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The Story of The Garden of Eden

         If there ever was such a place as the Garden of Eden, what happened to it? If it was figurative, what does it really tell us? Was it really perfect? If Adam was placed there as a caretaker, what does that mean about his career? What kind of care did he take? Did it need a lot of weeding; were there predators like Peter Rabbit; were there adverse weather conditions like frost, hail, drought, flood? Or was caretaker just a title while he lay around all day eating apples and appreciating naked Eve?

         If you read Genesis, the serpent is never equated with Satan. In fact the experts say Satan does not appear in the Old Testament. The serpent is "the deceiver", the craftiest of all the animals. Apparently, he walks or flies or something. He doesn't slither until after God punishes him for helping Adam and Eve disobey. Since they weren't literate in the Garden, whoever told this story many generations later was not an eye witness. Makes you wonder was the serpent, which most people dislike, guilty of anything at all. He didn't lose his brain or his power of speech. He probably never had them.

         I'm not invalidating the story. Even figuratively speaking, it's a powerful story that we often misunderstand. It sounds like the first humans had to work, but were content in their labor. They had everything they needed. They weren't ashamed of their sensuality and suffered no consequences for expressing it.

         The problem for mankind came from desiring to be like God, to know everything that God knows. The only thing God said Don't to was what they wanted, like children you tell not to hug Grandpa. They run to Grandpa. They were told "Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge". So they did.

         That brings me to another dilemma. Did evil not exist before they ate the fruit? The knowledge is about good and evil. So it they had never eaten the fruit, would evil never have existed? Was disobedience to God in the first place, taking the fruit (not an apple), not evil itself? If you keep reading Genesis, God didn't get mad because they now knew good and evil, but because they had disobeyed and were now lying about it.

         Further, these original story teller in the patriarchal society, and through the millennia since, placed the blame on the woman. Adam, figurative or not, was the caretaker, the manager. In business, the manager ultimately is responsible for what takes place on his shift. Why wasn't Adam onto the serpent? Why didn't he protect his helpmate Eve? Why didn't he stand up for his woman when they were caught? Why did he throw her under the bus? And through the centuries, man has used the claim, the woman made me do it, like he had no nerve of his own. He was vulnerable to her charms. He couldn't think straight. The woman caused his fall, so she pays the price. Man has passed the buck ever since Adam.

         I think we are supposed to question it, examine it, think about what it means, why the story endured, first verbally, then in writing. What meaning does it have for us? But don't take somebody's word for it. It will be biased. A good teacher or preacher will make you think about it for yourself.