Snake in the Grass?

For some Christians part of their difficulty in accepting evolution is that in evolution death and violence occur in creation before the appearance of  humans and what Christians call “the Fall”. In some classical accounts of the Fall  the pre fall world is a place without death and without suffering. Death enters the world because of and as a consequence of the actions of Adam and Eve. 

I think  there is a problem with this notion of a sinless, perfect pre fall world. Even a literal reading of Genesis 3 doesn’t appear to support this. What’s the problem? The serpent. The serpent, made by God (v1), who exists in pre fall Eden.

Take a moment and re read the story. It’s a rich and wonderful story full of divine wisdom and truth about the human condition.  But the text doesn’t explain how sin entered the world, it assumes that it is present. For the Genesis writer, the serpent simply exists. It is part of creation. There is no explanation about why the serpent acts the way it does. There is no explanation about why Eve and Adam listen to the serpent.  Notice in the text that the presence of a talking serpent doesn’t seem to surprise Eve. She carries on a conversation with the serpent as if that were a normal occurance.

The Bible assumes many things. For example Genesis one doesn’t  explain the existence of God. The Scripture assumes God exists. The Bible also doesn’t explain some things. Like how sin entered the world. Or why evil exists. As John Calvin and others have noted, God doesn’t explain everything to us. Some things are beyond our comprehension.  But we humans like to try to fill in the gaps.  We need to be careful, as we all know, when we read the Bible that we read it carefully with attention to the culture of the original audience and with the awareness that our reading is shaped by 2000 years of Christian theology- some of that theology better than other. 

As I read the story, it seems to me that unless Adam and Even knew what death was, the consequence of eating the forbidden fruit is unintelligible to them. If you don’t know what death is, how can death be an effective deterrent? Also notice Genesis 3: 22ff. Human mortality is assumed here. Human kind must be stopped from eating from the tree of life and thus living forever.  The Biblical text does not assume that pre fall humanity never died.

Is the story about Original Sin? Of course. But remember “original”  doesn’t mean the first sin. When theologians talk about original sin they  mean the universality of sin. Original sin refers to the inescapable nature of sin. Genesis 3 has much to say about sin and how sin works in the world – it’s out there, it can be difficult to recognize, it can sound reasonable and sin has tragic, far reaching and unexpected consequences.

Is this story about the Fall?  Yes, the Fall as a description of  the human condition. Estranged from God. Deciding not to trust God but rather deciding to trust the things of the world.  It’s a story about the human inclination to idolatry, putting something (in this case the word of the serpent) ahead of God.

Genesis 3, like the first two chapters of Genesis is a text full of meaning. Christians and Jews have spent millenia pondering this text. We could spend weeks on Genesis chapter 3, it is that rich and complex.  I only focused on a small part of the storyhere- carefully and faithfully I hope.  

So that objection to evolution, that there originally was a perfect pre fall Eden free of death well, I have trouble finding that in Genesis.  Perhaps we can  give that up. In fact let’s give up trying to read Genesis 1-3 as science altogether. It simply doesn’t work. As I have said before and will probably say again, to change our interpretation of the text  is not to claim the text is wrong or untrustworthy or untrue. To change our interpretation of the text is to admit we are human and need to grow and develop and sometimes that means we need to rethink the way we interpret a part of the Bible.

I’d like to know, what do you think?

Difficult Texts

The binding of Isaac. The Akedah. The testing of Abraham. No matter what you call it, this story found in Genesis 22:1-19 is difficult and disturbing. It’s one of the Biblical stories that everyone “knows”, even if they have never read the Bible. You can read the story here. My purpose today isn’t to offer a complex and full discussion of the binding of Isaac. My purpose today is to think about what to “do” with such difficult stories.

No matter how many times I read and re read this story, it remains a difficult text for me.  The story itself is simply and sparingly told, but what the story has to tell us is complex. There is no simple lesson from this simply told tale. I have discussed it in various study group settings. I have read many Jewish and Christian commentaries on this text. I think I have a sufficiently complex understanding of this text. Yet every time I read this story, it’s emotional impact is like  reading it for the first time. I suspect this is the experience of many people with this text. We never become comfortable with this story.

That bothered me for a long time- the reality that I would never become comfortable with this story. I thought I should be able to, once I had studied it, read this story without being disturbed by it. But  it upsets me every time I read it. I simply don’t like this story. 

And that’s all right.

It’s all right to say I don’t like this story.

It’s all right for a Biblical text to be upsetting.

Sometimes Christians think that we need to like every story in Scripture. We also sometimes think that every Biblical text ought to be uplifting and edifying and inspiring- chock full of feel good timeless truths.

But that’s not what we have in the Bible. And I think it’s OK to say so.

What’s not OK is to ignore the text, or trivialize it, or sanitize it.  Not everything in the Bible is there to make us feel good, or happy or special. You may have heard the saying that the purpose of preaching is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Well, I think that holds true for the Bible also.

The binding of Isaac is surely a story to afflict the comfortable. It afflicts those of us who think we understand God. It afflicts those of us who have a comfortable faith. It afflicts those of us who think we already give God everything. It afflicts those of us who like our faith and “our” God tidy and proper.

The binding of Isaac, the testing of Abraham, this story  is a persistently difficult text, it raises uncomfortable questions, it confronts us every time we dare to read it. My hunch is that’s exactly what the story is supposed to do.

I’d like to know, what do you think? 

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Two additional comments of a more practical nature concerning difficult texts.

You don’t have to wrestle with difficult texts, or any Bible story alone. We are fortunate today to have many good Bible commentaries available to us. They are written to help us, so take advantage of the wealth of information available. In addition, reading and discussing the Bible with a small group of people is helpful and important. Biblical interpretation has always been a group effort, please make the effort to find a group you can be part of.

Sometimes because of our particular personal situations, certain Bible stories just too difficult or painful to read.  There were several years I simply couldn’t read this story. In some situations, it is appropriate to leave a particular story unread.