Dialogue on Genesis 2 and 3

Genesis 2 recounts that by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing.  He had not yet created the first man, Adam.  God rested from all the work.  In retrospect, God should have taken an extended vacation before creating Adam!  In looking back at all of man’s actions over thousands of years, to include numerous atrocities, I simply have to ask the question, “What was God thinking when he created man and woman?”  God apparently had a plan and a vision for what man and woman would be.  That plan appears to have gone awry quickly.  God placed the first man, Adam in the Garden of Eden and assigned him to take care of the Garden.  Man was the first caretaker.  Man was given a restriction to not eat from the tree of knowledge but otherwise was free to do as he chose.  After creating a number of animals which he allowed Adam to name, God felt that Adam was still alone.  So he made a helper, Eve.  Genesis describes Eve as someone suitable for Adam.

God created woman to be the companion of man.  This was God’s plan.  Sometime after that some men and women created another option.  They decided that another man could be the sexual companion of a man.  Or another woman could be the sexual companion of another woman.  There is no coverage in Genesis that these same sex relationships are what God wanted.  People from the very beginning have done what they want to do.  Man has often made decisions without asking whether his Creator was okay with the decision.  The decision to have same sex relationships was one of the first decisions of man/woman that ran contrary to God’s original vision.  Did God intend for us to have the right to modify his plans for us?  It is not a matter of are same sex relationships correct?  It is the issue of do we have the right to modify what God intended for us?  Many of us think we have that right.

Genesis 2 and 3 do not initially address whether Adam and Eve were married in the sense of the word we have come to acknowledge.  It also does not address if Adam and Eve were initially sexually active for pleasure or procreation before the fall from Grace.   Only after the fall from grace and the commission of the first sin does Genesis 4 address Adam and Eve being sexually active to the point where Eve becomes pregnant.  Genesis does not address what Adam and Eve must have thought when they observed Eve’s physical appearance changing after she became pregnant.  Did God tell them what was happening?  How did they know what to do during the actual child birth?

No passage of time is illustrated in Genesis 2 or 3.  One can’t tell if the violation of God’s rule against eating from the tree of life was done shortly after Eve was created or years after Eve was created.  Regardless one can come to the conclusion that Adam and Eve were flawed creations.  The events that would follow would only lend support to such a conclusion.  Man didn’t stand a chance for long term survival.  We would never collectively be what God wanted us to be.  We would march off into any direction we chose, not what God intended for us.

God’s concept of man was well intended of course.  Seeing how the plan quickly went awry only leads the reader to ask again, “What was God thinking when he created mankind?”