Feb 06 2008
Thoughts on Gen 1-3
I was reading Gen 1-3 and a couple of things struck me as interesting. In Gen 2 when God created man, he placed him in a garden with all sorts of trees that were visually pleasing and good to eat. In the center of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It struck me as interesting that placement; placing the very thing that will bring you life in close proximity to something that will bring about certain death. As I think about it as well, God told them “…for when you eat of [the tree of life] you will surely die.” It makes me wonder if I’ve skipped over the real meaning of this statement. I look at the statement and knowing the rest of the story and human history that that act brought about circumstances that eventually lead to their physical death.
I wonder if I’m amiss, however in thinking that this is what Jesus is countering when he says ‘I come to bring you life to the full’ — There is undoubtedly a reference to the life in the hereafter, but I also have to believe that both of these are referencing a spiritual and quality of life death and life as well.
I know that in my history, I have never felt more dead than when I’ve been pursuing things that are not of God and working to temporarily pacify the arrogant tantrums of my fractured soul. Conversely, I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m doing what I need to do, when my life is in order and I’m working towards being the man God has designed me to be. I think for me and for most of us, God has placed a tree of life next to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that’s been living in each of us for years. Many of us have eaten of the knowledge tree and while it may be gratifying, it’s not satisfying.
One of the other things that struck me as interesting as well was one of the lines from Gen 3 — Sometimes through the telephone game and not paying attention we can add or subtract details from what God has told us: “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.’ It’s fascinating to me in reading that again that she has several things that are a bit off about her statement. The first is that she refers to it as ‘the tree that is in the middle of the garden,’ but there are two there diametrically opposed. The second is that somehow she got the idea that not only were they not supposed to eat it, they weren’t even supposed to touch it.
In thinking about this, I think many in the church suffer from this mentality, self included: as we go along, we lose focus on what things are and are not good for us and we get to the point where it’s so bad that not only should we not do it, but we shouldn’t even touch on it.
One of the things that comes strongly to mind here is teaching and talking about sex in church. Sex and sexuality is something that everyone deals with once their biology comes to term. In biology and commonality, it’s something as common as eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom — everyone who has the biological capacity has to deal with sex on some level. Understand me clearly: I am not relegating sex to an animalistic cycle of have need <-> satisfy need, I am saying that it is something that affects everyone frequently. I think that many times inthe church, discussing sex, for instance with your kids or with the youth in the youth group, etc, is something that is so private or even bad that it’s not discussed. And since it’s not discussed with good, holy, honest and God-led authority, our version of what we should or shouldn’t do, how we think about sex and how we deal with our own sexuality becomes very twisted to where we adhere to a rigid set of rules because that’s the way it is, we look at the rules to see which can be bent (because rules generally don’t explain WHY, they just lay out WHAT) or we experiment because we don’t understand the why.
Every one of us has a choice when we’re hungry — we can choose that which brings us life or we can choose that which brings us death. Similarly, I know I need to stay more grounded in the truth so that I know what God says on things so that I can have clarity in what he has for me.