Eden Revisited #1: Powerful Love vs. Limited Perfection

God is love.  God is good, patient, and forgiving.  So, why does the first biblical interaction between God and people end in His intolerance and rejection?  Actually, it doesn’t.  Without the unbiblical constraints of perfectionism, the Eden stories reveal God’s true nature.

Long before Jesus was born, Persian, Egyptian, and Greek “perfection” ideologies seeped into the Hebrew cultural mindset in the same way they absorbed the neighboring Canaanites’ beliefs.  They did not realize it was happening.  Religious theology distorted God’s love into disrespect, patience into wrath, and forgiveness into condemnation.  Christian Gnosticism injected more stipulations.  Some of these remain imbedded as dogma to this day.

Readers cannot imagine the Eden stories or God without the burden of this altered perspective.  Believers say God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and completely just.  Yet, the “perfection” perspective represents God as ignorant of what was about to happen, incompetent to correct the problem, and over-reactive to the situation He created.

Perfectionism makes sin more powerful than God, since it easily corrupted His perfect universe and forced Him to retreat to heaven.  Perfectionism elevates His purity until He became intolerant of sin and redeems only those few who follow a narrow set of vague rules.  Pitilessly, He sends everyone else to everlasting torment.

Except, those actions make God just like the gods of the Persians, Egyptians and Greeks.  If God is no different from all the others, then He too is a myth.  But, that is not who He is and not what He made.  If God wanted perfectly proper people, then we could not be tempted. 

A natural interpretation of the Eden stories removes the overburden of unbiblical perfectionism.  It proclaims that the Creator is not like all the other gods.  He retains control over events that only seem to disrupt His plan.  He devised the scenario in the garden, which means the opportunity to sin was good for humanity because we now have the choice to not sin.  He set the conditions for free will and laid out just consequences when sin happened.

When you read the Eden stories, remember God’s love, patience, and forgiveness guides His actions.  He is in control.

To be continued:

[Lessons from Creation’s Parables: Genesis and Standard Science, Sung as One, by Jo Helen Cox.]

Also in this series:

Eden Revisited #2: A Safe Place to Grow

Eden Revisited #3: The Garden River

Eden Revisited #4: Humanity’s Origins

Eden Revisited #5: Creation of Death

Eden Revisited #6: Curse? What Curse?

Eden Revisited #7: Original Sin Theology

Eden Revisited #8: The Lesson of Blessing

Also see series:

Genesis Revisited

Eden Revisited