Downward spiral  

Last post, after reading Genesis' first creation story, I commented that it seemed too idealistic. God creates everything and it's all just great. Of course most of us know that it's not going to stay that way very long in Genesis, and will quickly spiral down into a broken world we're more familiar with. That's where I found myself as I read part two of Genesis.

I say part two because it each begins with "This is the account of..." which according to the introduction to Genesis in my Bible, marks a new section. Thematically it seems reasonable, because the second creation story is a lot different from the first. Here's a table I made comparing the two:

Note that a big part of the scope of the second story that is absent from the first story is comparing before the fall vs. after the fall. I'll get to that in a second.

Also interesting are all the every-day-life explanations this story has: how animals got their names, why snakes don't have legs and are hated by women, why we have sex, why childbirth hurts, why marriage is hard, why farming is hard, why we have clothes, etc.

These are a fun part of the story and of course are not all... historically accurate... to say the least. But one particular explanation is the far more important and the central theme of this creation story. It is the explanation of why we die.

Here's the synopsis of Genesis part 2: God needed somebody to work the garden, so he breathes life into a man. The guy gets a pretty good deal living in the garden and hanging out, walking around with God. In fact, after naming the animals, God makes a woman for the man out of his own body, which he is so happy about that he breaks into poetry and bam, we have an explanation for sex. However they will die if they eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Why don't I hear about the name of that tree more? It is not the Tree of Evil that's off-limits but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All I can say is that the humans must not have had a clue about the difference between good and evil, and perhaps they weren't created to have such knowledge. The serpent and God seem to confirm this in their speech.

As in all stories like this, a crafty animal (in this case the snake) fools them into eating from that tree. Immediately they recognize and are ashamed of their nakedness. They also hide from God. Besides those two things, check out all the problems this causes: childbearing is painful, marriage is oppressive, the ground is hard to farm, people will not live forever, they are separated for good from the Tree of Life, and to top it all off, one of their sons kills his brother. Four generations later, a descendant who is married to two women proclaims that he has killed two men and is proud of it.

The contrast is stark; instead of working and living and walking alongside God and each other in harmony forever, humans move away from God, hide from him, kill each other and eventually all die.

Part 3 starts after that, and I might as well summarize it because it's similar and short. This part reemphasizes that God made humans in his likeness and blessed them. It then lists Adam and tons of his descendants, so that by the time a very very long time passes and a man named Noah is born, the humans are 100% corrupt and evil. They are so evil compared to how God created them that God is sad that he ever created humans and decides he will wipe them out; however, there is one little hitch in his plan, and that's that Noah found favor in God's eyes.

So part one of Genesis was about the beautiful perfect harmony and beauty of earth and man that God created. Part two demonstrates that by choosing to figure out good and evil for themselves, humans screwed everything up and went into a downward spiral. And part 3 is basically the same, except demonstrated through the passing of time rather than one single act.

So, what have we learned so far? What is the Bible about so far? God has been the main character, and he is a very personal, real, character who walks, talks, feels, etc. He is portrayed as totally good and unbelievable powerful, as everything he creates is perfect and he even helps humans when they fail, by protecting Cain and making skin garments for Adam and Eve.

Meanwhile, man, who was supposed to be a ruler under God, made in his image, rejected God's way in order to choose his own. This has lots of bad instant results and even worse ones down the road.

Now this is a story I can get into. This is the world I see around me. Humans have serious problems. According to the Bible, the problems exist because we turned from God and are cut off from the tree of life. It's an intriguing idea and one that our rights-oriented, I'm-the-victim culture would not appreciate. Anyway, the foreshadowing at the end of part three indicates that God is planning on wiping out humans in the next part. Sounds like a plan; the whole exercise was a disaster, really.