Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-january-13-2026
Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
4“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
In yesterday’s Reflection, we looked at the first part of the second Genesis creation story, the one that includes Adam and Eve. You might remember that I said in that Reflection that I believe the stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis are meant to be understood as parables, not as factual history. It seems to me that, like the parables of Jesus, those stories communicate important truths, even if they’re not really factual history. So what about this second creation story in Genesis – the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall? What important truths are we meant to take away from it?
First of all, we have to deal with the idea of “the fall,” which is one of the central ideas of traditional Christian theology. That idea says that everything was originally perfect in creation, with no suffering or death, and that it all went bad because of the sin of Adam and Eve. But that understanding doesn’t work if you believe – as many followers of Jesus do – that God created humankind through the process we call “evolution.” If that’s how we came into existence, then there never was an Eden, or a historical Adam and Eve, or a fall.
There’s a lot of interesting theological thinking going on around that question of the fall in the contemporary church. Some theologians have suggested that at a certain point in the evolution of the human species, our ancestors developed sufficient moral capacity to understand the difference between right and wrong. At that point, they say, humankind realized that we are “fallen” – that we all fall short of God’s intention for our lives. And realizing that, these theologians say, we began to ‘hide from God,’ in a sense. We began to feel naked before God in a way we had not before. So according to the framework we talked about yesterday, that would mean that this story communicates some important spiritual truth, even if it’s not fact.
And there are other interpretations of the story that seek truth through the application of principles of psychology or the neurosciences.
But however you understand this story – even if you understand it to be describing a factual historical event that happened exactly 6,030 years ago – it seems to me that the overall theme of the story is that a good deal of the suffering in the world is caused by our human urge to reject the authority of God’s commandments and decide for ourselves what is good and evil.
The disruption of the harmonious relationship between humanity and God is the most obvious source of suffering in the story. Because of their sin, the people in the story try to hide themselves from God. They no longer feel innocent in his presence. As a result, they are deprived of the paradise God had designed for them, and have to do difficult labor to sustain themselves from that point forward.
One aspect of this story that’s often overlooked is that the sin of Adam and Eve disrupted the relationship between them, as well. When God asks for an explanation of what has happened, the man blames the woman he had recently claimed as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The unity between them is compromised by their disobedience. Their desire for one another is touched by the knowledge of the pain that will accompany childbirth. And their banishment to a harsher world includes the establishment of a patriarchal system which, it seems from the story, was not God’s original intent.
The relationship between humanity and the rest of creation is also shown to be disrupted by their sinful disobedience. Take the snake, for instance. The scholars tell us that it was not considered to represent Satan until centuries later. Originally the snake was just thought of as a symbol of nature. But after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, it is put in a position of antagonism against humankind. Creation becomes an arena of struggle and hardship. Even God’s act of mercy in clothing the people involved the death of innocent creatures who gave their skins to cover the shame of Adam and Eve. There’s a spiritual truth that’s hard to argue with – that human sinfulness still causes suffering to innocent creatures everywhere.
One of the five basic principles of our Reformed theological tradition is our belief in “total depravity.” That’s actually the belief that human sinfulness touches every area of life, including politics, economics, relationships, even life in the church. And whatever you might believe about the story of Adam and Eve – whether it’s factual history or a parable intended to communicate important theological truth, it seems to support that idea of total depravity. This ancient story powerfully communicates the message that our refusal to live in obedience to God causes pain and suffering throughout his “very good” creation.
Let’s pray. Lord, since the dawn of history you have been at work among your people, caring for us and providing for us, and telling us that our best life is always a result of obeying your loving commandments. As we read and reflect on your scriptures, write these truths on our hearts, and move us to live in greater and greater obedience. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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