Last week we discussed jazz improv as a model for postmodern religion

Jazz solos build from a common foundation—a song or chord changes everyone knows. Still, each solo is unique. Similarly, Christianity and Islam are riffs on Judaism. Based on an Abrahamic foundation, they add new theological and civil concepts to the mix. Religion develops just like Jazz. A sax player and drummer trade fours. A pianist takes a solo. Eventually, they come together not in unison, but in harmony.

Today, we riff within many religious frameworks, not all of them Abrahamic. In our pluralistic society, we develop personal ideas about our relationship with God, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Ganesh, Lao Tzu, and a host of other brilliant, enlightened beings. Religion is like Jazz, and the extent to which we solo and improvise depends on how strictly a religion adheres to the literal page. In Christianity, that page is the Bible.

Postmodern Christianity invites us to consider scripture through a variety of lenses, both Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and otherwise. It’s useful to think of religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc. as perspectives we can apply to Christianity. Christianity itself is a blend of Jewish, Greek, and Roman religious and cosmological ideologies, making it perhaps the clearest example of improvisational religion.

This improvisation is built into the Jewish heritage of Christianity in the form of Midrash, which is one of the earliest forms of critical commentary on religious texts. For most of its history, Judaism has encouraged lively debate about the interpretation of the Bible. The first Jewish followers of Jesus were following a thousands-of-years-old tradition when they started expanding on and rephrasing their ancient spiritual ideas.

This week, we’re going to take a look at another passage from Genesis, this time the infamous “Garden of Eden” parable, and see what happens to the meaning when we give ourselves permission to improvise a bit based on what we know now that we didn’t know 2000 years ago. As we study the parable of the Garden of Eden today, keep in mind it was never meant to be a real story about an actual event. It is a metaphor meant to imbue wisdom. Jesus would have been encouraged to interpret this text in an original way, which he did, expansively.

May our interpretation today help each of us on our journey to Love.

Genesis 3:1-10 (CEB)

The snake was the most intelligent of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say that you shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the garden’s trees but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘Don’t eat from it, and don’t touch it, or you will die.” 

The snake said to the woman, “You won’t die! God knows that on the day you eat from it, you will see clearly and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food and that the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 

Then they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made garments for themselves. 

During that day’s cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God in the middle of the garden’s trees. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” The man replied, “I heard your sound in the garden; I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Okay, first of all, if you’ve always been naked, and now in your sudden burst of self-awareness, you discover you’re naked, why would you feel shame? What does being undressed have to do with shame? Especially if you don’t know the difference between being dressed or undressed?

Eating a piece of fruit from a tree doesn’t suddenly make Adam go, “Diggity! I’m naked! I better put some clothes on before the only other person in existence gets mad at me for walking around nude in public.”

It’s as if Adam and Eve didn’t eat from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” but from the “Tree of Self-Shaming.” Which makes sense, since self-shaming is what we’ve been preoccupied with ever since we were told this story is about sin and punishment. This story is not about sin. It is about improvising and creativity.

The Garden of Eden text is about leaving the nest, not being kicked out

The “humans sinned and got kicked out of paradise” interpretation of Genesis 3 doesn’t work because, being God, omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent, God knew A&E would eat the delicious, irresistible fruit, in utter disregard of God’s warning. So why put the forbidden fruit within reach in the first place, then make a point of telling the kids not to eat it, unless what you really wanted was for the kids to eat it? In which case, Adam and Eve did exactly what God wanted, which is not a sin. God may have feigned anger, but there is no way becoming human is a sin.

Of course, the alternative is that God is NOT omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, in which case, congratulations! You’re a process theologian, and that’s awesome. You’ll still enjoy what we’re talking about today, so please read on.

Adam and Eve aren’t kicked out of paradise. Better to think of them as twenty-somethings who are way too comfortable in a home where everything is provided for them. At some point, all our parents told us to go out and get a job. Adam and Eve’s job? Create human civilization. Live. Exist. And do it all for God’s glory, which requires nothing other than living. Existing. Being. Good, bad, indifferent, all of it. God wants it all. God loves it all.

If we believe that God creates and continues to build in response to creation, the Garden of Eden parable becomes a story of God’s indelible intimacy with humans, not God’s anger and disappointment with us. That we might be disappointed in our own behavior and tendency to destroy God’s natural beauty is absolutely part of the authors’ intention here. That God punishes and condemns us to die? Not so much.

So, being a creative and curious God, Adam and Eve are not banished from the garden, they are sent forth to explore a particular reality—being human. Our innate curiosity and unwillingness to follow the rules because we don’t believe the fire is hot until we stick our entire arm in it? I believe God loves that about us.

Are we sinners, or are we just made that way?

Yes, we can be stupid and petty and horrible, but we also create Sistine Chapels and Eifel towers, we write Hallelujah Choruses, we eradicate Polio and organize for civil liberty and systemic change. For all the horrors in the world today, we’re still generally taking better care of each other than we did 2000 years ago. We have a long road ahead, obviously, but even in these tumultuous times I am confident love wins. God’s love wins.

Many of us are starting to reject the way we’ve been told we came to exist: as worthless sinners requiring cosmic forgiveness for merely being curious, just like God. Rather, postmodern Christians (and other postmodernists) are wrestling with the idea that we are the very being of God in the flesh, exploring the wonder of God’s endless creativity in this, and every reality.

Are we created as worthless sinners, or from love, in love, to explore the universes? It’s a difference in point of view as stark as that of our earliest creation myths. In the earliest versions, we are created as slaves to the ancient gods. The Jewish adaptation envisions us instead as co-creators in a committed relationship (covenant) with the God of all reality. We are every person, creature, and plant. We are the world, quite literally.

So, you have heard it said Adam and Eve made a huge mistake, and consequently, all humans are paying the price for that one mistake.

Did Adam and Eve make a mistake, or did they make the most of a God-given opportunity? 

Staying in the Garden of Eden forever does not fulfill humanity’s purpose, which is to explore physical reality for God, who pushes us to explore new ideas and consider concepts that make us uncomfortable. Incarnating as human beings (again, Jesus) allows God to become fully human—to live a life full of wonder and surprise, joy and heartbreak, of curiosity quenching, of considering what it means to be good or evil, all while understanding that neither exist. I mean, if you can become human once, why not do it all the time? The implication of Jesus is not that he was God’s only son, but that we are all God’s children. And this time, I am not speaking metaphorically,

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil wasn’t a mistake. It was and continues to be an opportunity for God to experience humanity in all its glorious fragility.

How can that possibly be a sin?

Meditation: Help us recognize and cherish the worth of all human beings as physical emanations of You, our loving God.

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