Has it ever occurred to you that religion has fallen into the trap of repeating the lie of Eden to solve the problem created by Eden’s lie?
For those who may not know the story told in Genesis chapter 3, a cunning talking serpent convinced Eve and Adam that God was withholding something from them. He sowed a seed thought of discontent concerning their current standing with their Creator. “God doesn’t want you to be like him, knowing good and evil,” the tempter reportedly said. Apparently that was all it took to tip Adam and Eve over into the reckless behavior of breaking out of the boundaries of their ideal existence and trying to fix the problem they, until that moment, didn’t know they had.
The duped and disobedient couple took charge of their own destiny, ate fruit they weren’t supposed to eat and set themselves and their descendents on a downward spiral of self-doubt, victimization, blaming others and the gamut of dysfunctions and disorders common to us today. Merely the suggestion that they didn’t measure up in some way was all it took for the Deceiver to ruin the harmony that had existed between the Creator and the created.
Trying to solve the resulting sense of exposure and vulnerability their action had brought to their awareness, the guilty pair tried to hide behind fig leaves they sewed together. To which God, as he was confronting them with their folly, offered a better solution to their nakedness—fur coats he had made (sorry PETA). In other words, God in effect said to them and demonstrated by his action, “Your solutions don’t work. You can’t fix this. Only I can. Whatever resolution of this problem you’ve created and the resulting reconciliation is going to have to come from me.” I can further imagine God saying, “Don’t do anything else. You’ve already caused enough harm with your efforts.”
Now let’s fast forward through time and see what much of religion in its various forms offers us. Again we are told in many different ways that this God of ours is withholding something from us. In fact, as some versions would stress, he stands ready to give us the cold shoulder and the “hot forever” unless we do something. Subtly and not so subtly we are told the ball is in our court and if we’re going to rise to God’s level it depends on us. Make this decision, attend these events, say these prayers, give this money, read this book, act this way, do this and do that. If you don’t, the lie continues, you are really missing it with God. God won’t claim you.
So, if religion is telling us the same lie as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, where does that leave us? It leaves us right where Adam and Eve were totally dependent upon God to fix things. The good news for them and for us is that he did. Now all we have to do is quit looking for some fruit tree of personal effort.
