Adam and Eve and the Four Big Consequences
November 1, 2008
...the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God
had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh..." ...And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. [Genesis: 2]
•To the woman [God] said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your craving shall be for your husband, and he
shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face (in the sweat of your nose, literally) you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return..."
The LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; What if he should put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever?" Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
God punishes Eve; then Adam; then, by extension, all of humankind by permanently changing the conditions of what could have been a life of endless comfort and ease. He imposes on us four new realities, four new sources of dis-comfort or dis-ease: Fertility, sexual longing (or sexuality, if you will), labor, and death. You could see all these as symptoms of the nakedness and exposure that the first two humans feel, their original joy at the sight of each other now only a painful memory.
Fertility, sexuality, labor, and death. These are the great magnets that pull our lives into clumsy orbits around them. Every major struggle, every really serious question brings us back to them. Here, in this story, is where the Bible yells, “Heads up!” Here is where the action is in human life: Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. We did not create them, nor--try as we might--can we bring them under full control. These are the four areas where we will face our most serious choices, and our most serious doubts. These are the four great debating points between generations, and they’re often debated in loud voices: “You call that work, what you’re doing? In
my day, we really had to work..” “When are you going to get married?” “When are you going to have kids?” Or: “I can’t understand how you’re raising your kids!” Or: “Why don’t you have more of them?
Fertility, sexual longing, labor, and death. We find the fiercest competition between members of the same generation taking place here as well. This is where the teasing happens, and the harassing, and the shouting, and the shooting. Here is where we struggle--not only with each other, but also within ourselves--as we grope to establish an identity. Personal attractiveness and economic status are viewed by many as paramount-- triumphs or failures of sexuality and labor that define who you are. Throughout most of human history and still in most of the world, a person’s worth might be judged by the number of healthy children they can produce; the yield of their fields or orchards; the numbers of their pigs, sheep, cows or goats--all triumphs of fertility. Such triumphs can make us feel immortal, invincible. We may proclaim to ourselves, “I will live forever in my sons and daughters, my riches and my mighty works!” It seems like death can never touch us. We’re sitting on top of the world--for a little while.
But everyone here knows that when it comes to sexuality, fertility, and what we try to achieve by our labors, you can do everything to your utmost, do your best, do it all just right--and still things might not work out. The one you love might not love you back. A child might not be conceived, might not come to term; might not survive, or might become an adult who disappoints us terribly. Plant corn but you get thorns and thistles. Whatever you do, however poorly or how well you do it, everything still might fail. Only death will never fail to come. We know that nothing can prevent it, so we grasp at one Nothing after another. “If nothing prevents death, then I’m
gonna go get me some nothing!” Maybe if I eat some of these or take some of that or drive one of those... Here’s the secret! No, it’s over there! No, wait: look up! Look down! Around and around we go, from one false promise, one manufactured craving to the next.
Fertility, sexuality, labor, and death. These are the four areas in which we will constantly debate our rights, duties, options, and privileges. Once I’ve sold my labor, can my employer tell me that I can’t go to the bathroom yet, or that I must go now and come straight back with a cup for the drug testing contractors? Why doesn’t the boss have to do it, and why is the boss’s income more than 200 or even 400 times my own, although my job is more difficult or dangerous? And why can’t I ask these questions on company time--seeing what-all the boss does on the company dime?
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. These are the four areas of human existence that we are always struggling to put in order, then keep in order. These are the matters for our most important covenants, such as marriage licenses, contracts, and wills; for life terms and death sentences. They force us to sort out our values. What do these realities require of us? What do they permit? We are sexual, fertile, creatures who must work to survive but who do not and cannot live forever. So, what should be forbidden? These are crucial questions for all human communities, questions about justice and righteousness--not in the abstract but right here in your
body. What is justice for your mortal flesh, what is righteousness in the body?
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. When we hold these up as issues for debate, we find so-called liberals and conservatives quickly parting company. Conscientious liberals prefer those social covenants which guarantee choices in life’s big decisions. They express a basic trust that people will tend to make appropriate choices for themselves when they are given a chance to do so. Diversity, they say, should be celebrated and protected. Conscientious conservatives regard choices in these areas with considerably more suspicion, and wonder if diversity is just a front for indecision, or for something much more sinister.
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. Here’s where we find ourselves keeping the most secrets, telling the most lies, with the truth closed up like a bubble inside of us, hurting to rise and burst from our hearts and lips. Here we find ourselves saying “God” the most often, whether or not we trust, or love--or believe in--such a being. That terrible three-letter word just pops right out: God, that’s good. God, that hurts. God, I want you. God, I need you. God, what can I do? God--what have I done? Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. These are the four reasons we’ll always have something like prayer--that wanting, wishing, studying, brooding,
bottomlessly hopeful affair of the heart that may or may not “save” our souls but at least may help us to spend them better.
A Harvard professor once said that “Religion is what people in community do, say, and think...with respect to those things...over which they have no control.” So, when we talk about fertility, sexuality, labor and death, we’re talking about why we will always have religion. Religion will not go away until all the problems and challenges they pose are settled and solved forever. Please don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen!
But although our Bible story can easily be read to say that fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death are punishments for human disobedience-- original sin--let’s not forget that they are also the greatest motives for human creativity and ingenuity, the kind of ingenuity that produces such things as science, medicine, law, and the arts. Trying to prolong and improve life, to make sexuality safer and childbirth more secure, to make labor less grinding and more rewarding--these bring out the best in us. And so it may be best in the end to understand them as gifts that go on giving, even though they demand so much of us as we try to keep them safely, and use them wisely. If we do so, they can be seen as among our original blessings. Remember how the story of the Garden ends:
Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Here we stand on the ground from which we were taken, in the real world, gazing back towards the Garden. What can we see in this image of a flaming, whirling sword? Is the way to the Garden, to the Tree of Life, altogether closed to us? Are we really cut off from its fullness? Are we really cut off forever from seeing each other in our naked human beauty, the beauty that brought the first hymn of praise from our lips while God watched and smiled? A whirling sword is different from a closed door. It’s there and not there. The way it guards is as closed as it is open, as open as it is closed. We may not have the power to break our way through, or the speed to dash
past it without getting cut.
I imagine it would sound like a huge ceiling fan with just one blade, whooshawhooshawhoosha whoosh...always blowing the scent of the Garden out to remind us of what it’s like inside. And perhaps we can see through just enough to use the Garden for our model, and make this world outside as much like it as we can--through our labor, our love, and yes, through our children, as we leave them behind to till it when we’re gone.
© Craig Moro, all rights reserved
...the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God
had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh..." ...And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. [Genesis: 2]
•To the woman [God] said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your craving shall be for your husband, and he
shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face (in the sweat of your nose, literally) you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return..."
The LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; What if he should put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever?" Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
God punishes Eve; then Adam; then, by extension, all of humankind by permanently changing the conditions of what could have been a life of endless comfort and ease. He imposes on us four new realities, four new sources of dis-comfort or dis-ease: Fertility, sexual longing (or sexuality, if you will), labor, and death. You could see all these as symptoms of the nakedness and exposure that the first two humans feel, their original joy at the sight of each other now only a painful memory.
Fertility, sexuality, labor, and death. These are the great magnets that pull our lives into clumsy orbits around them. Every major struggle, every really serious question brings us back to them. Here, in this story, is where the Bible yells, “Heads up!” Here is where the action is in human life: Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. We did not create them, nor--try as we might--can we bring them under full control. These are the four areas where we will face our most serious choices, and our most serious doubts. These are the four great debating points between generations, and they’re often debated in loud voices: “You call that work, what you’re doing? In
my day, we really had to work..” “When are you going to get married?” “When are you going to have kids?” Or: “I can’t understand how you’re raising your kids!” Or: “Why don’t you have more of them?
Fertility, sexual longing, labor, and death. We find the fiercest competition between members of the same generation taking place here as well. This is where the teasing happens, and the harassing, and the shouting, and the shooting. Here is where we struggle--not only with each other, but also within ourselves--as we grope to establish an identity. Personal attractiveness and economic status are viewed by many as paramount-- triumphs or failures of sexuality and labor that define who you are. Throughout most of human history and still in most of the world, a person’s worth might be judged by the number of healthy children they can produce; the yield of their fields or orchards; the numbers of their pigs, sheep, cows or goats--all triumphs of fertility. Such triumphs can make us feel immortal, invincible. We may proclaim to ourselves, “I will live forever in my sons and daughters, my riches and my mighty works!” It seems like death can never touch us. We’re sitting on top of the world--for a little while.
But everyone here knows that when it comes to sexuality, fertility, and what we try to achieve by our labors, you can do everything to your utmost, do your best, do it all just right--and still things might not work out. The one you love might not love you back. A child might not be conceived, might not come to term; might not survive, or might become an adult who disappoints us terribly. Plant corn but you get thorns and thistles. Whatever you do, however poorly or how well you do it, everything still might fail. Only death will never fail to come. We know that nothing can prevent it, so we grasp at one Nothing after another. “If nothing prevents death, then I’m
gonna go get me some nothing!” Maybe if I eat some of these or take some of that or drive one of those... Here’s the secret! No, it’s over there! No, wait: look up! Look down! Around and around we go, from one false promise, one manufactured craving to the next.
Fertility, sexuality, labor, and death. These are the four areas in which we will constantly debate our rights, duties, options, and privileges. Once I’ve sold my labor, can my employer tell me that I can’t go to the bathroom yet, or that I must go now and come straight back with a cup for the drug testing contractors? Why doesn’t the boss have to do it, and why is the boss’s income more than 200 or even 400 times my own, although my job is more difficult or dangerous? And why can’t I ask these questions on company time--seeing what-all the boss does on the company dime?
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. These are the four areas of human existence that we are always struggling to put in order, then keep in order. These are the matters for our most important covenants, such as marriage licenses, contracts, and wills; for life terms and death sentences. They force us to sort out our values. What do these realities require of us? What do they permit? We are sexual, fertile, creatures who must work to survive but who do not and cannot live forever. So, what should be forbidden? These are crucial questions for all human communities, questions about justice and righteousness--not in the abstract but right here in your
body. What is justice for your mortal flesh, what is righteousness in the body?
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. When we hold these up as issues for debate, we find so-called liberals and conservatives quickly parting company. Conscientious liberals prefer those social covenants which guarantee choices in life’s big decisions. They express a basic trust that people will tend to make appropriate choices for themselves when they are given a chance to do so. Diversity, they say, should be celebrated and protected. Conscientious conservatives regard choices in these areas with considerably more suspicion, and wonder if diversity is just a front for indecision, or for something much more sinister.
Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. Here’s where we find ourselves keeping the most secrets, telling the most lies, with the truth closed up like a bubble inside of us, hurting to rise and burst from our hearts and lips. Here we find ourselves saying “God” the most often, whether or not we trust, or love--or believe in--such a being. That terrible three-letter word just pops right out: God, that’s good. God, that hurts. God, I want you. God, I need you. God, what can I do? God--what have I done? Fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death. These are the four reasons we’ll always have something like prayer--that wanting, wishing, studying, brooding,
bottomlessly hopeful affair of the heart that may or may not “save” our souls but at least may help us to spend them better.
A Harvard professor once said that “Religion is what people in community do, say, and think...with respect to those things...over which they have no control.” So, when we talk about fertility, sexuality, labor and death, we’re talking about why we will always have religion. Religion will not go away until all the problems and challenges they pose are settled and solved forever. Please don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen!
But although our Bible story can easily be read to say that fertility, sexual desire, labor, and death are punishments for human disobedience-- original sin--let’s not forget that they are also the greatest motives for human creativity and ingenuity, the kind of ingenuity that produces such things as science, medicine, law, and the arts. Trying to prolong and improve life, to make sexuality safer and childbirth more secure, to make labor less grinding and more rewarding--these bring out the best in us. And so it may be best in the end to understand them as gifts that go on giving, even though they demand so much of us as we try to keep them safely, and use them wisely. If we do so, they can be seen as among our original blessings. Remember how the story of the Garden ends:
Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Here we stand on the ground from which we were taken, in the real world, gazing back towards the Garden. What can we see in this image of a flaming, whirling sword? Is the way to the Garden, to the Tree of Life, altogether closed to us? Are we really cut off from its fullness? Are we really cut off forever from seeing each other in our naked human beauty, the beauty that brought the first hymn of praise from our lips while God watched and smiled? A whirling sword is different from a closed door. It’s there and not there. The way it guards is as closed as it is open, as open as it is closed. We may not have the power to break our way through, or the speed to dash
past it without getting cut.
I imagine it would sound like a huge ceiling fan with just one blade, whooshawhooshawhoosha whoosh...always blowing the scent of the Garden out to remind us of what it’s like inside. And perhaps we can see through just enough to use the Garden for our model, and make this world outside as much like it as we can--through our labor, our love, and yes, through our children, as we leave them behind to till it when we’re gone.
© Craig Moro, all rights reserved