A new year brings a new Bible reading plan and this year I've decided to go chronologically, which now that I type it sounds like some sort of kinky new lifestyle. The first thing that I've discovered is that backing up is really disappointing. You finish the whole Bible, close the book, and what do you have to do the next day but start all over again. In this way I'm reminded of pregnancy. You just get one child to the point of being reasonably self-propelled and potty trained and out pops number two, and you have to start all over from scratch. In the case of the Bible you have to move from the apocalypse to creation in one fell swoop. That's why I say backing up is difficult.
But here we are in the book of Genesis. In the beginning God created... and I have to wonder what exactly did God do with himself before he started creating? It says that he hovered over the waters which I must say sounds just a little tiresome and boring although hovering might be fun for a few millennium. No wonder God wanted to create stuff. So he creates the man which in my version of Bible is called "human person". I hate political correctness. Just say man. It's okay. And then God notices that the man doesn't have a partner like himself. Perhaps God knew the man was lonely from all that time he spent hovering over nothingness. I think it's really neat that God noticed that the man needed a partner.
We all know the story. The wily serpent tricked Eve, and she ate from the tree she wasn't supposed to eat from and she gave it to Adam and it's not like he put up a fight, and they both ate. That was the beginning of the world as we know it now. When I was much younger and taking piano lessons from Mrs. Searles, there was one day when I had a particularly bad lesson. I was unprepared, I was congested, I had a headache. I played through my Beethoven Sonata quite badly and Mrs. Searles said, "If only Eve hadn't eaten that damn apple!" And upon reading through the story again I have to say that's what I thought. Ultimately we can all blame Eve.
Last week we had a little plumbing problem in the house. I am thankful for our house and I usually like it, but every time we have a problem Bryan and I have a conversation that goes like this:
Me: Oh Lord. This house is so old and ugly. And now the toilet is broken. Whose idea was it to buy this house anyway? You told me that we would only be in this house for five years. Five years has now turned into 26. I never wanted this house.
Bryan: You didn't say that when we were buying the house. You wanted it. Besides, this is the house we could afford.
Me: I told you that the living room was too small and that the carpet was stinky. And you said that all that could be changed and that it would be a great starter house.
Bryan: And it was. You are just mad because the toilet is broken.
Me: We should have bought that other little tiny house with the new carpet and new everything. That house was cute. And I bet the toilet isn't broken in that house.
Bryan: But that house had two bedrooms the size of a saltine cracker. As soon as we had Rachel we would have had to move. That house was no good. This house is fine and it's been fine and if you had said you didn't like it at the time, then I wouldn't have moved in here, so it's your fault.
Me: It's not my fault. You showed me a really crappy house and then the pretty one with the tiny bedrooms and then this one. Of course I'd pick the house that was acceptable. You sort of tricked me by limiting my options. You wanted this old house the whole time and now the toilet is broken.
I think the story of the fall is kind of like that. All of earth is plunged (Sorry, still have my mind on broken toilets.) into ickiness and death and all that Adam and Eve can think to do is to place blame somewhere.
Human persons (men and women) still do that. We spend lots of energy placing blame. We blame God, Satan politicians, kings, presidents, mental illness, guns, war, and even poor Eve, but the fact is that we can each point the finger directly at ourselves. Something at the core of human persons seems to be bent toward evil.
However, God in speaking to Cain before the world's first murder says something like this: sin is waiting to get you Cain. It wants to take you, but you can overcome it. It's still like that I think. Sin waits to take us, :we can fight it and we can win. We can spend a lot of time reviewing history and placing blame or finding excuses, or we can spend that energy in fighting to do what is right and overcoming evil.
And at this point I just want to say that it doesn't matter who decided to buy this house. But it's not my fault.
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