What word best describes the talk in Genesis 3? Conversation? More like interrogation. Have you noticed the question and answer form? Not exactly like the 1662 catechism but there’s no question who’s driving the interrogation – and it’s not Adam. We can take thjs question a bit further because what began in Eden became lamentation in Uz and tantrum in Babylon.
So let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, they say. The conversation in Eden was not unlike proceedings in a court of law. Any business-like interrogator, whether it’s the Creator or the Devil, knows the importance of never asking a question to which you do not know the answer. (Remember: we are talking about a piece of imaginative literature, not a newspaper report.)
The Devil came to the contest from an angle. ‘Is it true…?’ he asked. Eve’s answer gave him the opening he sought. A harmless series of questions like that was not going anywhere. But Eve misunderstood the process. She contentedly provided a full answer, fuller than necessary. She constructed her own trap and fell into it. Surely this way of looking at things – the way provided by the snake – had its merits. Indeed, it took matters more seriously than did the Maker. Or so it seemed.
The Maker’s question came with all the directness of a fast ball. No craftiness, no cunning. The only response required was the obvious one. Two or three supplementary additions and the interrogation was over. Adam and his partner had a clear view of themselves in a mirror that was not clouded and a commentary that came warts and all. They were expelled from Eden.
Conversation did not end the matter. Consequences did. Adam had opened a door on a new way of life.
The story is all about that. And it is of the first importance to know what a story is about. We need not grimace when we are told that a snake could talk. We might well shudder at the question ‘Where are you?’ We might groan at the future of Adam and his race. But we cannot fail to recognise that here is one serious view of human nature. It is a picture-story rather than a wordy one. It is not the only view. But we can either reject or accept the analysis that the story has to offer. And with it we can either reject or accept a Maker with an intended destination for his creation, humankind.
POSSIBLY, FAQs
Why be baptized? Why are there no teenagers in the New Testament? Are there animals in heaven?
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