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Timeless Lessons from Genesis 2-4



Timeless Lessons from Genesis 2-4


Site: Jayden12.com › Rock › Timeless Lessons

Section: Intro ⋅ Adam & Eve's Choice ⋅ Satan's Model ⋅ Abel & Cain ⋅ Only Human ⋅ Order ⋅ Future ⋅ Extra Credit

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“Sin crouches in wait, it desires to overpower you, but you must rule it.”
Genesis 4:7b



Introduction



On the day God made humanity, He was only recorded as giving us one rule. This is fascinating insight in the context that God has a reputation in our world for being so concerned with rules and "thou shalt nots." He's the one who's always trying to limit us, and we're the ones who have to break free from the oppression, or so we tell each other. There are many lessons to be learned from what happened in the first few days of our existence with the first couple, and their first kids, as recorded in Genesis 2-4. These lessons predate the Jews by almost two millennia, who predate Christians by about one and a half millennia, who predate Muslims by about half a millennia, followed by the Mormons another millennia later, though all four of these religions think they exclusively correctly worship the one true God who was accurately described in Genesis 1-11. Genesis 1 is the first chapter of the first book in both the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and is more about science than humanity. I explore lessons from that in my separate article, Scientifically Superior. The emphasis of this article is exegesis, or a study of what the text says by, and about, itself. No outside resources are needed (used) to justify my writing. The scriptures are sufficient, and God spoke plainly to otherwise ordinary people (not the political nor religious nor economic elite) on purpose. This article keeps an emphasis on creation, but turns our attention closer to home (which is where the heart is). Consider reading Genesis 2-4 for yourself before reading this commentary. Read it in the translation of your choice, or here's a link to it in the original language: chapter 2, 3, or 4.



Adam & Eve's Choice



Genesis 1 was the description of Creation week, told from the macro level. Then in Genesis 2, the story is retold from Adam's perspective, specifically, even though it's written in the literary style of the third person. In Genesis 2:16-17, God gave the only rule He had for mankind. That is, the only rule we had for the short time until we ended up breaking it. God told Adam he “shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” But notice that wasn't the first thing God was recorded as saying explicitly to Adam's face. The first thing was “you may freely eat of every tree of the garden.” (By the way, most quotations on this page are from the WEB translation, except when indicated otherwise.)

Now this wasn't just some backyard garden. It was big, since it was described in Genesis 2:10 as having four rivers flowing out of it. The gardens name wasn't Eden, Eden was a larger area and this was the Garden of (in) Eden (Gen 2:8). The river flowed from (through) Eden and branched out inside the garden to go to four other named lands (Gen 2:10-14). (But remember, these were preflood lands, probably on the supercontinent both creationists and evolutionists now refer to as Rodinia, though these two groups differ on their interpretation of how long ago it existed. The similarity of the names then and today were probably because of Noah and his sons naming places with familiar names after the flood. There is no way for us to know the accuracy of their comparisons.)

Knowing God, surely the Garden of Eden was magnificent. We have no idea what it was really like, but we do know that fabulous river wasn't in the middle of the garden, because there were two specific trees in the middle. Genesis 2:9 tells us the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were together in the center. So there's the first conclusion to pull from between the lines. These two trees were right next to each other. If one was so dangerous, why was it right there? God surely has more reasons for doing anything than we'll ever realize, but one answer is to offer us choice. While life was supposed to be easy, it wasn't supposed to be effortless. Genesis 2:5 points out “there was not a man to till the ground [yet.]” Work isn't a result of the fall, thorns are. And the fact that work will be frustrating (bring sorrow and toil) and be so much effort it makes us sweat, is a result of the fall. When people make things, we typically want slaves. A hammer does whatever we make it do. Our cars go where we steer them and propel us as fast as we tell them. We train some of our pets to get the paper or stand guard. Our computers save us unimaginable mental processing energy. But that's largely because we want our lives to be made easier. We want to be lazy, so we need power. Whether we realize it or not, this is to relieve the effects of the curse of Genesis 3:17-19. But when God made humanity, He had a completely different motivation. He didn't need us to do work for Him (Psalm 50:9-12). He made us to enjoy His creation with Him in the process of servanthood (Isaiah 44:21). He wanted to share what He'd done with someone, with us. That's why He made us in His image (Gen 1:26-27 and repeated in 5:1-2). The trick is, He wasn't excited to share His creation with mindless automatons, plants, animals, or slaves. He wanted His creation to be grateful for what He'd done, for what He'd given (including life itself, and the grandness of the universe itself, not to mention the beauty and luxury present in that immediate corner of the world). For this to be true, He had to give people (the first couple) the freedom of choice. We had to be free to choose to be ungrateful in order for our gratitude to be true when we did express it. And most importantly, freedom had to exist for love to exist. Remember that old expression, "if you love someone then let them go and if they come back then it was love"? God knew it before some mortal immortalized it. The first choice was that accursed tree.



Satan's model



It's impossible to say how long we would have held out and resisted temptation if we didn't get outside advice. But it's a moot point, because we did. Genesis 2:5 to the end of the chapter takes place on day 6, and Genesis 1:31 tells us God declared everything “very good” on day 6. In Genesis 2:3 ​we read God called day 7 holy. I'm not claiming special insight but the pessimist in me suspects Genesis 3 happened on day 8. Genesis 2 ends on such a high note, with verse 25 describing the first couple as together, happy, naked, and not ashamed. But then Genesis 3 starts with verse 1 describing the great deceiver coming to ruin the fun. So again, why did God let such a cunning, malicious, deceitful creature get so close to His favorite creation? The most likely answer is again to give us the choice. This was our chance to bring glory to God (Isaiah 43:7, 1 Corinthians 10:31) and defend His reputation in the world (all 2 citizens on it, plus the angels). We would not have known if our actions were good or evil, since we hadn't eaten from that tree yet. But we would have known enough to know we had the choice between honoring our Creator or making Him sad (Gen 6:6). God invented time on day 1 of Creation, so He is outside of it, and He knew what we would do. But knowing what we'd do is different than making us do it. It's just part of His personal style to give us the opportunity to do it anyway, probably so we can exercise choice (freewill) and find out for ourselves.

So how'd it happen? What was this huge battle that caused the fall of humanity and the whole universe to be cursed with us (Gen 3:17-18, Romans 8:22). Was it some titanic clash where the forces of evil (Satan and a third of all the angels, Luke 10:18, Revelation 12:3-4) teamed up and overwhelmed the innocent, unexpecting, unprepared forces of good (lonely Adam and Eve)? If only it was that dramatic.

Satan is a tricky one, and not to be underestimated. He was described later as having originally been created to be “the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty” (Ezekiel 28:11-13 NIV). Yes, this is the devil we're talking about. In that same passage it reminded us Satan was “in Eden, the garden of God,” which was affirmation the serpent was under the influence of Satan (we'll analyze more of this in my next article, Real History). Maybe these events didn't happen on day 8. Maybe on day 8, Satan was buddying up with the serpent, and these events happened on day 9. Regardless of exactly which day it was, somehow he knew well enough how to dupe us (people) into disobeying our Creator, the only authority and benefactor we'd ever known (all 48 hours of their life) when he was only a few days old. This guy, “full of wisdom,” had a plan of attack, and that plan was so effective, he's still using it six millennia later. We will be better off if we know his plan and are prepared to block it.

This plan/strategy/model is so dangerous, it might be more important than all other sins put together. Because most individual sins are more like symptoms than root causes, compared to this. Here is the Genesis 3 model: question the word of God, doubt it, reject it, and people will suffer. It's not that questioning is wrong, but doubting is. Curiosity is a tool and neither good nor bad on its own (remember Abraham in Genesis 18:23 & David in 2 Samuel 7:18). But when spiritual adversaries capitalize on this, we need to be on guard. Because while honest questions can lead to really interesting answers (like Moses in Exodus 3:13-14, Mary in Luke 1:34, and that woman at the well in John 4:9), rejecting our Creator will inevitably result in pain, suffering, and death. Because God is not only our Father, but the source of our life (Deuteronomy 30:20, Acts 17:25). The dangers of what could be called the Genesis 3 model are succinctly described in Psalm 11:3. Let's break this model down:

  1. Question

    First, the serpent asked “did God really say...?” (Gen 3:1 NIV). Before you go and play devil's advocate, this wasn't an academic question. This wasn't about curiosity. In order for him to know enough to even ask the question in the first place, he would've had to already known the answer. Because he got it wrong. He asked “has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’” Seriously?? Why on earth would God say they couldn't eat of "any" tree in the garden? What a dirty rotten trick. He was acting dumb on purpose to distract Eve and allow her to feel smart by correcting him. Because we don't need to be on guard against dumb people. Sadly, his implication was also: "you poor unfortunate soul, we have a common antagonist. God is an unreasonable, overbearing, micromanager that we don't owe anything to, or at least not as much as He leads us to believe."

    The serpent didn't ask Adam, he asked his wife. We could debate if that was because girls are more talkative than boys, but that'd be fruitless. Don't miss the fact that the final creative act God was recorded as making was the creation of the human female. Even angels were noted as being enticed by the beauty of God's design in women (Gen 6:1-2 and 6:4). However, Satan was “perfect in beauty” (Ezekiel 28:12) so would have had less reason to be attracted to them, and apparently therefore felt justified to be the original misogynist (woman hater). He was also the first misandrist (man hater) and misanthrope (hater of humanity). Satan is unbelievably smart, so it's likely he noticed Eve was God's final creation, which directly implied she was the most special, or prized. So he went straight for her. Maybe with envy, but not likely with lust.

    Eve's response was a little off. She didn't quote God right. Her initial answer was in verse 2, but then she added some in verse 3 when she said we “shall not touch it.” The official quote was recorded in Genesis 2:16-17. Why would she get it wrong? At least, what's the most likely reason? The easy (cheap) answer is Eve just got it wrong. The male chauvinist would blame the girl. But the chivalrous man will take another angle, where it was Adam who added to God's word, presumably to protect his beautiful wife from harm. But changing the word of God is a dangerous thing to do.

  2. Doubt

    Second, the serpent inspired doubt of God's word (and His character) by denying it. He fed Eve propoganda that God was mistaken and there would not be negative consequences from eating that delicious fruit. He flat out contradicted God in defiant, adversarial arrogance, and said: “you won’t surely die,” (Gen 3:4). Not only were there not consequences, there were benefits. He continued, mostly repeating what Eve already knew, but making it sound much more attractive, saying “God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). Implication: "God is holding out on you, and that's wrong. I know I'm a random stranger, but trust me, I'll treat you right, and you'll be better off with me than if you listen to Him. He's not good, you and I are more loving, more compassionate, and all-around more humane than God is. So why pay any attention to His advice? Further, what kind of God would hold out on His creation like this? Only an evil God, right? Evil deities don't deserve love nor respect, let alone worship." Except there was a flaw in that logic that changed everything. The serpent's argument was based on a lie, which was in turn based on malice, and God's warning was based on reality, and love. (So in hindsight, remind me who was the evil deity again? Answer: Satan, not God.)

  3. Reject

    It's not that Adam or Eve knew what it meant to know the difference between good and evil. That's not necessarily the part that was so attractive. The tipping point was probably the offer to "be like God," which is intellectually virtually irresistible. Remember, we were created in God's image (Gen 1:26-27) so we were already like God, the trick was (and still is) we are only partially like Him. He gave us the capacity to reason, use logic, have emotion (especially love), and manipulate the world. But He didn't give us His omni's. He's omnificent (unlimited in creativity), omnicompetent (unlimited in capability), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present in all places at all times), but we aren't. Most relevant at this time, He's omniscient (all-knowing), we're not. In other words, God is holding out on us, and that's ok. It's His prerogative as God (Isaiah 10:15, 45:9, 46:9-10, Job 38-40).

    Once the seed was planted, if someone had chosen to be a good role model and say "wait a minute," then they might have held firm. And that's of course what Adam was supposed to have done. But he didn't. In response to the serpent's claims, Eve stared at the fruit from that forbidden tree and traveled the path that was laid before her. In this moment she had a paradigm shift that was pointed out in a very subtle way. When God told Moses this story, He first described all the trees in the garden as “pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Gen 2:9 NIV). But then while Eve was considering the serpent's words, staring at that fruit, she observed the forbidden tree as “good for food and pleasing to the eye” (Gen 3:6 NIV). This flip symbolized her decision to see the world differently. The doubt of God's goodness made it easy to reject His warning, and the next thing we know, “she took some of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.” How many times do we still today casually excuse ourselves to knowingly disobey God (sin) and disregard any devastation that may (will) result? (Answer: all too often.)

    Remember how Eve had mentioned the part about “don’t even touch it”? We can imagine what damage that did now. The first thing she did was “take the fruit.” And guess what, nothing happened. Because touching it wasn't part of the deal. We don't know if it was half a second or 30 seconds or what, but the next thing we know, “she took some of its fruit, and ate.” Makes me wonder if she figured since she'd broken what she thought was God's rule by simply touching it, and nothing happened, she then thought she was justified to reject more, and go ahead with eating it too. What would be worse is if Adam was watching the events unfold. If when he watched Eve touch it, and nothing happened (no negative consequences) if that was when he decided he'd go along with this charade. Because not only do we say what we believe, we often believe what we say. This is why it's so important for us to go out of our way to be accurate when we claim God's Word. Satan, like any angel, isn't constrained by the same laws of physics us humans are (Numbers 22:31, 2 Kings 6:16-17, Acts 12:5-10). He could have heard when Adam told Eve God's one rule, and he could have heard when Adam added the part about not touching it. He could have asked Eve specifically because she didn't know any better, and he might have known that Adam would rather gamble his life (and his wife's) on being damned than admit he had wrongly quoted God. This imbalance (or this pride) created the perfect opportunity for Satan to step in and destroy everything in their lives. And it only took him 3 short sentences (43 words in NIV) to succeed. For you and I to do better, we need to be able to admit when we're wrong. In the modern world of business, we have at least two expressions to institutionalize this (or never let each other slack off). They are "continuous improvement" and the "pursuit of excellence." Though I'm not saying the world of business is perfect, I'm just saying it's got two processes/​systems that are self-reflective in a good way, which we can all learn from.

    To make this story even more sad, notice the serpent didn't make either Eve nor Adam do anything. They weren't backed into a corner, coerced, intimidated, bullied, nor did they get their hands tied. No fists flew, and no fire was used. There was no physical battle between good and evil. There was only a spiritual war waging. Paul wrote the most famous articulation of this in Ephesians 6:10-18. Chapter 3 pivoted on the human exercise of choice. God told Adam not to eat from that one tree. Adam passed along the warning to his wife. Whether Eve could have spotted the serpent's lie or not, she could have chosen to take her husband seriously. But before we blame Eve, her husband was right there and when she started going down the path of disregarding God's rule, he should have reminded her to take God seriously. But before we blame Adam, how many times have we failed to warn people in our life that they should take God seriously? That said, the point isn't to avoid blaming anyone. There was fault. The key is we all share the blame, because we all keep making the same mistakes our ancestors did.

    How much more sad would the story be if Adam wasn't even paying attention? Because technically it just says he was there (Gen 3:6). Remember the two trees were right next to each other in the middle of the garden (Gen 2:9). We don't have any idea if the fruit looked the same or different. We don't know whether Adam took God so seriously that he never even looked at it to be able to recognize when its fruit was shoved in his face. But even if it was the case that he wasn't paying attention, since he was next to the forbidden tree, he should have been on guard for his wife. How often, even today, do husbands prefer to believe they told their wife something once, even years earlier, and expect their wife to still remember it as if it had been said an hour ago? The only girl alive messed up royally, but only because the only boy alive let her do it. You and I are supposed to learn from their mistake and always do better.

  4. Suffer

    We can choose our actions, but not the consequences. And instantly the consequences began to pile up. The very next verse says “their eyes were opened, and they both knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made coverings for themselves.” Because we believed a lie (both the lie of the serpent and the lie of our own invention) genuine fear entered the world (not to be confused with the reverent fear God wants us to have). They made simple clothes for themselves because they feared being naked before God. It's not that God cares what clothes we wear, it's simply part of God's design whether exposing our bare bodies in public is right and wrong. (Note, God reiterated He didn't want our private parts exposed in Exodus 20:26.) Verse 10 confirms the point when Adam said “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Sadly, fear was just the beginning.

    God knew what was going on. And as a good parent, He didn't instantly blow up. He wasn't playing dumb, rather He lovingly asked the children for their point of view. And that's when the blame game started. Adam not only blamed his wife, but he blamed God too, saying “the woman whom you gave to be with me” (emphasis added). Naturally, Eve wasn't going to take the rap and declared “the serpent deceived me, and I ate.” God didn't ask the serpent for his perspective (it's probably safe to assume it was male). The second half of the curse of the serpent actually affected Eve. If Satan wasn't a misogynist before the curse, he definitely was after the first third of Gen 3:15. (The remainder of the verse we'll talk about later, in my separate article named Real History.) Satan is most effective at being a misogynist when he tricks men into going along with him, and he loves to get us (people) to blame each other for his evil ideas & deeds.

    What comes next was not God being vindictive. Remember, God is the source of our life. When He warned us that we'd die, but we got cursed instead (and promised that eventually we'd die), was that really malicious, or lenient? When a parent warns a child not to touch the boiling water on the stove or they'll get burned, but the child sticks their hand in it anyway, there are consequences that the parent doesn't have to consciously inflict. Some choices simply have consequences, and some of those consequences last longer than others. Let's read a full list of the consequences:

    • “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bear children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Gen 3:16)
    • the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life. It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field. By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Gen 3:17-19)
    • Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...” Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, (Gen 3:22-23)

    The presence of natural consequences doesn't negate a parent's authority to also punish a deliberate act of defiance. God said “Because you have listened to your wife's voice, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’” (Gen 3:17, emphasis added). Adam experienced some mix of consequences and punishment. An important takeaway is he was punished because of his actions, and God is largely not in the business of thought police. Then in verse 22, God said we should not eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. By God's original plan, we were conditionally immortal. God's design for humanity was so good, that even after the curse Adam still survived 900 years. What God makes is good, and the action of departing from God's design, catalyzed by the choice to do so, is what messes it up.

    Verse 21 tells us “Yahweh God made coats of animal skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.” What had to happen for God to make that coat? Discarding the fact that God can do anything He wants, it stands to reason that an animal sacrifice had to be made. A recurring theme in scripture is when we sin, something dies. Yes, eventually we will die because of sin. But more specifically, for the people who are close to God, when we sin, something has to die. Because God cannot stand to be around sin. The Israelites would learn about this a couple millennia later, as recorded in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. And we also see here the beginnings of the imperfect model of sacrifice that sets the stage for the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Back in Genesis 3:21, God probably modeled for Adam and Eve what an acceptable sacrifice looked like.

    We have in verse 22 what Jews and Muslims might call a theological hickup. It reads: “Yahweh God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil’” (emphasis added). The same plurality was also used in Genesis 1:26 and 11:7. There are two easy answers for God's use of the word "us". One is this is the "royal we," which is where a king or queen will say "we" when they really mean "I" when they are speaking on behalf of everyone in their nation as the legitimate ruler of said nation. A second explanation is "us" refers to both God and the angels. But we don't know exactly when the angels were created, nor if God would have spoken with them in this manner (in Gen 1:26) and there is no other precedence for either of these interpretations in the rest of the Bible. A third and best explanation is these verses are alluding to the Trinity, which becomes most clear later, in the gospels. Whether you believe it to be true or not, the concept of the Trinity is that God is one God with three distinct parts, namely Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus personally endorsed the Trinity in His Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, because He was very jealous of bringing glory to God, and would not have commanded His followers to baptize in the name of anyone but God. Yet the fact that there is one God is very clear in the entire Old Testament, most notably in Moses's most famous sermon titled Deuteronomy, in what we now know as chapter 6 verse 4. There are of course multiple exmaples of precedence in the universe God created as 3 in 1. Examples include mater (solid, liquid, gas), space (length, width, height), and time (past, present, future).

    Another example of suffering was described more subtly. In verse 23, it says God "sent" Adam from the garden. But then in verse 24 it says God "drove" Adam out. This is not a translation trick, they really are different words in the original Hebrew. (Here's a link to the former and the later.) It's not hard to imagine the reason for the switch (though admittedly, it's just speculation). God starts off, like a good parent, saying "love you, go outside." But then Adam says back something like "but I don't want to." To which God responds "I said 'get out'." This was yet another cause for suffering, Adam knew what he was going to miss out on now, and he was required to do something he didn't want to do: leave paradise forever.
Let's rephrase that warning in Genesis 2:16-17. "If you exercise your right to make this choice then your life will be irreversibly ruined." How many times in our lives are we given the exact same choice? (Answer: a lot.) It's interesting that we are reminded by Genesis 2:17 that most of us are less clear on what life and death really are than we may like to admit. The original Hebrew of Genesis 2:17 (interlinear) is almost always translated "in the day you eat of it you will surely die," but can be translated "in the day you eat of it, in dying you will die" (Gen 2:17 YLT). Cain was alluded to that life actually continues after death in Genesis 4:10. David knew there was what we call "life after death" because he said he would eventually go to be with his dead son but his dead son could not come back here (2 Samuel 12:23). Jesus criticized the religious elite who were trying to persecute Him with a very pointed reply in Matthew 22:32 / Mark 12:27 / Luke 20:38 (which was based on Exodus 3:6). The reason Jesus came was to ensure each of us had a way to inherit eternal life: John 3:14-16. This came up numerous times in the gospels (text search, here) but notice back in Isaiah 66:24, God described an eternal punishment, which Jesus confirmed in Mark 9:48. This indicates everyone exists forever, but we have no experience with that reality so our language available is limited. When we say "live forever" what we often mean is to live in the presence of God, and spiritual death is to be both separated from His presence and subject to His wrath. The Apostle Paul said Jesus also came to defeat our enemy, death: 1 Corinthians 15:25-26, and he pointed out 1 Corinthians 10:13. To rephrase again, everyone lives forever, the trick is there will be irreversible consequences for our choices, so be (1) educated by God's word and (2) strong and determined (disciplined) to, at the very least, avoid ruining your life, and better yet, invest in your own future. God is more sympathetic than we can imagine, but He clearly has expectations for our lives, arguably most succinctly described in Revelation 22:14-15 (about a dozen sentences from the end of the Bible, where God summarized who will and won't be in heaven) and first evidenced by how seriously He responded to our first disregard for His word in Genesis 3:6. In Genesis 3:8, Adam & Eve hid not just because they were naked but probably also because they knew they broken the law and were afraid of consequences. Not every "right" to choice we're given is in our best interest to exercise. (This is the fundamental mistake of the modern pro-choice movement.) Adam and Eve learned this lesson the hard way (Gen 3:16-19, 23) and maybe you and I have too, but let's try to be more intentional to obey God going forward.



Abel & Cain



It's almost funny how many different ways the English translators translate the first recorded consummation in Genesis 4:1. Read the variations for yourself on BibleHub, here, or on BibleGateway, here, or the original on Interlinear, here. But more seriously, it's an important detail that life only comes from life. It never, ever, comes from non-life. The modern scientific community officially calls this biogenesis. God implied this reality to Moses about four millennia ago. Chapter 4 was the second time this came up. The first was in Genesis 2:7, when God Himself breathed life into Adam, then He made Eve directly from Adam (Gen 2:22). And what is life? Or at least, how do we objectively differentiate the living from the rest? Living things can move, but so can robots. When we die, electrical activity ceases. But light bulbs have electrical activity too. Werner Gitt, in his book In the Beginning was Information, observed:
Information is neither a physical nor a chemical principle like energy and matter, even though the latter are required as carriers. The central characteristic of all living beings is the "information" they contain, and this information regulates all life processes and procreative functions. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.
DNA is nothing but information, stored at the molecular level. Genesis 1 left no room for God to have used evolution, because it says He made the earth initially all water (not molten), plants before the sun, flying animals before land animals, man from dust (not apes), and woman from man. Further, death entered the world in Genesis 3:6, which took place after Genesis 2:3. Dinosaurs and Adam and Eve were both created on day 6, but evolution claims dinosaurs lived and died for millions of years before Adam & Eve. However Adam and Eve didn't sin until at least 1.5 days later (Gen 2:25 and 3:1 were separated by Gen 2:3) so it's inadequate to claim day 6 lasted millions of years. God deserves credit for creating everything exactly how He said He did, and evolution began as just another lie of Satan to damage God's credibility. Molecules to man evolution doesn't deserve to be perpetuated, compromised with, nor entertained (Isaiah 42:8, 45:12, 48:11, John 1:1-3). Remember the strategy: question, doubt, reject. Have you been tricked like Eve into believing a lie? If so then it's ok, if you admit it, and change your mind.

Practice scenario 1:
  • Question: did God really say He created everything in six days?
  • Doubt: modern science, heavily influenced by atheists, says the earth is billions of years old, and the universe is even older.
  • Reject: science is responsible for my cell phone and all the other conveniences in my life, so what scientists say must be true, and the Bible is more about fairy tales and morality than history anyway.
  • Better answer: yes, He did say He did it all in six days. On day six, when God created Adam, Adam was mature. Same for everything else. So the so-called apparent age of the earth is misleading. Modern science was created by Christians but has been subverted by atheists who have fancy sounding lies to alienate us from our Creator and Savior. God's original Words are more reliable than anything else.
Practice scenario 2:
  • Question: did God really say He created everything in the universe?
  • Doubt: if God made evil, can He really be good?
  • Reject: since God is responsible for the evil in the world then learning the character of my Creator and the history of what He's done for and in the world shouldn't be a priority. When secular scientists praise the miracle of evolution, giving the credit God deserves to an effective idol, I'm not inspired to differ.
  • Better answer: God created everything good and chose to take 6 days to do it about 6,000 years ago. Part of the design included freewill so we could have a meaningful relationship with Him, but those He created chose to use that freewill to bring evil into the world and that made our Creator sad. Even today, we are God's ambassadors and He expects us to care about what He cares about and to stand up for His name (His reputation) to prove we take Him seriously.
Eve knew how to distinguish when she had a son or a daughter, and she knew God was involved in the creation of her babies (Gen 4:1-2, 4:25, 5:4). Everything God creates has integrity. Which means what we see on the outside is what we find on the inside. When we are authentic we act with integrity. Freewill allows us to choose to be non-authentic. That's why the 9th of the Ten Commandments demands we don't give false testimony (Exodus 20:16 and Deuteronomy 5:20). Which is technically different than don't lie. (God did also commanded us not to lie, but separately in Leviticus 19:11.) Testimony is a legal term. In Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:2 ​we read that God created humans as either male or female. In Genesis 1:28 and 9:1 we were commanded to reproduce, and Genesis 2:24-25 declares how this was intended to happen. This was not supposed to be complicated. (Moses would later lament on behalf of God in Deuteronomy 30:11-14.) Gender Dysphoria (confusion about our gender that is so strong we divorce our gender from our obvious genetic sex) when isolated to our mind, is not a sin. God sympathizes with confusion and mental struggle. He made us mortal and very finite with complex psychologies on purpose. But when we make decisions and act on them, then we're held accountable. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later. When we struggle with our gender, or any other part of life, we need constructive help that will first of all help us align to the truth of God's original design. Because life just works better when we honor our Creator, no matter what excuses we make up, or our society spoon feeds us. Wrestling with our mind (our temptations) is not a sin. Wrestling with God on a topic isn't a sin. (Jacob was given a unique opportunity to do this literally in Genesis 32:22-30.) But dragging someone to court because they don't call you by your preferred but scientifically inaccurate pronoun is... rude, at best. And any false testimony in pursuit of that case is sin. God created you and me just as He created Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, and everyone else. Boys are boys and girls are girls and never the two shall be scientifically confused, at least not in objective reality. Everything God creates is good and has integrity, though admittedly our sin, including the choices of other people which are annoyingly outside our control, have a tendency to mess it up.

Practice scenario 3:
  • Question: did God really say you may never have sex with anyone?
  • Wrong answer: we may only ever have sex with one person in our lifetime and we can't even think about it or else God will be mad at us.
  • Doubt: God won't get mad, He wants you to be happy and fill the earth.
  • Reject: cool, the sexual revolution was right. Let's do it to prove we're responsible adults.
  • Better answer: God said only make babies or even go through the motions with someone you're married to.
When we read the story of Cain and Abel, do you relate more to Cain or Abel? Abel was the protagonist and Cain was the antagonist. How about the story of David and Goliath? David was the protagonist (hero) and Goliath was the antagonist (villain). Most of us prefer to relate to the protagonist, but it's important to relate to the antagonist, too. Because it's inevitable that we're going to be it sooner or later, hopefully by accident or otherwise unintentionally. There are lessons to be learned to emulate from the protagonist and lessons to avoid from the antagonist.

Notice, despite the blatant disrespect for God (their obvious creator and sole benefactor) no one ever said sorry in any of these stories. In the original system, our actions were emphasized over our heart. Not that our heart wasn't important, but that wasn't what was scrutinized. The prescribed action to symbolize regret (and repentance) was sacrifice. In Genesis 4:3-5,​ Abel and his older brother Cain both tried giving an offering, but Cain's was rejected. The closest thing to precedence (instruction) we had at this point was Genesis 3:21, where God sacrificed an animal on behalf of Adam and Eve because of their sin. (Purely speculative: that first animal sacrifice was probably a lamb, as a foreshadowing of John 1:29.) It's not a stretch to think Abel and Cain had learned from their parents, and maybe even from God Himself, that they should offer sacrifice to attempt to atone (apologize) for their sin. There were a couple of problems that lead to this activity, which should have been mundane, turning into one of the most famous stories in the history of the world: the first murder.
  • First and most obvious, God said Abel "brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat," but Cain just "brought... from the fruit of the ground." Later, when speaking to Moses, God would specifically ask for the firstborn (for animals, Exodus 13:1-2) or firstfruits (for crops, Leviticus 27:30). God's preference probably didn't start arbitrarily in Moses's day, but probably had precedence all the way back to GE 3 or 4.

  • When it comes to sacrifice, God is not a pacifist. He is a peacemaker, and that distinction isn't meant to be confusing. Our culture has largely deviated from God's will, so we are confused about why God's expectations are not aligned with ours, even and especially when we think we're being "good people." In Genesis 2:17 God declared sin results in death. When we take chapter 3 seriously, especially verses 7 and 21, we see that plants don't count. While fasting is a very valid activity, and certainly has a place in our paying honor to God, giving up our food is not the same as sacrifice. For sacrifice, something has to die (Hebrews 9:22). Noah had an exceptionally clear example of this in Genesis 8:20-21. When we take chapter 1 seriously, there's a distinction between plants and animals (noted by how their formation was separated by the creation of all the stars) and plant death isn't the same as animal death. This is why the Jews were given such detailed expectations of acceptable sacrifices in Exodus and Leviticus. And the reason Christians completely abandoned those regulations is because Jesus became the perfect sacrifice, once for all time (Hebrews 7:18-19, 10:1-18) which was prophesied/​promised half a millennia earlier in Jeremiah 31:31-34. But God is authentic, and while He's not bound by time (because He invented it) He respects His Creation. Jesus's sacrifice wasn't valid until He actually did it, so until then, animal sacrifice was expected if we thought we were going to atone for our sins. This connection of sacrifice with animals was surely another part of why Cain's offering was rejected. God lamented a similar theme a few thousand years later in Malachi 1:6-14.

  • Don't you hate it when you know you're right, then get proven wrong? We must be careful how we react to our failures, because our followup can be far worse than our original failure, as Cain demonstrated.

  • As a side note, Cain brought his offering first. Abel came second, and God liked Abel's better. All older siblings can relate to this scenario. It's common that a younger brother or sister will try to one-up the older. But it's just as common that a younger sibling will look up to and try to emulate the older. In this case, it's more likely that Abel was simply taking God more seriously than Cain, and that's why God was more pleased. If you're an older sibling, don't be like Cain and take your own deficiencies out on your younger sibling(s), junior employees, etc. Sometimes we can learn from our juniors (1 Timothy 4:12).
  • Cain's problem was possibly more his heart than what was on the alter. When we try to make someone else happy, especially our benefactor or boss, and they aren't made happy, we're supposed to want to try harder. If instead of practicing humility we get mad, then our heart is in a bad place, and God has a history of caring about our heart (1sa 16:7). It may not have been what Cain's offering looked like at all.**
How often do we feign ignorance by turning what we know to be true into a question, as if "how are we supposed to know"? Answer: all too often. But notice God didn't go off on Cain when Cain was premeditating the murder of his brother. It was after he had done it that God got mad. God is not into being the thought police. He cares what we think for sure, but He's really into freewill, and He's not into regulating our minds, He expects us to do that for ourselves. He's significantly more gracious on this topic than His creation has proven to be. Humans have volunteered to authorize or act as thought police in their own or someone else's community more times than I could list in a whole book. God cares about our thoughts, but most of the time He judges us on our actions (Ezekiel 24:14, Revelation 20:12-13). (The opposite is also true, and our faith is also judged by our actions. This is repeatedly emphasized in the rest of scripture, like 1 Samuel 15:22, Matthew 7:21, and James 2:14-26.) In those rare cases He addressed our thoughts (Exodus 20:17/​Deuteronomy 5:21, Matthew 5:28), it's not because thought is wrong. It's because our hearts are evil (Gen 8:21, Luke 11:11-13) and if we entertain evil thoughts then they will eventually lead to evil actions (James 1:14-15). And God would have us avoid the consequences of those actions. Plus, He specifically wants us to be holy: Leviticus 19:2, 1 Peter 1:15-16 (and Jesus upped the ante in Matthew 5:48).

There's a difference between knowing the path and walking it. Cain, like his mother, decided to ignore God's path and blaze his own trail. While his mother decided she could choose her own adventure and define her own righteousness, Cain decided he could define his own justice. In hindsight, clearly that didn't work out too well for either of them. (So naturally, why would we think it will when we try?) After Eve's rebellion, God asked her “what have you done?” (Gen 3:13) and He asked the same of Cain (Gen 4:10). The key here was once again human choice. God flat out came out and said it point blank to Cain: “If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? If you don’t do well, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it” (Gen 4:7). God created us to rule the world, and part of that involves ruling over temptation. God created a world that we filled with temptation, and He implores us to overcome that challenge. In other words, rebellion against our Maker is bad, but rebellion against sin & temptation is unequivocally good. Do you like being a rebel? Do you have kids who do? Here is permission to rebel against the right thing.

Notice what God didn't do after Cain murdered his brother. God didn't make a rule. That's how humans (and human governments) work, but not God. God had already given the warning, which was also essentially a command, to rule sin (Gen 4:7). After the fatal crime happened, God didn't freak out and declare His prior warning inadequate and add another on top of that. He didn't even say I told you so. He just punished the misbehavior and they moved on with life. The original warning was adequate, and still is. It wasn't until about 3 millennia later that God outlined moral behavior for the Israelites, through Moses. And it wasn't until after the flood that God decided to come out and say it that murder was wrong (Gen 9:5-6). (At least, this is the first time He's recorded as saying such.) Just as trivia, Paul made a great followup to Genesis 4:7 in Romans 6:14.

Cain started out all big and bad, talking back to the biggest authority figure in his life, quipping “am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9). Can you hear the gangster in him, or maybe just the teenager?
  • For the record, the implied answer to Cain's question in Genesis 4:9 was definitely "yes." Much later, God would tell Moses and he'd tell the Israelites in Leviticus 19:17-18 an example of how they're supposed to watch out for their neighbor. This concept later became one of Jesus's top two commands in the whole law (Matthew 22:39 / Mark 12:31 / Luke 10:27) and it was quoted three more times in the New Testament (Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8). How much more for your family?

  • When the punishment came and he knew he was busted, he buckled and played the victim. “My punishment is greater than I can bear,” he said (Gen 4:13). Awe, can we hear the violins playing? In Genesis 4:5-6 ​we see Cain was actually sad, but he chose to express anger and put up a front of strength rather than express sorrow, admit vulnerability, and work through his issue. It wasn't cool when he did it, and it's not when we do it. How many people in your life do you know who play the victim, even when their problems are caused by their own choices? How often do you (and I) do it? God demonstrated tough love with Cain. He didn't back down and did call Cain's bluff. We rarely have justification to play the victim card. Sometimes when we think we've been wronged we're just victims of our own choices. Even when we legitimately are the victims of others, we shouldn't play it up. More to the point, we should live up to our responsibilities, and not whine about them. For most of us, our responsibilities are a privilege, not a curse.

  • Everyone is faking it. We all put on a show. Everyone. There's "domain knowledge," where different people are experts in different subject matters. Cain was apparently a good farmer, and Abel was good with animals (Gen 4:2b). But when it comes to the whole of life, no one is an expert. Even Einstein, generally considered one of the smartest people of the 20th century, had numerous crash and burns in his family life. There are just too many aspects of life to be good at them all. Don't take this propensity for failure personally, and remember this before blaming others for theirs. Just because we're doomed to failure doesn't let us off the hook though. God still calls us to improve and strive for holiness and perfection, anyway (Leviticus 19:2, Matthew 5:48). He just knows it's a stretch goal and not actually achievable.

  • Has anyone ever given you a gift that you really just had no interest in? If so, God can relate. Since God is in charge, He got to say what was acceptable to sacrifice. Because He is the source of life and all blessings, the point of the sacrifice is to say thanks (and sorry). There's something to be said for gratitude. If you've not realized it before, you'll be amazed at how much of our attitude is based on our willingness to be grateful. When we don't have any gratitude in our heart, it's difficult to pretend we do, and other people tend to notice pretty quick. Mouthing off or talking back to our benefactors is a dead giveaway. Cain did exactly this in GE 4:9. He demonstrated no gratitude, which undermined the point of the sacrifice. Most of the time, going through the motions isn't really good enough, and can even backfire. (As the copycats learned in Acts 19:13-16.) Though there is something to be said for the value of practicing with the hope of forming good habits.
In Genesis 4:17​, we read Cain had a wife. Where'd she come from? Easy, Genesis 5:4 tells us Adam “had other sons and daughters.” In Genesis 4:14, Cain said: “whoever finds me will kill me.” Who was he afraid of? While Genesis 5:4 is there, it's not the only explanation available. We all know someone who projects their own opinion, expectation, or experience, on the rest of the world. Certainly Adam and Eve would have been around somewhere all through chapter 4. Cain could have at least meant them. Since he was willing to kill his brother, he seems to have assumed his father would be willing to kill him. This is most likely a totally unwarranted assumption, based on nothing but a prideful desire on Cain's part that everyone else should be like himself. How often do we make the same assumption, usually without doing any research to validate it? Though admittedly, in this case the only words we have recorded from Adam were back in chapter 2:23, 3:10, and 3:12. While we know he lived to be 930 years old (Gen 5:5) we don't have any idea what Adam was like as a person. (By the way, it's a similar scenario with Joseph, the adopted father of Jesus, in the sense that he's not directly mentioned after Jesus was a child.)

Cain was so creative that he built an entire city (Gen 4:17). It probably didn't have skyscrapers, trains, nor fiberoptics, but it still sounds like an impressive accomplishment. The rest of chapter 4 is about Cain's descendants, and while none of them are specifically described as dying, they wouldn't have made it past the global flood (Gen 7:23). Cain was only mentioned 3 more times in the rest of the Bible. None of them were flattering (Hebrews 11:4, 1 John 3:12, Jude 1:11). How many times are we doomed never to live down our mistakes? Even when we can't, our willingness to repent is key in how everyone around (including God) will respond to us (Ezekiel 18:21-23, Matthew 4:17, Acts 2:38).

Lamech, Cain's 5th generation descendent, sure inherited Cain's gangster personality. He made it into scripture in Genesis 4:18-24. It was God, not Cain, who declared "if anyone kills Cain then vengeance seven times over" (Gen 4:15). So Lamech was quite prideful to self-declare vengeance 77 times over for himself. This wasn't his finest moment, and his reasoning was pretty pathetic. Imagine what it would have been like to be one of his wives when he bragged about being so petty that he killed a boy for bumping into him (Gen 4:23-24). (Lamech was the first recorded polygamist.) We only have the one quote from Lamech. Be careful how you act, because you never know which of your actions will resonate with people (good or bad) and which the historians will choose to write about. Don't be like Lamech. Leave it to Jesus to turn it around. He said if someone wrongs you and says they're sorry (asks for forgiveness) then forgive them at least 77 times (Matthew 18:21-22, Luke 17:3-4, meaning, make your willingness to forgive be unlimited). Be like Jesus.



Only Human



Adam and Eve knew God. Both of them had seen God in person when God brought Eve to Adam in Genesis 2:22. And yet they still chose to take the serpent's word over God's word. But the serpent didn't make them do it, he just gave them permission. Then it became far more tempting. It became a game of "do I create my own reality?" This is so appealing because only a god can create or alter reality. In our reality, there is only one true God, and we've got to go through Him before we may change the reality He created. This is why modern virtual reality can be so addicting to both create and be in (including all forms of computer games, and to some extent the virtual environments implied by social media). So if we can reject the history and morality of the Bible and disavow our (any) creator, then we take His place, at least in [how we live] our own (limited) life. God made us in His image and we desperately want to return the favor. Satan, being the “seal of perfection,” wanted this enough to incite a rebellion (partially described in Isaiah 14:13-15 and Revelation 12:3-4). When he failed to usurp God, he turned his attention on us, to corrupt God's favorite creation and separate us from our Creator. With minimal coercion, Eve decided to gamble her life and her husband's life on the possibility that she too could replace her creator. Ever since and even now we have the same choice. There are just more people to give us suggestions for and permission to sin, but there are also more people who are actively trying to be good role models and remind us of God's expectations. This is actually a major recurring theme in the entire Bible. Super succinct examples include: Deuteronomy 11:26, 13:3, 30:19, Joshua 24:15, 1 Kings 18:21, Isaiah 1:19-20, and 1 Peter 4:1-4.

Adam and Eve had seen God. At least during Genesis 2:22, and God knows how many other times because Adam said “I heard you in the garden” (Gen 3:10), implying he recognized the sound and had prior encounters with God. Cain and Abel had a similar relationship described in Genesis 4:3-6. As much as we'd like to think that seeing is believing, it's not always. When you don't want something to be true, seeing is not believing, and often no amount of evidence will change your mind. It's dismissed as a trick, either of a trickster or just of your own brain. In society, we see over and over when there is a clash between paradigms and imperial reality, the later usually loses. The apostle Peter had a similar problem 4 millennia later, when Jesus was walking on water in the midst of a storm, in Matthew 14:22-34 (parallels in Mark 6:45-53 and John 6:16-21). Peter could see Jesus, that's why he got out of the boat. But then he saw the wind (not the waves) and got distracted. Many people saw Jesus 2 millennia ago, but didn't believe. There are plenty of times in our lives when seeing really will be believing, but don't assume it always will be. Jesus commented on this in Luke 16:30-31.

They were given a life of innocence and immortality, but they preferred intelligence and choice, even when it was promised to result in death. Sound familiar? The pro-life and pro-choice movements have been around since week two of creation (which was about 6,000 years ago). Only recently have they been so tightly tied to abortion. And there's clearly a more and less noble side to be on. The pro-life side, which obeys (or at least actively tries to obey) God, is on the path to righteousness. By the way, what is righteousness? The Bible explicitly gives two complimentary definitions in Genesis 15:6 and Deuteronomy 6:25. The pro-choice side is by definition choosing to disobey their Creator (whether consciously or not) and make up their own rules for right and wrong without accountability to the God they know exists (Romans 1:18-22). In other words, they're practicing self-righteousness. This is why the pro-life perspective is so offensive to the pro-choicer: all pro-life promoters are reminders that it's wrong to make up our own definition of right and wrong when God has already said what is and isn't (Isaiah 5:20). Adam and Eve didn't have the social background to have a clue what baggage pro-life and pro-choice paradigms come with, but they gave being pro-choice a try. No one wants to live a lie, but we do want to make up our own reality, and we resent when anyone else points out our wishful thinking is fake.

Love the sinner, hate the sin, was exemplified crystal clear by God in both Genesis 3 and 4. Whether the Christians in your life have bastardized the concept or acted nobly as God's ambassadors, the concept is clearly straight from God. God loved Adam and Eve, as well as Cain, but He punished them (and/​or allowed them to bear the consequences) for their sin. The result was very serious and awarded on the first offense, because God hates sin. He flat out said it over and over in scripture (Isaiah 61:8, Amos 5:15, Hebrews 1:8-9, Jude 1:22-23) and He repeatedly proclaimed He loves people (Exodus 34:6, Ezekiel 18:23, John 3:16, Romans 5:8).

Practice scenario 4:
  • Question: did God really say all sin should be punished by death?
  • Wrong answer: basically, and we shouldn't even think about it, or we deserve to go to hell.
  • Doubt: shouldn't we punish sinners now, in case God's not "man enough" to follow through?
  • Reject: criticising (persecuting) people will point out their error, inspire them to stay on the straight and narrow, and encourage them to be more like me (the criticizer).
  • Better answer: All sin is committed against God first, since He set the standards for us long before we were even born. God said all sin results in death, but only some sins should be punished in life. When a person repents they need less punishment than if they remain stubborn and won't repent. Equally important, however, is all people are made in God's image and deserve to be treated as such at all times. God can follow through as He sees fit, it's our job to be firm about His revelation while caring to His creation (especially people).
Why do bad things happen to good people and worse, good things happen to bad people? Adam and Eve were as good as anyone ever was, and yet something bad happened to them. Cain was pretty bad, and yet God was compassionate on him (Gen 4:15). God wasn't being fickle. Adam and Eve made a choice, and their poor choice allowed something bad to happen to themselves. Sadly, sometimes bad things happen to us because of someone else's poor choice too. Good things happen to bad people because we're all bad. As self-centered mortals we simply prefer to believe many people are less good than us, but when it comes to truly being good, we're just kidding ourselves (Mark 10:18/​Luke 18:19). So if good things didn't happen to bad people, we'd all be in trouble. Fortunately for us, Jesus pointed out that God “makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Another perspective is sometimes bad things happen to good people to allow the good people to prove they are good: to show the world when garbage happens to a believer that we will react noticeably differently than they would.

Originally, when all was still good, God gave us an extremely broad spectrum of food (Gen 1:29). Considering they hadn't existed for more than a few hours yet, they probably didn't have many preferences ingrained in their brain yet. With that perspective in mind, it's not a stretch to say God offered humanity to eat anything on earth they wanted. There was no need to worry about fat, calories, carbs, gluten, lactose, sugar substitutes, and most importantly, poison. Yet the serpent had the nerve to call God a liar (verse 4) and a hoarder (verse 5). Worse yet, we agreed with that assessment. Worse yet, we acted on that belief (verse 6).

God is a God of detail. He invented DNA and genetic variation. Every one of the 3 billion letters in our DNA molecule have meaning. He can make things work out when He wants to. He can orchestrate the universe to work in your favor and have every stoplight on your commute be green, or the boss walk into the room just as you're saying that awesome thing, or the other person says that hurtful thing to you. He can and He sometimes does, when it fits into His plan. It's called providence. But we can imagine, Abel was pretty surprised God didn't come through in that moment. Same with Job. Even Jesus was personally accused of not coming through at least twice. First, when when John the Baptiser sent his disciples to ask Jesus whether He was the Messiah in Matthew 11:2-3, which was after Luke 1:44. Then there was when He intentionally let Lazarus die just so He could raise him from death 4 days later: John 11:21. It's important we recognize God's ability to control the details while also recognizing His sovereignty to decide which details are important enough to control, or decide which details aren't going to work out in our favor. Which isn't an excuse for determinism (sit back and watch life happen) but is a paradigm to remember.

How did Adam know what a father and mother were in Genesis 2:24? Remember the first couple were created mature, as opposed to babies. They already knew how to talk and walk on the day they were created. They came uniquely "preloaded" with vocabulary that would make any school kid very jealous. He didn't have to have a father or mother to know what they were.

Adam and Eve were the first to learn that parenthood is inevitable when we engage in the one activity that was intended to (and capable of) produce children. There's a reason we have to go out of our way to avoid conception. That's because we're exploiting the system. This biological system was exclusively designed to facilitate Genesis 1:28 and 9:1, which is why everyone enjoys it so much. Because God designed us to do it. A lot. But the original intent of the activity this system is so famous for was not just another social relationship builder, rite of passage, nor pastime. It was specifically designed as the exclusive path to family creation. The only Judeo-Christian allocation to "plan" parenthood is with strict abstinence, maybe contraception (when and only when the couple is already married), but not abortion. Notice God created everyone to be entitled to the joy of this activity. It's not limited to some exclusive club of politically correct (or incorrect), or genetically gifted people. The trick is our Creator only approves of it in one very specific situation, and that's between a husband and wife. We might ask where does it explicitly say this, anywhere in these first 4 chapters of Genesis? Genesis 2:24 only implies it, but the theme never lets up in the remaining thousand chapters of the Bible, neither does it reverse. Later in scripture this is repeatedly made more explicit, but that's the subject of another article(s).

Adam needed to realize he was alone the hard way. Notice how it happened in Genesis 2:15-25. God created Adam and all the animals, but not yet Eve. Then He let Adam name all the animals (Gen 2:19). We can imagine, if Adam was a typical male, he's going about his day having a great time in his freedom. The loner: going it solo and self-sustaining. But we are designed for intimacy, or at least connection. We are designed to want children. Even if at first we don't realize it, or are distracted by all the selfish-affirming opportunities in the world. So Adam is naming all the animals and seeing how they're all paired up. At some point in the parade of animals he surely realized he was alone (Gen 2:20). Considering he was the only person alive, and he knew it, there's a decent chance he got really depressed. Even though Adam had a non-repeatable, highly specific situation, we can all relate. We know what it's like to be lonely. Rather than simply tell Adam he was alone, or create him as part of a pair, God wanted Adam to realize how he was designed. We're meant to be incomplete alone, but there are two problems. First, sometimes we're too stubborn to admit when we feel incomplete, and second, we're not all that satisfied when we're together, either. Partially because our hearts are infinitely greedy (Jeremiah 17:9) and partially because every person thinks differently. There are billions of synapses in our brains, and we have God given freewill. Every couple finds out the hard way that living with and being committed to another human being is strenuous. It's ok, that's normal, just don't blame each other like Adam did (Gen 3:12).

In Genesis 3:19, God mentioned bread. (At least, in the original it does. NIV transliterated it to "food.") I wonder if Adam had made or eaten bread yet? If he had, then that might ruin my hypothesis that chapter 3 happened on day 8. Adam and Eve would have needed at least a little time to invent the process by which to make it. The original people were quite creative, so it's conceivable that Adam figured it out in just a couple days, but it could have also taken much longer, even a couple growing seasons. Similarly, since Genesis 3:24 repeats that God drove Adam out, it implies Adam had enough experience to know this was a bad thing. It's not a stretch to think a couple of years could have even passed, where Adam had gained enough knowledge about the disparity between the paradise of God's personal garden and the rest of the world. The only constraint there would have been was the first natural child (or at least son) was likely born in Genesis 4:1, which chronologically happened after Genesis 3:24​. We can have reasonable assurance of this succession for two reasons:
  1. Eve's reaction, recorded in the second half of the verse. Her exclamation seems odd if it wasn't her first child, or at least, her first son. But her reaction was more understandable if Cain was her first. Remember, Eve uniquely came directly from the first man, so it's understandable that she would be a little more excited than usual when she birthed a man, essentially returning the favor. Especially since she gave credit to God, saying “with Yahweh's help,” which is surely a reference to what we now know as Genesis 2:18 and 22. If Eve had a couple children by the time Cain was born, but they were all girls, we could sympathize more with her exclamation if she was beginning to wonder if boy children would come by some other process.
  2. If there were other offspring from before the curse, presumably there would have been a moral anomaly. Because (a) why weren't said children mentioned in the curse, and (b) if they weren't included in the curse, then whatever happened to them? So there probably weren't.
At the beginning, God only gave humanity one rule. We don't trust each other to live up to the few rules God gave us, or we flat out dislike them altogether, so we either ask for more rules to clarify (in hopes the additional detail will conform to our preconceived notions) or we just invent more rules to force the original rules to fit into the box of our mind. In other words, we're the ones who demand rules and thou shalt nots. So it's actually deceptive and hypocritical when we claim we don't appreciate God giving them to us. What we really mean when we complain about rules, whether we realize it or not, is we don't want God to be the one to give us the rules. We want the authority to make them up for ourselves (and for others). Which is why the culture wars are so tempting. (The culture war raging in the USA and elsewhere can be summarized like this: is the word of God in authority over man, or is man's word our authority? In other words, is humanity autonomous from or accountable to God? This is called "autonomous human reason.") Note in sports, rules are an essential element to create a level playing field and define the game. The most common criticism regarding rules in sports is when they're not followed, not the fact they exist. So why do we criticize God for having rules for life? We are why all religions, including orthodox Christianity, have so many rules. But Jesus highly criticized the religious leaders of His day for being that way, especially in Matthew 23. This is because God prefers a relationship with us, He never asked for a religion. When our parents relationship with God turns into nothing more than an empty, hollow religion in ours minds, God will likely get annoyed. If our parent's faith was genuine but we reject it, we're in trouble. If our parent's faith was just a show, so we reject God to avoid repeating their hypocrisy, then both we and our parents are in trouble. The regulations of Exodus and Leviticus were to establish a theocratic nation and codify morality, not so much to create a "religion". Hundreds of years later, when the Israelites religion had replaced their relationship with their Creator, long before Jesus came, God had some pretty pointed things to say, like in Psalms 50:7-13, Isaiah 1:11-14, and Amos 5:21-22. By the way, Genesis 4:26 is the first mention of anything close to religion. Although using the word "religion" is a stretch. We'll review this verse more in my next article, Real History.

Claiming the truth will always prevail is at best wishful thinking and at worst Satanic optimism. At least in any practical application of the idea. In an absolute sense it is indeed absolute truth. Because at the end of time Jesus will come to earth a second time and end the world (and the whole universe) as we know it and perform the ultimate reset (Revelation 21:1). Jesus is Truth (John 14:6) so truth will prevail, then. But until then, to believe the truth is ever obligated to win is a lie. To prove the point, look at Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter 2, they had all the truth they needed, and it was prevailing. In chapter 3, they still had truth, but they were introduced to deception in verse 1 and a flat out lie in verse 4. In a practical sense, for the truth to prevail, they had to not believe the lie nor the liar. But they did, they ate, and they got cursed and died as a result. And us along with them. In the end, the truth will prevail, but for Adam and Eve, to claim that in the past the truth prevailed would be an extreme slant on history. On earth, the truth is under no obligation to prevail. Rather there is a daily choice we make to honor truth and align our beliefs with God's warnings over our own wishes. Eve wished the serpent was right (he had claimed Eve wouldn't die by eating the fruit that would afford her knowledge) so she disregarded God's truthful warning (Gen 2:16-17). Oh "the truth prevailed" all right, and God was proven right, but Eve suffered the consequences. For the idea that "the truth will always prevail" to be helpful, it has to end up in our favor. Eve proved it doesn't, so the statement is of no practical benefit. And can you just hear Satan standing there in the garden when poor Eve was contemplating his words, implying to her, "don't worry, the truth will prevail, just eat the fruit." This is Satanic optimism, when we choose to simply think positive thoughts even when we should know there's imminent danger to avoid (Jeremiah 6:14-15). I'm not saying the opposite either, I'm not saying truth never prevails. I'm just saying we shouldn't assume the truth will prevail without a lot of work. If the phrase "the truth will prevail" is a rally cry call to action for you, then cool, go for it. But never let it be an excuse to slack off on our pursuit of the truth.

Some people claim that the account of Adam and Eve was "just a story" (as in "fable"). But does God see it that way? Let's review all the times in the rest of scripture Genesis 1-11 are explicitly referenced (not counting the general references to God creating the Earth, Sun, Moon, stars, heavens, etc):

Exodus 31:12-17 The interpret­ation of the days of creation as 24-standard-hour time periods were built into the 4th of the 10 Commandments
1 Chronicles 1:1-4 Genealogic reminder
Job 38:1-38 An eyewitness account of creation from a different perspective
Isaiah 54:9 God mentions Noah to the prophet Isaiah
Ezekiel 14:14,20 God mentions Noah to the prophet Ezekiel
Matthew 19:4/​Mark 10:6  Male & female He made (not evolved) them in the beginning (not years later)
Matthew 23:35/​Luke 11:51  Righteousness of Abel
Matthew 24:37-38/​Luke 17:26-27  Jesus cites Noah with a tone of voice like "duh."
Luke 3:34-38 Genealogic reminder
John 5:46-47 Jesus criticizes his contemporaries for not believing what Moses wrote
Acts 17:26-27 We all descended from one ansestor
Romans 5:17 First Adam/​last Adam (Jesus)
1 Corinthians 15:21-22 First Adam/​last Adam (Jesus)
1 Corinthians 15:45 First Adam/​last Adam (Jesus)
2 Corinthians 11:3 Eve was deceived by the serpent
1 Timothy 2:13-14 Adam & Eve and the original sin
Hebrews 11:1-7 Abel, Cain, Enoch, Noah
Hebrews 12:24 Contrasting the scenario of Jesus's death to Abel's
1 Peter 3:20 Noah, the ark, and the flood
2 Peter 2:5 Noah, the 8 people on the ark, and the worldwide flood
1 John 3:12 Cain's poor choice
Jude 1:11 Comparing people to Cain
Jude 1:14-15 Adam & Enoch

That makes 5 explicit quotes from Jesus, 5 from Paul, 3 from the apostles Peter & John, plus 9 more. All these references reinforce the fact that the accounts recorded in Genesis 1-11​ were real history that is still relevant for our lives, even millennia later.

Have you ever been stuck being around people who disappointed you? If so, God can relate. He literally created us to know better, and gave us the freedom of choice, but we disappointed Him. Repeatedly. Generation after generation. Later, Moses warned the Israelites in Deuteronomy 9:6. Later, Isaiah warned the Assyrians in Isaiah 10:12-13. Our choices not only break God's heart (Gen 6:6) but also damage His reputation (Ezekiel 36:22). He so wanted Adam and Eve to have responded very differently to Satan in chapter 3, and Cain to have acted differently towards his brother in chapter 4. But even God doesn't get everything He wants. So we shouldn't be surprised when we don't either. (Note, there's a difference between not getting what you want and not getting what you decree. Everyone in authority can relate to this. What God decrees happens, because He's sovereign. But He leaves room for us to live up to or let down His expectations.) A few millennia later, when God walked among us again, Jesus said the most important commandment in the entire law given by Moses was to love God with all our heart (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Matthew 22:34-40/​Mark 12:28-34). This is sad context to the poor choices made in Genesis 3 & 4, and is an explicit reminder that if we aren't intentional to do better, we probably won't.

Here's a trick question. Who's sin was worse, Adam's, or Cain's? Be careful with how you answer. Cain committed murder, which later would become the only sin named as a capital crime in all five books of the Torah. All Adam did (seemingly) was eat a stupid piece of fruit. But wait, all of creation was cursed because of Adam. No one but Abel suffered as a consequence of Cain's sin (not to mention the billions of people he lost the opportunity to be the progenitor for). Adam's sin was far worse (everyone who's ever lived and ever will live was affected). The fruit was less important in a literal sense than the fact that he disregarded God's command, word, and opinion. Next time you are tempted to say "but at least I didn't kill anyone," remember how justified we'd be to scorn Adam if (stress if) he were to say the same thing. It's no better when we sin than when Adam did, and sin is sin no matter what we think about it. David articulated beautifully why God's word is important in Psalm 119:11, saying “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Because the reverse was succinctly recorded by David's son, Solomon, in Proverbs 19:3.



Order



An important arch-lesson in Genesis 2-4 is the intended order to life (as in "organization," more so than "sequence"). This is not about my opinion, these are obvious conclusions drawn straight from the text when we take it seriously:
  1. God made everything.
  2. The sequence God used for creation totally contradicts evolution.
  3. God took 6 literal days to create everything in the universe.
  4. God made Adam. (Gen​ 2:7)
  5. God made Eve. (Gen​ 2:22)
  6. God made Eve to be both equal to and yet subordinate to Adam.
  7. God declared Adam and Eve rulers of the world. (Gen​ 1:28)
  8. God is good.
  9. Everything God made was good, originally. (Gen​ 1:31)
  10. God's supernatural creation of the universe is the source of our 7 day week. (Gen​ 2:2)
  11. Work itself is from before the fall.
  12. God made marriage for the purpose of family.
  13. Marriage was designed as one man and one woman. (Gen​ 2:24)
  14. Human reproduction was designed to only occur inside families. (Gen​ 2:24)
  15. Satan wants us to be estranged from God.
  16. Satan is a liar. (Gen​ 3:4)
  17. We are accountable to God.
  18. The temptation to sin is not the same as the act of sinning.
  19. Sin leads to death. (Gen​ 2:17)
  20. Human dress code is a moral issue. (Gen​ 2:25, 3:7)
  21. God cares about our attitude to Him.
  22. Binary gender and heteronormative are the design.
  23. We are all responsible for each other.
  24. Murder is immoral.
  25. God has supreme jurisdiction to define justice, morality, and reality.
  26. People can be surprisingly creative.
  27. God is not a micromanager, He cares greatly about human responsibility and self-discipline.
  28. God loves people and hates sin.
God is a God of order, and He made an orderly universe that exemplifies it. Choosing to deviate from His design in any way will inevitably result in bad things (2 Chronicles 36:16, Galatians 6:7).

We are commanded to make babies, or at least try, but the command didn't stop there (Gen 1:28). In the same breath, same sentence, and/or same verse, we're also commanded to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule everything else alive (everything non-human). In other words, God called us to greatness. The specific method to accomplish this task was the strong family. The implied order of one man and one woman was so obvious in God's design that Adam just blurted it out when he first saw Eve (Gen 2:23-24). And God reminded us years later through His prophet, Malachi 2:15, what we now call "nuclear families" were the original intent. Families were also the explicit (though not exclusive) center of childhood education, not the government, the local church, nor private schools. Though this wasn't formally recorded until verses like Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Psalm 78:5-8, Joel 1:3, and Ephesians 6:4. Families don't have the exclusive burden because of the inspiration for the old saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." Just because I'm pointing out God's original design, if your life didn't follow that path, doesn't mean I'm criticizing you. I'm reminding us all what the design was and imploring us all to do our best in this fallen world to honor God. Even if we've already messed up, it's never too late to use our lives to teach the next generation (anyone, really) how God wants us to live. We all fall short of perfection, so we all have ways we've been good and bad examples, and both have relevance in teaching. And by the way, when we were given a direct command from God to “fill the earth,” it's implied that God set us up for success and designed the planet to be fully capable of supporting us. This isn't an excuse to abuse the planet, nor the environment. But it is reason to believe Satan invented the term "overpopulation" to distract us from our mandate. Similarly, the sexual revolution was likely originally motivated by another direct lie of Satan as yet another way to alienate us from God's design of strong, healthy families. (Remember the model: question, doubt, reject, suffer.)

Many Americans are uncomfortable with the concept of male headship (which basically just means male leadership). Possibly because of all the media coverage (mostly from make-believe sitcoms and so-called "reality" TV) that make men look so stupid. But this is not about forcing the Bible to say what men (or women) want it to, this is looking to the text and taking it seriously, whether it says what we want or not. Let's count the theological supports for male leadership in the record of the original couple:

Gen 2:7  1  God made Adam first.
Gen 2:18  2  God said Adam needed a helper.
Gen 2:19  -  Reminder that every animal was made from the dust of the ground (not just humans).
Gen 2:20  -  Adam named all the animals, possibly to prove none of them were suitable helpers.
Gen 2:21  3  God created Eve from Adam (not from dust) while Adam was asleep (otherwise Adam would have taken at least partial credit).
Gen 2:22  4  God brought Eve to Adam (compare to how subjects and visitors are escorted to visit kings, not the other way around).
Gen 2:23  5  Adam named the female gender (anyone who gets to name something is it's master).
Gen 3:16  6  Eve cursed to be ruled by her husband.
Gen 3:17-19  7  Adam's curse applied to Eve but Eve's didn't apply to Adam.
Gen 3:20  8  Adam named his wife Eve.
Gen 3:22-24  9  God only referred to Adam in this final and immediate portion of the curse, so it was understood that Eve was subordinate and therefore also affected.

One point of clarification: I feel no obligation to justify or defend the stated opinions and designs of our omnipotent Creator. I do feel obligated to know and honor them, even and especially when they're not politically correct. There are no verses that support female leadership, but there was strong indication of female equality. Since Eve was made from Adam (not the dust of the ground, like all other animals) she has a special version of equality with Adam not shared by any other creature. A general theme of the curse was the buck stopped with Adam because he was in charge, so because he slipped up, all of creation suffers. The New Testament also explores the idea of headship in Mark 9:35, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 11:7-12, Ephesians 5:23, and 1 Timothy 2:12-14. How much better might society be if we returned to God's original design? This isn't about making strong women stand by and settle for the leadership of weak men. There were no occasions in the Bible where God encouraged a leader to be dumb (foolish) or stay content with their character. Every encounter with God had (and has) an automatic call to elevate our character and grow in wisdom. And as a direct contradiction to what Hollywood and comic books would have us believe, wisdom doesn't come from self-confidence, self-determination, nor self-righteousness. Wisdom starts with a healthy fear of our Creator (Proverbs 9:10, James 1:5). The concept of male headship is not an excuse for men to oppress women. But the reverse is also true. Encouraging girls to prepare for "real" jobs when they grow up is fine, because strong (as in skilled and educated) women are no less cool than strong men. But encouraging girls should never become an excuse to:
  1. give up on boys (as American culture has done, for example, here's a PragerU video) nor
  2. normalize an implication that girls staying home and raising strong families is a waste of talent (as American culture is doing).
And about women leadership, how's that working out for American culture? Don't just answer "fine" or "great" to evade the question. The problem when a woman takes a man's role in leadership is that it often backfires. Men don't feel challenged by more competition, they feel let off the hook. Many men will just reassign their role and let women take on both the women's and the men's role. That doesn't help anyone. It's not that women can't or even shouldn't be leaders, that's a baseless extrapolation. The trick is it's the man's God given job to be a leader, and not the woman's. Nothing says women's preferences should automatically be ignored or dismissed, nor that woman should never lead, and scripture does include Proverbs 11:14, 12:15, 15:22, 19:20, 24:6, 31:26. But it's the man's job to lead, and women stepping in for more than a temporary fix will prove to be counterproductive in the long run. For one reason, a strong woman will gladly take the position of a weak man, but that same weak man will not accept the position of any woman. When men are relieved of God's expectations by women, they certainly won't live up to women's expectations. The problem with women in the workplace is not them in the workplace, it's the vacuum they leave behind. Most of the people who are willing to fill that vacuum we shouldn't trust to do it. Equal rights of personhood/​citizenship are objectively critical, equal roles are subjectively debatable (their legitimacy varies by situation). (Technically, an agreement of different roles for men and women is called complementarianism.) The problem with the strive for unilateral gender equality is not equality, it's that such a strive is misguided. It devalues what makes women special by implying only when women define themselves like a man should they have self worth, or value to society. The very premise of feminism begins with a belief that women have a burden to prove to the world they are not less than men. That paradigm devalues women, not empowers them. God's word, when taken seriously and interpretted consistently, empowers women radically better than feminism does. Remember, woman was made after man, arguably making her more special than him. As we scrutinize the first few two chapters of the Bible (which describe the beginning of humanity) we find God stressed our similarities more than our differences. When our relationship with God becomes more about religion, bad things always happen. Man lording over women would be only one example. The solution is not pride and equality but genuinely knowing our Creator and His original design.

God has been criticized for cursing Eve for what happened in Genesis 3. Specifically, if He would disrespect and devalue women this way, then some claim He shouldn't be believed in at all. This philosophy is a perfect lesson in self-righteousness. We love to use our own self-centered logic and believe we can define reality around that. But rather than dismiss or argue head on with this (like boxing), go with it. Let's use taekwondo and follow this abhoration to its natural conclusion. If God doesn't exist, then the only other option recognized by culture to explain existence is evoltion. If humanity is the result of evolution then life is an accident. Life has no meaning. Women and womanhood has no value in an evolutionary paradigm because nothing has objective meaning. The only meaning evolution places on anything is just a temporary byproduct of the legacy of the Judeo/Christian worldview. (When society as a whole stops believing in God then that legacy will evaporate. For government is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of religion.) Why would we reject God because we perceive Him as devaluing women and then replace Him with evolution which has absolutely no value for women (or anyone)? The criticism of God because of Genesis 3 is a wonderful (albeit sad) example of a logical fallacy. There is so much to say about God's positive view of women throughout all of scripture that it deserves a whole separate article. (For one example, remember when Jesus resurrected, He appeared to the women first, in parallels Matthew 28:1-10, Mark 16:1-11, Luke 24:1-11, and John 20:1-18.) Only by better understanding God will we better understand the optimal role of both men and women in society. Satan was the original misogynist, not God, and not man. But it's one of Satan's pastimes to distort our understanding of God's character. In other words, Satan lies to us at all costs to distort what we believe because when we believe something, we act like it's true, and God holds us accountable for what we do.

The serpent claimed God was a liar and a hoarder. Let's do a brief character assessment. The next time we read about Satan (after Genesis 3) was in Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-7. This is the kind of guy most of us don't even want knowing we exist. He's not just a god of mischief (Norse Loki), nor is he simply the guy who's job was to rule the underworld (Greek Hades). Jesus called him “the father of lies” and a “murderer” (John 8:44). After Job, the next story he was in was Zechariah 3:1-2, where he accused the high Priest. Next was Matthew 4:1-11 (with parallel in Luke 4:1-13). A highlight was Matthew 4:8-9 (Luke 4:5-7) where Satan, knowing who Jesus was, had the arrogance to offer God what was already His if He (the Creator: John 1:1-3) would only bow down to one He had created. It wasn't like Satan's attitude here surprised God, because it was Satan's norm (Isaiah 14:13-15) and still is. Since this was how Satan treated the omnipotent God, we mortals need to be cautious (John 10:10, Jude 1:9). Fortunately for us, the "last Adam" did better than the first (1 Corinthians 15:45). Once again, there was no physical battle, only a spiritual war. The only way Jesus fought was with the Word of God (Matthew 4:4). Adam could have done this, but perhaps he didn't think of it. It's too bad we can all relate to that. None-the-less, Jesus provided a model for all of us to copy, and begins with (a) reading/​knowing God's word and (b) having/​demonstrating a Biblical worldview. By the way, the reason Satan is in both Job 1 and 2 is because Job passed the first test in chapter 1, exemplified when he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:20-22 NIV). And he had no Bible to refer to.

Let's up the ante. Genesis 3 is probably a direct result of Satan wanting to tell his Creator He was stupid. Satan is the ultimate rebel. When He realized mankind's potential, and more specifically God's favor on us, and that we had no protections in place (we weren't supposed to need any) and all he had to do was trick us into disobedience (as opposed to fighting), Satan probably decided to show God how stupid an arrangement that was. Note I'm not saying it was stupid, I'm saying Satan probably thought it was. Like a rebellious teenager, he decided to show his Dad how stupid he thought He was. Like a rebellious teenager, he was wrong, but sadly, we played right along.



Future



Genesis 3:24 was not the last time we will ever see the Tree of Life. It still exists, and comes up again in the book of Revelation. It's just up in Heaven now. First, Jesus says whoever overcomes temptation and the snares of this world will again be allowed to eat from it, in Revelation 2:7. Then, in the last chapter of the Book, it's mentioned 3 times, in Revelation 22:2, 14, and 19. While we're here, there is good news in Revelation 22:3. Notice in 22:2 the tree is so big it is on both sides of the river. (This may have been the inspiration for the enormity of the tree in the 2009 movie Avatar.)

Clearly there are many lessons in Genesis 2-4. The single most important arch lesson is how significant human choice is, and how important it is to take God seriously. If we accept the historicity of the rest of the Bible (beginning with Genesis 1:1 all the way to the end in Revelation 22:21), then we must conclude that the most significant way we are expected to take God seriously was when Jesus claimed no one gets to God except by going through Him. This was stated succinctly in John 14:6, phrased slightly differently in John 3:16 and 3:36, and attested to later in Acts 4:12, Romans 10:9, and 1 Timothy 2:5-6. The original design was that we would be with God, but our choices (sin) separate us from Him, and we need a way to get back (to be reconciled). As the ones who keep committing the offenses, we do not get to chose how the reconciliation works. Only the one who's had the offense committed against him does, and in this case that's God. Many people have asked: isn't there another way besides believing in (and explicitly thanking) Jesus's death and resurrection? To which there are two simple responses.
  • If there was any other way, God would not have left Heaven to live 3 decades as a pauper just to end up homeless and to knowingly allow himself to be savagely murdered.
  • We're lucky there's a [any] way. Travel the world and you'll find no one else is coming for you. There is no other God who loves you, passionately pursues you, longs to forgive you of your sin, and to heal you from your brokenness (Isaiah 43:11, 45:22-24).
When we say "there's got to be another way," what we really mean is there's got to be a way that satisfies my pride. There's got to be a way that I can earn my own salvation and thereby not require a savior by proving my own righteousness. But sorry, if we take our Bible seriously, there isn't (Mark 10:18, Luke 9:24, Romans 3:10,23, Galatians 5:4). And if we don't accept that reality before we die, then we're being like Eve and Adam and gambling everything that God's word is wrong. A better choice is taking God at His word (which involves knowing it) and living a life full of joy (not the same as a life of ease) that God has always wanted for us (Jeremiah 29:11). Moses would allude to this later, when in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 (Paul quotes in Romans 10:6-7) he pointed out that God made this real easy for us. The problem for many people is this precluded the possibility of us achieving glory for ourselves. The reason is all glory is supposed to go to God first (Isaiah 42:8) then we can share in it (albeit a small portion) if we're obedient (John 17:22, Romans 8:17). To a self-centered person this is just so not cool. But more important than whether it's cool is if it's true.



Extra Credit



This is not "everything I need to know I learned from Genesis." Because then we wouldn't need the rest of the Bible. But we do need it. Jesus had a lot to teach us, not because He hadn't already implied it all in the preceding scriptures, but because even with the entire Old Testament we still didn't get it. Read it all, just in the process don't forget what's in Genesis 1-11. Here are more thoughts on Genesis 2-4 that weren't important enough to integrate into the above.

We always think of Adam and Eve as having been created as modern 21 year olds. But they could have just as easily been created with both the physical and mental maturity of a 10 year old.

The culture of just about every civilization in the Bible was (and in the middle east still is today) very patriarchal and male chauvenist. Even the quasi-apostle Paul thought this way, as evidenced in his writing, most notably in this case his commentary on Adam and Eve in 1 Timothy 2:14. I'm neither endorsing nor criticizing those cultures here, my point is simply their reasoning can surely be traced all the way back to Genesis 3. Sometimes our mistakes die hard, and I wonder if Paul ever thought this hard about the original couple, or if I'm just overthinking it.

Since Adam wasn't allowed to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, why didn't he devise a way to cut that tree down and eliminate the problem? Or just cut a huge gouge in the trunk so it'd die, let it dry out for a year, then light the thing up? Just a thought.

Ignoring the events leading up to when Adam ate the fruit, and how he was responsible for preventing Eve from eating it, it's a possibility that he ate the fruit Eve gave him because he didn't want his wife to be legitimately and objectively smarter than him. Despite how things look on paper, when given the choice in real life, most of us act like being weak or ignorant is worse than being evil, because at least being evil leaves room to imply we're strong. All too often our actions prove that too many of us would rather be seen as evil than weak. This is surely why people allow themselves to be portrayed as evil in the news rather than set the record straight that they just had what might be called a stupid moment. Perhaps it's a cultural/​anthropological leftover from when wars happened annually and were largely faught man to man, or perhaps it's just human nature.

It's curious how there's a reference to "east" in Genesis 2:8, 3:24, 4:16, 10:30, and 11:2. I'm not clear on the meaning/​relevance, but it's interesting since north, south, and west aren't mentioned until Genesis 13:14. Might help explain why the Chinese are so certain their country is the center of the world.

It's not might that makes right, it's relationship. Just because God is the most powerful being in the universe is not as important as the fact He made everything. We intuit this is relevant because we make things too. At work, when I make something, only my superior, successor, or equal can alter it. Others can try, but they won't likely succeed. God has no superior, successor, nor equal. So He's always going to be God, and His relationship with us gives Him the authority to define right and wrong, more so than His strength. When two people have either no relationship or a known-to-be-equal relationship, then another deciding factor must be invoked. Because we're simple people, that factor is often might. So by default rather than design can might be substituted for right when there is no relationship (or the relationship is rejected). But there are other choices, like intelligence, beauty, or whoever holds the conch.

It seems like Satan's favorite pastime is to criticize us for how God designed us. For examples:
  • characterising men as mean or women as weak for thinking differently than the other
  • criticizing men for thinking so much about women while simultaneously criticising women if they don't dress in such a way as to distract men
  • for people having different skin shades, body shapes, or languages
  • we have no worth when we don't live up in every conceivable way that society implies we should be (including through impersonal advertisements)
And on and on. We're capable of these offenses without Satan, but it sure seems like we get coordinated help from invisible forces (2 Corinthians 11:14-15, Ephesians 6:12, 1 Timothy 4:1).

Since Satan is real, he's a fallen angel, and he supposedly took a third of the angels with him in his failed coup, then two questions are begged: when exactly was he created and how many other angels are there?
  • There is no mention of any angels directly until Genesis 6:2, followed by Genesis 16:7 (not counting the references to the serpent in Genesis 3). These are all well after Creation week. Assuming God didn't wait until after creation week, there is no clue in Genesis as to when the angels were created. But if we look in Job, we find a clue. At the end of the book is a three chapter rebuke from God to Job and his friends. At the beginning of that discourse, God makes a comment about the creation of the Earth's foundation while the sons of God shouted for joy in Job 38:4-7. The term "sons of God" is only used in Hebrew in Genesis 6:2-4, Job 1:6, & 2:1, and is widely understood to mean angels. If they watched the foundation of the Earth be set, this would likely put the angels' creation on day 1, along with the other fundamental entities of the universe like space, time, matter, and energy. Or perhaps they were created before time began, or outside of time, which isn't a stretch, since Heaven doesn't seem to be bound by the same concept of time that we understand on Earth.
  • While there are almost 3 dozen examples of angelic interactions in the Bible, we are only given the name of two:
    • Michael (Daniel 10:13,21, Jude 1:9, Revelation 12:7)
    • Gabriel (Daniel 8:16, 9:21, Luke 1:19,26)
    • In Mark 5:9 and Luke 8:30​, we read about Legion, but that appears to be the name the man was going by, not the name he was born with nor of any of the demons he was possessed by.
    • Even Satan, referred to by this name in 3 books of the Old Testament and 12 books of the New Testament (using NIV translation) is arguably not his true proper name because the word "satan" also means "adversary" in Hebrew (example). It's possible the word is used more as a proper title, even in the New Testament, even in Revelation. Compare to how non-Christians may call a Christian "Christian" rather than their real name. However, that said, clearly he operates by the name, and everyone knows who's being referred to with it. So it's not necessarily wrong to treat it as a name, we just must be careful making definitive statements about spiritual beings when the Bible didn't.
  • As for how many there are, there are three places with clues. Most don't give any hint how many there are, specifically nor in total, but do assure us that there are a lot. Note, ten thousand squared equals one hundred million.
    • 1 Kings 22:19
    • 2 Kings 6:14-17
    • Matthew 26:53
    • Luke 2:8-15
    • Hebrews 12:22
    • Revelation 5:11, 9:16
Don't kid yourself, the Genesis 3 model of spiritual warfare (quesiton, doubt, reject, suffer) is used today less on pagans and more on people we call "saved." Adam and Eve were sinless when Satan successfully used this attack on them. They didn't need saved until after this was used against them. Experience has shown Satan has another couple derivatives of it, too. One is "question, deny, suffer" and another is just "deny, suffer." Recognize these? They are far more effective on atheists and other nonbelievers, but also work on believers who are uneducated (whether by personal choice or because their teachers slacked).

Then there's another strategy for spiritual warfare, but this one isn't necessarily Satan's. (Though he surely exploits it anyway.) Humans are pretty easy to distract. Distractions are like idols. Idols are anything we give glory to instead of our Creator. God is pretty direct about His opinion on them (Exodus 20:4-6, Isaiah 42:8). Distractions are anything that cause us to simply not give glory to our Creator. Video games, stories (whether in movie, TV, book, or comic book form), and infinite education are three low handing fruit examples of entertainment that is perfectly fine until it causes us to neglect or completely forget about the more important responsibilities we have (Matthew 22:37-38, Mark 12:29-31) starting with (but not limited to) deepening our relationship with our Creator and living out our faith through deeds (Matthew 7:21, James 2:14, 2:26).

We must assume we will be held accountable for our choices (our deeds) regardless of how much angelic or demonic influence was present in our life (Revelation 20:12-13). Eve was the only recorded human ever to have succeeded at blaming Satan for anything and getting him in trouble as a result. For the rest of us, we've been warned he'll be a known accuser (Revelation 12:10) and not an excuse (James 4:7).

Life itself really is cursed now, because of our choices, so it's no wonder it's difficult. But never forget work came before the fall. Work is part of God's design. The key is the work God designed us for is supposed to be meaningful and have purpose (Ecclesiastes 5:18-19). It's supposed to be fulfilling to do what God created us to do. And He did create each of us with a plan in mind (Acts 17:26).

When God pronounced the curse in Genesis 3:17-18, He knew what He was doing. He already knew about Mark 15:17 and John 19:2​. We think God is so mean, but it's really the other way around.

We want to be extraordinary but that's different than excellent. In our pursuit to be extraordinary we must not give up excellent, otherwise we will defeat the purpose. When we try to be extraordinary by being like God in ways He didn't offer (His omnis) we become less human, not more. Being human is a wonderful gift. God described this in Ezekiel 36:26 when He promised to restore our humanity after we had thrown it away. Arguably the worst way we want to be like God is we want to be worshiped like Him. This is why we crave popularity.

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants, to love Yahweh your God, to obey His voice, and to cling to Him; for He is your life.”
 Deuteronomy 30:19-20​ WEB

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