We're supposed to take the fruit.
Genesis seems like a good place to start.
The Madonna of Humility with the Temptation of Eve by Olivuccio di Ciccarello (c. 1400), which depicts an absolutely haunting face-snake tempting a blonde (??!!) Eve.
I work with college students in a church context, and they are brilliant and wonderful.
They also ask the most devastating questions.
A few weeks ago, we were having a conversation in a large group about scripture:
How passages in scripture seem to say contradictory things.
How there are four different origin stories of Jesus, and each one tells his story a little bit differently.
How the Bible seems to give one piece of advice in one moment, then another piece of advice a few chapters later.
Towards the end of the gathering, one student spoke up, clearly frustrated: “Why did God give us a book that contradicts itself? Why did God make it so hard?”
Oh, girl. Yes.
That’s exactly the right question.
There exists a flood of questions underneath that one:
Where are we supposed to go for wisdom? For truth?
How do we know how to live if this book isn’t going to tell us?
How can we trust that we’re headed in the right direction?
Where do we find truth if not in the one place we’re told we should look?
If this book isn’t going to give us answers, what good is it?
My heart broke for her. Questions like these tend to lead to more questions, and more after that, and they never quite end. Her old boundaries and frameworks might not fit once these questions move in. Even after 18 months of divinity school and a decade of being honest with myself about my unanswerable questions, encountering a new one is painful. I was watching her begin her journey of asking unanswerable questions – she was opening the door of mystery and wading out into the deep waters.
– – –
The creation story of Genesis 2 and 3 tells the story of Adam and Eve.
Eve meets a serpent who offers her fruit.
She eats the fruit.
She gives some to Adam.
Adam eats the fruit.
God finds out.
They are both told to leave Eden with a handful of curses.
But the serpent who offers Eve the fruit doesn’t tempt her with something sinful. He doesn’t say, “You’ll be so cool – you’ll be way stronger than Adam, and then you can go beat him up.” The serpent says, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).
You will know good and evil.
Eve’s instinct here wasn’t sinful – she wanted knowledge. She wanted to feed her expansive imagination. She had questions, and she wanted answers.
She wanted to know how to be good.
In most Bibles, this story is called “the Fall.” The New Revised Standard Version calls it “The First Sin and Its Punishment.” In most Christian circles, this is a story about a beautiful garden where everyone was perfectly moral and no one did anything wrong, then Eve screwed it up by doing something so bad that she and Adam were both kicked out forever.
But not everyone thinks about it that way.
Not all religious traditions consider this to be a story about the entrance of sin into the world. Most Jewish interpretations say it’s a story about the end of innocence – the beginning of the complexity, messiness, and uncertainty of human life. Now you know good from evil, so now you have to figure out what to do with that. Good luck.
Jewish scholars say life in Eden wasn’t perfectly good and moral, because morality requires someone to know the difference between good and evil and choose good on purpose. Eden wasn’t perfectly good and moral – it was just innocent.
Maybe this story isn’t a cautionary tale – maybe it’s an invitation.
Maybe we’re supposed to take the fruit.
Maybe we’re supposed to ask the questions.
Maybe we’re supposed to leave the safe security of the garden where everything makes sense and nothing hurts.
Maybe we’re supposed to enter into the fullness of reality, where things are confusing and God is mysterious and all we have is each other.
I started dreaming about this corner of the Internet many, many months ago. It’s finally here, you’re here, and I’m deeply grateful. This exists to honor the part of us that, like Eve, chases wisdom and truth and goodness and love, even into places we’ve been told are too dangerous.
Thank you for being here. I hope you discover something this week that feeds your spirit.
📚 Internet Wafers
Lastly… What are we all reading? What are we listening to? What’s making tiny ripples in the ocean of our souls??? Here’s what’s on my bedside table rn:
Academic: Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts is quickly becoming perhaps my favorite story in the entire Bible (we’ll get back to this in a few weeks). The language leans pretty academic, but it’s short and surprisingly readable and just SO UNIQUE AND COMPELLING.
Non-academic: Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth. I’m in the process of developing a Bible study on Ruth for my college students for later this semester, and this has been a wonderful place to start. Short and highly readable!