In a previous post, I ended with the assumption that man [no, not the sexual identity but all people1] were created for relationship with God. For at least as long as people have gathered over coffee, the discussion has been engaged that mankind was created for all sorts of reasons. Some imply that God was lacking, needed someone to do something, or that God was lonely, or that God couldn’t stop creating, or that everything prior to people was not significant enough to satisfy Him. Let’s just consider a few of His basic observations: His comment about everything that was created was that it was “good.” Did He need someone to have relationship with? As in the prior post, He already was in relationship with Himself – the trinitarian view of Three-in-One. Even in the earliest chapters of the story He is telling, we find Them2 working together in unison/agreement to create all that is created. Did God need something to worship Them? Indications are that at some point before the account of the creation of People, angels were already created and we find later in the Story that one of the main things they do is praise Them for who They are.
Could it be that They so appreciated Their relationship with each other that they wanted to share a similar experience with creation? We were designed “in the image of” the Ones who created us so is it unlikely that similitude was for some of the sharing that existed between Them? No, we were not created to be identical to Them but rather to have similarities. Each of the traits of God are infinite, limitless – without the limits They have in Their own character yet we are created finite, having a beginning whereas God has no beginning, and yet we like Them have no ending, time limit. We have the ability to know, to feel, to be present, to accomplish – all of which are seen in God without limit yet with God’s own constraints.
I propose that this creating us with the capacity for relationship with Them was so foundational to who we were to become that They placed one limit upon the Terms of Relationship. The only constraint upon us was that we remain in agreement with who They are, that we not divert ourselves away from Them to become independent, self-sufficient, gods in our own eyes.
The early revealing of our journey with God begins with Him being with us, providing for us, giving us responsibilities and opportunities, frequently spending time with us and revealing Himself to us in a slow, progressive unfolding as we gently get to know Him. But, as any older, more mature party would realize, we did not yet have the experience and therefore the wisdom to make all decisions on our own understanding. Hence, the singular restriction, the “not everything yet” clause. Wisdom is not given in the same was as life but is learned, observed, practiced. The element of betrayal of the relationship is not the fruit of a tree but the desire to circumvent getting “the knowledge of goodness and evil” from God. The fruit was not the problem but cutting the LifeGiver out of the process of maturing, setting our own agenda and means of achieving that “knowledge to be like God” that broke the singular term of relationship.
If God spent time with our first generation, walking with them “in the cool of the day”3 and the consequence of not being in agreement with Him but wanting to “know” without His participation in Revealing was hiding from Him, separating themselves from His presence, is knowledge on our terms worth the cost. Sad. We are so myopic. So shortsighted. Willing to give up so much to gain so little. But now you know…
1 Man. Yes there is a gender inherent in the first part but it is not a term of superiority by priority. Yes, beginning in Genesis 1:26 [Bible], “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” ‘man’ is the Hebrew term ‘āḏām which is generic for mankind albeit the form is a masculine noun. No, this is not a gender superiority but simply general reference to people. The term ‘āḏām becomes the first person’s name because it was the most obvious designator. It literally means “son of red earth”. It is used generically of mankind, male and female, in Genesis 1:26-27.
2 I have chosen to bypass God as having gender in this post. While elohim is a masculine form it does not imply sexuality as we think of such. God does not engage in sexual activity and reveals Himself with anthropomorphic terms. The revelation that He sees, touches, feels, moves and yet does not have the same form of temporal body (until the incarnation) should move us away from the distraction of gender arguments. The Scriptures are loaded with figures of speech, metaphors, similitudes and poetic expressions which in no way limit God to the confines of physicality. While God is not gender-constrained He is also not gender-confused. He (without the sexual connotations) is wholly, consistently, eternally true to His nature and not subject to dimorphic constraints.
3 Genesis 3:8 indicates once breaking the relationship centered in God, the very next time God comes among them, they hide from Him. The ‘carrot’ was “to be like God, knowing good and evil” but the cost was knowing the cost only after buying into the means of taking for themselves.
