Frail and Faithful The Character of Humanity in Gen 3—11 “What sort of thing am I?” Every creature of character eventually asks this question. The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” “I think, therefore I am,” proclaimed French philosopher, Rene Descartes, after long and skeptical musings. When Jean Valjean asks it dramatically at a turning point in is life in Les Miserables, he answers, “Who am I?...My soul belongs to God, I know / I made that bargain long ago / He gave / me hope, when hope was gone / He gave me strength to journey on! / Who am I? / Who am I? /I am Jean Valjean!” While living out the last days of his prison stay under the Nazis, the German churchman Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem called “Who Am I?” In it, he reflects on the high regard others have for him, compared with his own feelings of inadequacy and failure. He closes with the one thing of which he is sure: Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!” What is it to be human? What is it to be you? Genesis 3 through 11 introduce us to both the frail and the faithful in us. Let’s read on! Part One – Freedom and “The Fall” How free are you? Do your choices feel like they are really yours to make, or are they determined by other agents or forces? What does God have to do with your free choosing? What does true freedom feel like? In Genesis 3, we get our first window into human freedom. Theologians and philosophers across the ages have given widely different answers. o Hard Determinists. Some, see us as programmed/predestined persons whose every act has been scripted by our genetics and socialization/God’s will. Those who hear the Bible saying we are predestined make their way to passages like John 15.16 and Romans 8.29. ©Allen Hilton 1 Fran Park Center o Completely Free Will. On the other end of the spectrum are people who believe that every decision we make hinges solely on each individual’s free decision-making process. Christians who hear the Bible saying they are utterly free to choose gravitate to passages like John 7.17 and 1 Corinthians 10.13. o Soft Determinists. Finally, there are many, many people who see human acts as partly determined by genetics and socialization/God’s and partly by a freely-choosing self. The fact that both hard determinists and free will people can appeal to a long string of Bible passages – even sometimes within the same book (e.g. John 15.16 and 7.17 above) – tells them that this is a constructive (or not so constructive) tension in humanity. Let’s look at Genesis 3 and see whether it helps us with this issue. A Fruit Tree and Human Freedom For the first time, in Genesis 3, we encounter humans choosing actions that go against God’s commands. In chapters 1 and 2, the divine voice and human actions seem consonant, so that when God says people should have dominion, name the animals, tend the garden, etc., we take it for granted that Adam and Eve will do so. It is not until chapter 3 that we recognize humanity’s prerogative to disobey God. “Eat from any tree except this one,” God says, and suddenly humans have a chance to do wrong by God. Like a child who’s been told, “Don’t touch!” Adam and Eve become curious and a serpent ushers them toward dalliance. The result is an all-new static on the line between God and humans. Communication had always flowed freely between God and the humans before this. Now, though, Adam and Eve hide from God, then blame each other and the serpent, then face the consequences of defying God’s way. Result: they have to relocate East of Eden. Are Adam and Eve free? o A hard determinist looking at this passage would see inevitability and predestination. “Serpent tempts, humans fall. That’s the way God set it up. All according to script!” o A free will believer would insist that Eve and Adam actually ponder their options and freely elect to eat – volunteer to defy God’s command. o Soft determinists would picture a more complex and nuanced set of causes – part human nature and part free choice. Which do you see? Also, can you see yourself in this picture? The Apostle Paul sure could. He reflects on his life before Christ in Romans 7, which becomes a poignant commentary on this scene from Eden. “I ©Allen Hilton 2 Fran Park Center was once alive apart from the law,” he says. “But when the law came in, Sin sprang to life, and I died.” Consider these equations; “Law = God’s Tree Command, and “Sin = Serpent.” Do we humans naturally recoil against limitation? Think of times when you’ve experienced conflict with God. Does your inner life ever feel this way? What “ushers” you into conflict with God? What consequences have you faced? Misappropriated fruit, nakedness, fig leaves, a family’s exit from Eden’s paradise – these seem a bit quaint in the story. But you and I know that our author has a wider scope than this. Nothing less than human history is in play. “The Fall of Humanity” is the common title for this section of Genesis, and, in a way, this part of Genesis puts human freedom on trial. In his chapter called “Rebellion” in The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky raises the question whether human freedom comes with too high a price tag. A disappointed character called Ivan chronicles all the inhumanity of adults toward children: abominable forms of abuse and torture against innocent kids. Ivan suffers the weight of human suffering, and especially the suffering free adults inflict on them. “It’s too high a price!” he fumes to his brother, the monk Alyosha. “And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket." ©Allen Hilton 3 Fran Park Center Dostoevski famously built his characters around his own inner musings, so Ivan and Alyosha speak for the two opposed voices in the author’s internal dialogue. Both characters believe in human free will. Ivan sees the cost as too high. Alyosha ultimately trusts God with the whole messy, intricate web of human relations. Caligula, Atilla the Hun, Adolf Hitler, the many genocidal leaders of history, the 9/11/01 attackers, the gunmen of Newtown and Parkland and Charlston, and all the others who dot history with the blood of their victims – all of these people were free to destroy. On the other hand, St. Francis, Mother Teresa, Claude Monet, and the kind person down your block were all built with the capacity and freedom to create and build people up. According to Genesis 3, human freedom was God’s idea. So what do you think? Is it a good idea? What does it cost humanity? What does it cost God? A Word from Brother Clive Blessedly, C.S. Lewis brings his prodigious imagination to the project of understanding temptation and fall. In his brilliant book, Screwtape Letters, he has a Senior Tempter called Screwtape writes a series of strategic missives to his Underworld protégé, the Junior Tempter called Wormwood. In Letter 8, Screwtape takes on the complex nature of humanity and the opportunities it presents to a young devil. My dear Wormwood, So you 'have great hopes that the patient's religious phase is dying away', have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Subgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one every told you about the law of Undulation? Humans are amphibians-- half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and ©Allen Hilton 4 Fran Park Center imaginations are in continual change, for as to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation-- the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life-- his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it. To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.