THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Some say the Garden of Eden the figment of the fertile imaginations of a biblical writer who was trying to convey a religious truth. Others say that it was an actual place inhabited for a time by the first man and first woman. But does it really matter?

Most biblical scholars look upon the first eleven chapters of Genesis more as parables than actual fact. Most fundamentalists look upon Adam and Eve, the Garden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel as real live people and events. It doesn’t really matter. Want to believe they’re parables? Fine. Just live out what they mean to teach. Want to believe the literal fact? Fine. Just don’t believe. Live out that belief.

That’s what is essential to all biblical truth and teaching: that we live it out. Take the Garden of Eden as an example. What does it teach and what does it mean? Parable or fact aside, the story says something very important to you and me. This is what I think it says, at least in part:

The Garden of Eden, as it is portrayed in Genesis, was paradise, heaven on earth. The inhabitants, call them Adam and Eve, had absolutely everything they could possibly want that would make them happy. Everything. It was all there. We don’t know what was all there; but whatever everything was, it was all there.

In the biblical Garden Adam and Eve had absolutely everything they could ever want to make them happy. But guess what? That “everything” didn't make them happy. They wanted something more. And when the biblical writer says that in their search for happiness they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he is telling us that that act of disobedience was the beginning of mankind’s discovery of what brings true happiness.

No, disobedience doesn’t bring happiness. What it brought for Adam and Eve was getting booted out of the Garden, woman bearing children in pain and man having to sweat in order to survive. And, believe it or not, that was the best thing that ever happened to mankind. When God closed the gate to the Garden, man and woman finally found happiness, finally discovered paradise.

For they found each other. They found out that happiness/paradise does not consist in having everything one’s heart desires but in having someone to love and care for. That’s what makes work, even with all the sweat and pain that is sometimes involves, worthwhile. We are doing it for someone we love and who loves us and not because it can or will bring them or us things to possess. That’s what makes the pain of childbirth bearable. It is shared by husband and wife. The physical pain is hers. He shares in it because of his love for her.

Yes. the best thing that ever happened to mankind was that our ancestors lost the Garden. For what they found, and what we must find, is that paradise, heaven on earth, consists in loving another and being loved in return. Things, possessions, just won’t do it. They can't. To cry because a loved one is in pain is understandable. To cry over possessions lost or cry because we can’t have something we want is tragic.

The Story of the Garden of Eden – real or parable, your choice – is a good reminder that real happiness is found in people not possessions. God help us if our possessions ever become more important than another person, any person.