Now personally I am open to having an ambiguous view of the opening chapters of the Bible and am okay with the dissonance of not dogmatically landing on any particular interpretation, though I understand not everyone is capable of this. I prefer to withhold judgment on issues that, in my mind, appear to be too unsettled, so that I have the flexibility to explore different aspects of the question without being locked into one way of thinking about something. Nonetheless, if you feel a need to latch on to one particular interpretation of Genesis you are welcome to it and I encourage you to do so… as long as we don't miss the point of what Genesis is trying to communicate of course. My starting place when interpreting Genesis is not dependent on clear scientific precision, so please allow me the chance to tell a short story to best articulate my point.
Imagine it is past midnight and a young boy named Wes awakens to the smell of something burning. He staggers out of bed in a daze rubbing his eyes as he approaches his window, a cough that begins to increase with more and more intensity as he gazes out of the window. Outside, he sees his mother and father, along with his siblings, but it isn't long before he sees the faces of his family grow cold, looking around in a frantic panic. Wes hears a loud bang in the background and turns to see glowing embers accompanying a beam that was set on fire by a furious blaze that was beginning to quickly consume his room. He perks up when he hears his dad outside the window and quickly turns to open the window.
“Wes! Wes! My boy, do you see the firemen below you?!” His father could barely hold back the panic in his voice, but did his best to maintain his composure for the sake of his son.
“I see them daddy!” Wes exclaimed. “But I'm scared! I'm afraid!”
His dad took a deep sigh as the firemen prepared the net that would be used to catch the seven year old Wes after he jumped from the window. “I know my boy. You have to jump though.”
Wes’s fear began to increase tremendously as the fire began growing hotter behind him, but his fear of heights caused him to freeze in place. Wes was an imaginative boy and was always telling the grandest of stories and his mind flashed to a superhero he had invented that could turn into steel .
“DAD! I KNOW WHAT TO DO!” Wes shouted with glee. “I'll jump out and become Steelzor! That way when I hit the ground I won't be hurt!”
His father held back his panic as the second story windows blew. “Okay son! Now jump!”
Wes quickly jumped and fell safely into the net the firefighters had prepared for him, was rushed to the hospital and eventually grew up into a successful novelist, with his most successful comic strip being Steelman. His origin story begins inside a house, with a little boy named Wesley after a fire gone wrong that releases a special chemical that turns him into Steelzor…
Now let me ask a simple question, what was more important in the moment with young Wes for the father to communicate, the truth that Steelzor is a fictional character, that it's the firefighters along with the nets that will actually save him and it's just his imagination running wild that is deluding him into thinking he is a superhero made of steel or working within his son's beliefs for the sake of the greater truth, that is, he must jump out of the building to live?
I am not a neuroscientist, but I hardly believe that any of my children would bother much with my ramblings of the location of the of the central sulcus or the pre and post central gyri, nor care to hear me explain the process of an action potential and yet I do not expect them to relate upwards to me, rather I condescend to their level of understanding, similar to Wes’s father in our imagined scenario. I believe this may be what's happening with God and the Hebrew people, rather than expect them to apprehend the scientific nature of reality, with physics that could not possibly be apprehended by them in their time period, he simply related to them in a way they could understand. Rather than multiple gods of creations carrying out various tasks, Yahweh wanted them to know He was the one that created it all.
Now I am aware that most who adhere to a literalist interpretation of scripture will reject my approach to the text and I offer no objection to their objection! If this is what you believe the text says, then that is what you believe the text says and I am not your lord, not your judge and I simply leave you with respect and love to you in your interpretation, as again I stress that I am more interested in understanding the point of the text, than argue whether there is a literal talking snake in the garden or not. I simply let the Lutheran of the world tell me “is means is” and the Zwingli’s of the world disagree while leaving room for mystery on my part and just partake in the Lord’s supper in remembrance of Christ, regardless of how Christ is present, knowing He is somehow.
As we have discussed, I believe Christ is the tree of life and so whatever fruit that would come from Him, must give life as He is the source of all life. Consider the following scriptures.
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:66-69
[25] Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; [26] and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26
43 “For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. 45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil [a]treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Luke 6:43-45
The Lord says,
4 “Then I will heal you of your faithlessness;
my love will know no bounds,
for my anger will be gone forever.
5 I will be to Israel
like a refreshing dew from heaven.
Israel will blossom like the lily;
it will send roots deep into the soil
like the cedars in Lebanon.
6 Its branches will spread out like beautiful olive trees,
as fragrant as the cedars of Lebanon.
7 My people will again live under my shade.
They will flourish like grain and blossom Like Grapevines.
They will be as fragrant as the wines of Lebanon.
8 “O Israel, stay away from idols!
I am the one who answers your prayers and cares for you.
I am like a tree that is always green;
all your fruit comes from me.”
Hosea 14:4-8
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
John 17:3
It seems clear to me then, that a relationship with God through His Son the Lord Jesus Christ is what gives us eternal life and that eternal death is separation from God, by rejecting His Son, who is the only means by which He will accept reconciliation. I want to reiterate Luke 6:43-45 for just a moment as I think this will bring home the crucial message of Genesis and what God is trying to teach us through the text.
If people are known by their fruit, that is, by their behavior and the results of their teaching, since the Lord Jesus has no sin (1 Peter 2:21-22, 1 Corinthians 5:21), is God (John 1:1-4 and 14, John 8:58 and Exodus 3:14) and the source of eternal life (John 11:25-26), that means there is no disease or corruption in Him.
If Satan is the embodiment of evil and is the serpent in the garden (Revelation 12:9, 2 Corinthians 11:3, Genesis 3:15, and 1 John 3:8), then in a sense we could refer to Satan as the tree of death since his corruption produces diseased fruit that if bitten, leads to eternal death through the act of disobedience to the Author of Life (Acts 3:15).
Since sin separates us from God, the source of eternal life (Isaiah 59:1-2) we have a clear picture of what was going on in the garden of Eden.
We had two trees, one the tree of eternal life who is the Lord Jesus Christ and the other the tree of eternal death who is Satan. Obeying the Words of Christ is life and peace and obeying the voice of Satan is death and destruction. Adam and Eve were presented with a choice of whom they were going to follow and I believe that the choice in and of itself was what led to the knowledge of good and evil. If I am to be consistent in my hermeneutics, then if the tree of life is a symbol of Christ, then the tree of the knowledge of good and evil must be a symbol of the choice to disobey God. Recall in the earlier blog, “Eve’s Room” and the parallels with the philosophical thought experiment Mary's room. Eve, like Mary only possessed theoretical knowledge, it was not until she carried out her act of disobedience to God did she obtain experiential knowledge of evil, just as it was not until Mary saw red for after stepping out of the room did she gain knowledge that could not be accessed through information alone.
God is goodness, to obey Him perfectly is to only do good, to disobey would be to do evil as His will leads to selflessness, our wills not aligned with His produce only selfishness and destruction as a result. If God said, “You may use any pencil in this bag, except the blue pencil” you can trust that in His divine foreknowledge He has good reason for you not to use it and to not trust His voice, is to reject the voice of Goodness Himself and ultimately all that is pure. The fruit is not what's important in the story, it's the decision of what Adam and Eve did with the fruit that is important.
Everyday you and I choose to obey one of two voices and we often choose to “eat the fruit” when we give in to the serpent's voice and rationalize our sin, knowing it's wrong and just like Adam and Eve, we blame others for our sinful choices and refuse to take accountability for our sins. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of humanity, told in a way that transcends the ages with timeless truths that connect to us all on a deeply relational level, by a culture I believe God condescended to, speaking in a way not concerned with scientific accuracy, but to highlight the deeper truths in our souls that long to return to Eden with our Creator. I believe there was a literal garden, a literal Adam and Eve and a literal demonic being that came into the garden and led the pair into rebellion against God, bringing about the fall of man, told through the symbolic language and tradition of that ancient culture.
Whether you want to believe in a literal young earth interpretation where God forms Adam from dust and Eve from his rib with snakes that somehow lose the ability to talk, an old earth view with Adam as a special creation with various mixes of metaphor or as theistic evolutionist would would interpret, Adam and Eve being hominems that God imbued with consciousness and placed in the garden of Eden to be priests of creation, the meaning is all the same. Humanity was deceived by the serpent and creation as a result was cursed and separated from God.
Whatever view seems the most rational, I will leave to the reader to decide, but know that whichever interpretation you believe to be correct, the central points of Genesis must not be forgotten. Humanity was once in a perfect relationship with God and we fell, but our loving Creator made a way back home for all of us through His Son Jesus and I think as long as we keep that in our hearts, we will be just fine, whatever conclusions we come to.
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