900190782

Honors 240A
Prof. Bobertz
26 February 2010

Blissful Ignorance and Inevitable Corruption

“Let the children come to me…for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke

18:16) 1. The main drives and motivations of the Jewish and Christian religions focus, as we have

discussed in class, on humanity’s eternal quest to return to Eden. We, the Judeo-Christians of the

world, want to live like Adam and Eve in a perfectly balanced and ordered universe. We want a

world in which God provides for all our needs, and in which we have no worries. But how can

we obtain such an existence? What was Adam and Eve’s big secret? The answer lies in the early

texts of Genesis; interestingly, the second creation narrative portrays Adam and Eve as children.

The garden is their innocence, the snake is the gateway into sin and corruption, and their

banishment from Eden represents growing up and the need to face the “real world.”

From the moment that “God formed man out of the clay of the ground” (Gen 2:7), this

human being, Adam, is entirely dependent on his creator. He is a newborn baby. As this baby

grows, God, like any good parent, plants a garden for him to play in and for him to help tend.

Papa God also makes the rules, and establishes the consequences: “You are free to eat from any

of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad…the moment you eat

from it you are surely doomed to die” (Gen 2:16-17). The parental side of God is trying to shelter

his son from knowledge of the world’s evil, but all Adam knows is that if he eats the fruit he will

be in for a lot more than just a time-out.

God also wants his son to have friends, because after all, “it is not good for the man to be

alone” (Gen 2:18). He brings to Adam an entire zoo’s-worth of animals, but for a human being,

1
All biblical passages are from the Saint Joseph Edition of The New American Bible. New York, NY: Catholic
Book Publishing Co., 1992.

1
 2

pets are sometimes not enough. So God creates Eve, and with Eve, Adam can experience a deep,

intimate friendship and fulfill the basic human need to belong. “This one, at last, is bone of my

bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). At this point in the narrative, Adam and Eve are still

naïve and uncorrupted. Adam doesn’t yet know that girls have cooties, and Eve has no idea that

men can be deceitful, sex-driven Schweinehunde. From this perspective, the arguments that the

creation narrative blatantly displays sexism and patriarchy – the main themes of Trible’s “Clues

in a Text” and Clines’ “What does Eve do to Help?” – are totally irrelevant. Adam and Eve are

like young brothers and sisters who can bathe together but not think anything of it; indeed, they

“were both naked, yet they felt no shame” (Gen 2:25).

Although small children are so often cute and carefree and innocent, we wise and agéd

individuals know that this cannot last. After all, the world is corrupt. Our sweet little children are

surrounded by violence, sex, drugs, lies, and natural disasters. In the Garden is a tree, with the

fruit of the knowledge of good and bad. This implies that evil already exists during this time. But

Adam and Eve are safely sheltered from this evil, right? After all, they have no television to stuff

them with images of violence and immoral sex, no public school bus from which to learn all their

curse words and the many variations of the previously mentioned immoral sex, and no school to

learn that the world is run by greedy, corrupt capitalists, communists, and fascists. Wrong. They

have a snake. The snake tells Eve that her Old Man has no idea what he’s talking about: “You

will certainly not die…the moment you eat of it you will be like gods who know…” (Gen 3:4-5).

He assures Eve that nothing bad will happen; in fact, eating the fruit will make her more like a

grown-up! The snake is a teenager, and he just offered Eve a cigarette. Eve accepts. And, like

anyone deliberately making a poor choice, Eve doesn’t want to go down alone. So she hands the

cigarette to Adam, and he takes a drag.

 3

God, who undoubtedly has eyes in the back of his head and can sniff trouble a mile away,

figures out what his naughty children have done. Not wanting to get caught, Adam and Eve

“hid[e] themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Gen 3:8). God finds them

and eventually elicits a confession, while Adam and Eve each explain how it is not their fault.

God, hearing this, gives the snake his due and then proceeds to punish his kids. His punishment,

incidentally, is not as harsh as the death he warned them of, because when parents sputter, “I’m

going to kill the little brats!” they seldom actually mean it. Instead, He kicks them out of the

garden.

Adam and Eve’s banishment from Eden, however, holds a deeper meaning than simply

the punishment for one act of disobedience. Let us re-examine the whole event, this time viewing

it as a significant developmental stage in Adam and Eve’s growth and maturation. Before eating

the fruit, they are innocent children. They then take a couple bites and, just like the snake had

told them, do become “like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” “The eyes of both of

them were opened, and they realized that they were naked” (Gen 3:7). Essentially, they grow up.

They must now leave the safe, carefree haven of home, or Eden, and discover the “real world.”

God tells Adam, “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat” (Gen 3:19), and he tells

Eve, “In pain shall you bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). They now have to get jobs, pay the rent,

shop for groceries, and bear children. Notice also that although Adam and Eve have been

“married” this whole time, they don’t “have relations” and produce offspring until Genesis 4:1,

after they had left Eden.

Thus depicts the growth and maturation of Adam and Eve, occurring nearly the same way

as every other individual’s development throughout history. Just like Adam and Eve, the people

of today still experience the innocence of childhood, lose that innocence, and eventually go on to
 4

face real life. When we metaphorically eat the fruit of knowledge and grow up, we become like

God not only in that we know good from evil, but also in that we must take some responsibility

for the Earth on which we live. We must work to earn our bread, and we must also work as

stewards of creation. Heaven, then, can only belong to the naïve, innocent children. Try as we

might to rediscover that peaceful garden of child-like bliss, mankind can never reenter it while

on earth. Until the end of time, people will continue to grow up.