression or bending the earth to our will.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

Genesis 2:15

We are the gardeners of the earth.  It is our job to care for His creation and bless it as He blesses us.  He gave us this amazing gift that will provide for us everything we need to survive.  Our job is to love it.

In the beginning there were three relationships – God and us in love, us loving one another, and us caring for the world.  And these were not a static “perfect” relationships that have nowhere to go but down.  These were “good” relationships.  They were fluid, meant to grow and expand and shift.  Our relationship with God is like a great marriage.  Every day presents the opportunity to know our partner more and fall deeper in love with Him.  As we love one another we learn more about love and therefore more about God.  As we care for the world we see what it is like for God to care for us.

Then came the snake and the apple and the disobedience.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but 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.’” 

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.  “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

Genesis 3:1-6

So what was the fall all about?  It’s not actually about an untouchable apple or magic tree.  The fall is about us cutting God out.  The snake told us that if we ate the apple we would be like God and, as a result, no longer need Him.  No longer would we be dependent on Him.  Rather we would be as wise as He was, knowing good and evil.

To be clear.  We already knew what was good.  He loved us.  We loved Him.  He blessed us.  We were faithful.  And it was all good.  What we didn’t know was evil.  What we didn’t know was life without God, life without His blessings, life in darkness, hidden from the light of His love.

The fall was not about breaking God’s one holy rule.  The fall was about us rejecting God.  Full of pride, we decided that we could be like Him and didn’t need Him anymore.

Creation was good.  Then we rejected God and broke it.

I can’t stress that enough.  God didn’t reject us because we disobeyed.  We rejected Him.  We were unfaithful.  He loved and blessed us, and we scorned Him for it.

As a consequence of our unfaithfulness the other two relationships broke down.

To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the filed.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:16-19

Our rejection of God messed up our relationship with one another and gave birth to oppression where one person rules over another.  Our rejection also messed up our relationship with the world.  No longer will caring for the earth produce good things.  Now it will be difficult.

In summary.  God loves us and created us to love Him, love one another, and care for the world.  But we decided we didn’t need Him.  In our rejection of Him we messed up our relationship with one another and our relationship with the world.

But this is not where the story ends.  At first, Genesis continues with examples of how our rejection of God caused everything to fall apart.  Cain kills his brother and the earth cries.  God tries to hit reset with a flood, but before the rainbow fades Noah is drunk, naked, and cursing his son.  Then people are getting together to show God they can be like Him again by building a huge tower.

Then suddenly in Genesis 12 God did something amazing.  Something unexpected.  Something only a God who is love would think of.  He began a mission to restore the relationships that were broken.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  I will make you into the a great nation and I will bless you.  I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 12:1-3

God grabbed one guy and told him, “I’m going to fix my relationship with you and your family.  Then through you the world will come to know me again.” Later God is having a conversation with Himself and He says…

The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed?  For  I have  chosen him, so that he may command hi children and his household after hi  to keep the way of the Lord by doing  righteousness  and justice,  so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”

Genesis 18:16-19

God’s plan was to love and bless Abraham’s family hoping they will respond by faithfully loving Him in return.  He will bless.  They will follow.  Empowered by a restored relationship with God (righteousness), they will once again be able to live in right relationship with one another (justice) and the world.  Their restored relationships then will be an example to the rest of the world of what it means to live the good life, the life we were created to have.

God is on mission.  It is a mission fueled by His love.  It is a mission of restoration, putting things back the way He created them to be.