Thomas J Parlette
“The One About the Apple”
Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7
2/26/23
Dear Adam,
Eve here.
Well here it is, Lent, again. Folks are going to read a story about us from the Book of Genesis. You know the one – the one about the apple. That story, like some of other ones about us, really get under my skin. Most of them make you and all the other guys at your end of the gene pool look pretty good. But not so much for the women. And let’s not even get started with what it’s done to the reputation of snakes all over the world. But I have a hard time empathizing with snakes – so I’ll let that go.
I know it’s been awhile, and we kind of drifted apart after God kicked us out of the Garden and we had all that trouble with the boys. But I wanted to write to you to set the record straight. I know I haven’t written in ages. But life has worn me pretty thin. Still, I’ve had a couple of nice jobs along the way. Maybe you’ve seen me around – Mother Earth, Lady Wisdom, Dame Fortune. Maybe you saw me in that series of commercials for margarine back in the 1970’s – “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” That was fun.
Well, enough about me. Let’s get down to it. There are a lot of things about that apple story that I think people overlook or misinterpret.
First of all, let’s start with why you, and then I, were put in the Garden in the first place. It’s right there in verse 15, the very beginning of the story people read on this Sunday. We were put there “to till and keep” the garden. In that other creation story, the one about the six days of creation and on the seventh, God rested, it says that God gave us “dominion” over creation, that we were to bring it under control and that we were in charge. Since that story comes first in the Bible, that’s the one people tend to remember. And they come away thinking, “The earth is here for us to use as we see fit. Creation serves us.” But in our story, we are put in creation “to till it and keep it.” Our story makes it clear that we are here to serve and care for the world. Our first job is to care for God’s creation. I think people forget that sometimes.
Next, most people forget, that my conversation with the snake is actually the first theological conversation recorded in the Bible.(1) The snake asked me, “Did God say, “you shall not eat from any tree in the Garden?” I told the snake “No – we are allowed to eat from the trees, just not the one in the middle of the Garden.”
Then, I became the first biblical interpreter when I added, “God said you shall not eat of it, or even touch it, or you shall die.”(2) That touching part was all me. I mean, when you think about it, how are you going eat from the tree unless you touch the fruit. It would be too hard to jump and take a bite, and I don’t ever remember any fruit falling on the ground, so you’d have to touch it. Pretty smart, huh. That’s biblical interpretation right there. But nobody remembers that about this story.
So let’s get to the big one – the point everybody remembers and talks about even today. Original Sin.
I’m really kind of fed up with taking all the blame for what happened in the Garden. First of all, I wasn’t alone. I think people have a picture in their head about this story and they see only the snake talking to me. As if I’m there all by myself. But if you remember Adam, you were there with me. You didn’t say anything – but you were there. In case you forgot, it says so right there in verse 6, “…she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” And yet somehow, I take all the blame. The way the story gets spun, I end up taking the fall – or causing The Fall, I should say. I’m the Temptress, the Weaker Sex who gives in to temptation, bested by the snake, the Little Woman. All those images I think find their way back to this story about the apple.
Let’s take a closer look at what the snake was doing in that conversation with us – yes, as I said, you were there, you heard the same things I did, you just didn’t say anything.
What that snake did was to cause us to question God. He made us suspicious of God’s intentions. He made us wonder “Why weren’t we allowed to know the difference between Good and Evil?” Why would God do that? And then that wriggly serpent planted an idea in our head that we could be “like God.”
I admit, that’s what got me. To be like God. Who wouldn’t want that. It occurred to me that the snake might have a point. After all:
1. The fruit was good for food.
2. It was nice to look at.
3. And it offered wisdom, the knowledge of Good and Evil.
I remember shooting you a look at this point, a look that meant “What do you think?” But you just shrugged and didn’t say anything. So I handed you a piece of fruit and we ate. And that how I came to be responsible for sin coming into the world, as some people think. Like I said, I got all the blame.
One more thing I’d like to clear up. People often ask me about why we didn’t die. God said quite explicitly, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” But then we ate the fruit and we didn’t die. What happened.
Well, true. God did say that and we didn’t die. True.
But not entirely true. Some things in us did die after we ate that apple.
1. Our innocence died. We ate that apple and realized we were naked. We realized we were different. We were no longer two care-free beings living in the garden, taking care of the plants and happily enjoying our time in God’s presence.
2. Our child-like trust in God also died. We depended on God for everything and we didn’t even realize it – till after we ate that apple. We never used to worry about a thing. Everything was provided for us. Suddenly we were more suspicious, less trusting, we asked more questions, considered more possibilities, both and bad and started to worry about the future for the first time ever.
3. And then our humility died. We no longer thought of God as something beyond us. We thought we could put ourselves on equal footing with God. If we had the knowledge of good and evil, we would be like God – that’s what the snake told us. And we – that’s right we – fell for it hook, line and sinker.
So, we didn’t die physically, but some of our attributes and ways of approaching life did die. And suddenly we were farther from God than we had ever been. And God sent us out of the Garden.
I’m sure you remember the hard times that came after that – I sure do. The hard work to get the land to yield any food at all. And of course the pain of childbirth – I don’t even want to talk about that. But the biggest heartbreak of all was what became of our boys, Cain and Abel. You just don’t recover from one son killing the other.
I wonder if two daughters would have been different?
We’ll never know.
These days, I take some solace in the fact that the same God that sent us out of the Garden, sent his own Son, Jesus, to provide a way back in to God’s good graces. I was amazed that Jesus faced temptations even greater than ours – but he was able to resist.
I don’t know if you’ve read any of the writings of the one they call Paul, but he wrote to a Christian church in Rome and he nicely reframed our story about the apple. He said:
“Sin came into the world through one man, and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race because everyone has sinned… So then, as the one sin condemned all humankind, in the same way the one righteous act sets all humankind free and gives them life. And just as all people were made sinners as a result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way they will all be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.”
Don’t know if you caught that Adam – but Paul didn’t mention me once, only you. Just saying. Oh, and he mentions you by name three times. Uh Huh.
Well , thank you for letting me straighten some things out about our infamous apple story. I do wish you well. And I’ll try not to let too much time go by before I write again.
Peace be with you, Eve.
1. David G. Garber Jr., Connections, Westminster John Knox Press, 2019, p 25.
2. Ibid… p 25.
