GENESIS 4:11-12 - Curses: How Fair?

“'Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.'”

FYI: I'm writing this post months following my original analysis of the verses which it's linked to (prompted by questions arising from reading about Cain's curse in Genesis 4:11-12).

Curses: How Fair?

Before addressing the specifics of the curse that God places upon Adam & Eve - which have been subsequently passed onto us - a more basic question I needed answered was the fairness of a hereditary curse in the first place. I can easily grasp the logic of punishing Adam for his sins, but how is it fair to disadvantage me (via a meddled-with-hand-me-down body and mind which has been perverted over the ages) for that?

So I decided to play a little make believe: imagine we had the benefit of being born with un-cursed flawless minds and bodies as God intended. We're now all equally free from internal flaws. But wait, those born in say, war-torn Africa, are still at a disadvantage from external influences. Fair enough, we'll transport our equally perfect bodies to equally perfect environments. We now have what is effectively Eden - and isn't that what we've been getting at all along? Let's continue and say that for every man, an identical but separate Eden is created, so alongside Adam on Earth A, God creates Mike on Earth B. On Earth A, well, we know how that turns out, but on Earth B, Mike's wife manages to resist Satan's temptations, warns Mike, and as a result they live happily ever after. An outside observer could still argue that Mike had it easier than Adam by virtue of his wife making the better decision and thus not "weighing the odds against his own free choice". Very well, we'll remove the last potentially "unfair" variable available: other people.

Success! At last, a universe in which we, oh wait, I mean you, can live and make your own decisions, removed from the dangers of other "unpredictable" people who might tilt the scales against you; it's the truly fair universe you've always wanted: sterile, surgically-controlled, and completely alone.

Admittedly, none of this haphazard reasoning got me any closer to an answer of my original question, but more importantly helped me bridge the gap between the seemingly contradictory ideas of a hereditary curse and God's absolute fairness.

C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity: Morality and Psychoanalysis

The bad […] material is not a sin but a disease. […] And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. […] When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty […] he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

[…] It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us : all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.

C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain (p. 65)

It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. If the miracles ceased, then sooner or later we might have reached our present lamentable situation: if they did not, then a world, thus continually underpropped by Divine interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice, and in which choice itself would soon cease

Partiality, in the sense that objectors commonly use the word, is impossible in the sphere of grace. It can exist only in the sphere of justice, where the persons concerned have certain claims and rights. -Loraine Boettner

If by “fair” we insist on meaning that God be absolutely equitable in how He relates to, or gifts, every individual, then we end up with what may amount to an impossible criteria for even an omnipotent God. No two individuals - not even clones - could ever be given the exact same gifts and circumstances in life.
-Is God Biased?

(back to Genesis 4)

GENESIS 4:7 - The Need to Master Sin

“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

The Need to Master Sin

All too often I find myself subconsciously treating sin like it's simply an inevitable byproduct of being a fallen creature rather than a conspiring entity "crouching at the door" that I must constantly battle.

This trickles downwards and manifests itself in the idea that so long as I'm sincere in my remorseful request for forgiveness, then the matter is resolved and I can move onto more active and important Christian duties - that God probably cares more about anyways - like Bible study, prayer, apologetics etc. On the contrary however, this verse is unmistakably clear when it comes to what God wants us to do: master it!

Short-Sightedness

It's easy to see the affects of murder but much harder to wrap our temporal minds around the harm of say, an impure thought, unless we consider it in the larger scope of its slippery degenerative effects, as the thought-provoking article What Sin Is & What Sin Does states: "Each sin makes the next one a bit easier. Over time, the conduct will become entirely acceptable, and we will sin without a qualm. Sin is addictive like a drug. As the addiction becomes stronger, the ideal depreciates until it is completely gone." After reading this I realized the sad truth of this statement as I reflected on the profound difference between how seriously I used to treat some sins which I can now barely blink an eye over.

A Losing Battle

We're told to battle against sin, but are then told that it's a battle we're bound to lose, now and for the rest of our lives. Is it any wonder we end up with blasé attitudes towards prevention and instead concentrate instead on forgiveness? C.S. Lewis offers great insight and encouragement on this matter in Mere Christianity (using the example of chastity):

"[...] many people are deterred from seriously attempting Christian chastity because they think (before trying) that it is impossible. But when a thing has to be attempted, one must never think about possibility or impossibility. Faced with an optional question in an examination paper, one considers whether one can do it or not: faced with a compulsory question. one must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. Not only in examinations but in war, in mountain climbing, in learning to skate, or swim, or ride a bicycle, even in fastening a stiff collar with cold fingers, people quite often do what seemed impossible before they did it. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

(back to Genesis 4)

GENESIS 3:21,23-24 - God's Hidden Compassions

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

[...] therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

God's Hidden Compassions

When we talk about the fall, the focus is usually on how we're screw-ups, we're full of sin, and how God had to kick us out and make sure we stayed out. Pretty depressing stuff that we think makes God look like nothing but a judge, a righteous one perhaps, but also cold.

Despite Genesis being written in a pretty brief only-what-you-need-to-know style, there's a surprising amount of compassion scattered throughout these chapters.

Verse 7 states that Adam & Eve had sewn themselves coverings after their fall, and yet in verse 21 God goes ahead and clothes them in additional garments of skin. And while on the surface, verse 7 might seem to take away from God's act of mercy, I find it actually enhances it: this was not a simple case of God providing bare necessities that Adam & Eve wouldn't have been able to obtain otherwise (unlike say, providing manna to the Israelites in the desert who would have otherwise starved). It would be like a homeowner who discovers a tenant of his has been stealing from him and must be evicted, in the dead of winter. In one case, the tenant doesn't own a jacket and so the owner provides him with a ratty old one that certainly isn't the warmest thing but will suffice to keep him alive. In the other case, the tenant already owns that ratty jacket, he'll be fine, and yet the owner, in his compassion, runs after the man and offers him his own warm winter jacket. Maybe I'm reading into verse 21 too much but that's how I see it.

And as for the implicit compassion contained within verses 23-24:

"He might justly have chased him out of the world (Job 18:18), but he only chased him out of the garden. He might justly have cast him down to hell, as he did the angels that sinned when he shut them out from the heavenly paradise, 2 Pt. 2:4 ("For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment..."). But man was only sent to till the ground out of which he was taken. He was sent to a place of toil, not to a place of torment. He was sent to the ground, not to the grave, to the workhouse, not to the dungeon, not to the prison-house,- to hold the plough, not to drag the chain. His tilling the ground would be recompensed by his eating of its fruits; and his converse with the earth whence he was taken was improvable to good purposes, to keep him humble, and to remind him of his latter end. Observe, then, that though our first parents were excluded from the privileges of their state of innocency, yet they were not abandoned to despair, God's thoughts of love designing them for a second state of probation upon new terms.

[...] The command of that covenant being broken, the curse of it is in full force; it leaves no room for repentance, but we are all undone if we be judged by that covenant. God revealed this to Adam, not to drive him to despair, but to oblige and quicken him to look for life and happiness in the promised seed."

(Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary)

The cursed world in which we were "abandoned" to is in many ways a blessing in itself (something Pastor Dan mentioned to me in conversation) as it makes us realize that something is not right, things are not the way they should be...

"The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. [...] God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." (C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity)

EDIT (2008/10/28)

While I still like this interpretation, I should point out my later entry on Genesis 4:3-6 (Why Did God Reject Cain's Offering?) which interprets these events with a much more negative slant. Not sure if these interpretations can co-exist or not...

(back to Genesis 3)

C.S. Lewis on Pride = There Will Be Blood

I am a huge fan of C.S. Lewis; reading Mere Christianity was one of the turning points of my spiritual life and of all the chapters in that book, the most revelatory one to me was his chapter on "the great sin":

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves [...] the vice I am talking of is Pride".

I am also a huge fan of film, and while I keep separate blogs for my film-related thoughts and my Bible/Christian ones, this is one of those occasions where I feel justified in putting a film recommendation here. Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is the greatest illustration of pride that I have ever seen committed to celluloid. It also happens to be one of the best films I have seen in a very long time and one that has stuck with me even weeks after seeing it - twice! (update: three times)

So despite film recommendations from cinephiles being a dime-a-dozen I'll still go ahead and say that I think this is a must see for any Christian and particularly those who think that the movies have nothing to offer but immoral entertainment. There Will Be Blood is likely one of the most powerful, intelligent and spiritually reflective films I have ever seen in my life. Go and watch it! And even if you've already seen it and didn't feel like you quite "got it", sit yourself down, read Lewis' chapter on pride, then go and watch it again!

(and if you're looking for someone to watch it with, I'm sure I'd be up for another viewing, and another, and another...)

GENESIS 3:7 - Why the Sudden Shame?

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Why the Sudden Shame?

I had always found the logic of this series of events rather curious. A few verses back it's made clear to us that Adam & Eve are not ashamed to be naked: Genesis 2:25 - "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed". I can understand how eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a sin and caused the fall of man, but I don't see the direct relation between that and why nakedness suddenly becomes a bad thing or something to be ashamed of.

"Looking at self is a fruit of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. [...] When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, they began to be self-conscious. They started looking at themselves. They knew they were naked. Until then, they weren't even aware of that. In fact, they were clothed with a kind of spiritual glory before they fell, and they lived in the presence of Almighty God without shame. After eating of the forbidden Tree, they lost that glory and began to be selfish and desire to escape from the presence of Almighty God." (Christian Faith - Tree of Life)

That makes a lot of sense. The nakedness wasn't so much the sin than the means through which Adam & Eve's self-consciousness manifested itself. It's funny how - besides the obvious disobedience of God's direct order - Adam & Eve's first sin was something we don't even see as a sin these days: self-awareness! But this article lays it out fairly well I think. Before they eat of the fruit, they were too busy being in constant fellowship with God to even think about themselves for a split-second. The second we start looking at ourselves we introduce the possibility for sinning whether it be through worry and dissatisfaction, or worse yet, pride.

"A really humble man will not be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. [...] he will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." (Mere Christianity - The Great Sin)

(back to Genesis 3)

GENESIS 2:9 - Forgotten Tree of Life, Pride

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Forgotten Tree of Life

Wow. I can't believe that despite having grown up in the church and knowing all the basic Bible stories front-to-back - or so I thought - I had totally forgotten that the tree of life even existed! I suppose this isn't much of a surprise considering how the entire fall deals mostly with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Or so it seems...

Significant?: The tree of life really only gets two mentions, both of which are tangential to the "story" of Eden and the fall, but of course the Bible is so much more than a narrative and from that perspective it becomes clear how important the tree is even from these two sparse mentions: 1) It's the only other thing given special mention in this verse alongside the soon-to-be-infamous "sin" tree, which must mean something. 2) Later on in Genesis 3:24 when God bars Adam & Eve from Eden, it doesn't say he's doing it to protect the nice plants, furry animals, or flowing rivers within, but specifically "...to guard the way to the tree of life."

Guard the tree of life? There's no mention of them ever having any interest in it in the first place. Ah, and therein lies the rub... (following quotes are all from this brilliant must-read article from Christian Faith)

If he had eaten of the Tree of Life, he would never have been interested in the forbidden tree. But having NEGLECTED the tree of life, it was really only a matter of time before he would fall to the temptation of eating the forbidden fruit.

A lot of times we get into trouble because we focus on the forbidden thing. We fight with temptation, and lose, because we focus on the temptation. God wants us to get our eyes off the temptation, and even off the moral rules of what would be right and wrong, so we can get our eyes onto what He is wanting us to focus on. We inevitably move towards our most dominant thought.

Sin in some form will always look attractive to us unless we get a new focus.

Reading this was like a splash of cold water. In forgetting about the tree of life I had put myself in the same precarious position that Adam & Eve placed themselves in. All this time I should have been focusing on God's goodness and attempting to emulate Jesus' love. Instead I've been doing what I thought was a righteous thing by constantly pondering questions of morality and how to fix my problems, without realizing that this ironically can only lead me away from my goal and towards the worst of sins:

Pride

Satan loves to get us to look to ourselves. A sure mark of a satanic religion is one that tells you to look inside yourself for the answer. There are many variations on this theme. One is the eastern meditation type thing, where you are told to get in touch with your own godhood. There is another variation, far more subtle, and far more likely to appeal to Christians. That is, to measure yourself up against certain moral or spiritual principles, and consider how well or badly you are doing, and resolving to improve. Multitudes of sincere people are doing this, and fail to realise that in this way they will never become what God wants them to be.

Looking at self is a fruit of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Just knowing good and evil doesn't give you the power to do what is right, however. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, they began to be self-conscious. They started looking at themselves. They knew they were naked. Until then, they weren't even aware of that. In fact, they were clothed with a kind of spiritual glory before they fell, and they lived in the presence of Almighty God without shame. After eating of the forbidden Tree, they lost that glory and began to be selfish and desire to escape from the presence of Almighty God.

If you look at yourself, judging yourself by your knowledge of good and evil, you will either end up congratulating yourself for your good performance (self-righteousness) or becoming depressed because of the guilt of failing to live up to those standards. Neither of these results is what God wants. God made us for Him, and He is not satisfied when we prefer to ignore Him and become wrapped up in our own righteousness or lack thereof. He wants us to enjoy Him, to trust Him, and that only happens when we dare to take our eyes off ourself, trust the power of His cross, and begin to get our eyes on Him.

It just goes to show you how conventional wisdom doesn't count for much when it comes to spiritual matters. In attempting to tackle my problems head-on I was only weakening my chances and allowing for pride to make its way in. "The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." (Mere Christianity)

Who would have thought that in trying to simply investigate what the forgotten tree of life was all about that I would realize something so fundamentally significant that needs fixing in my life and I'm sure most people's lives. More important than focusing on how to fix sin - be it anger, immorality, pride etc. is to pursue the only one who can help us thoroughly defeat them, and that is Jesus Christ.

(back to Genesis 2)