Jim's Sunday Sermon
Written by Jim BrochuPART 1: THE ADAM FAMILY CHAPTER ONE:
GENESIS
AND GOD AS ULTIMATE MOTHER-IN-LAWTo read the story of Adam and Eve closely is to read the tale of God -self-made creator, who, as a parent/landlord evicts his children from paradise because they wanted to know right from wrong -- then stalks his former tenants and opens three businesses on the side.The story of the creation of the earth is confusing enough. According to Genesis, God creates the light and the dark two days before he creates the sun. Okay, so I guess God can make light without any source but then it also says he created the moon to give off its own light at night. Also, on the second day, He's seen hovering over "the waters" which he doesn't create until the day after.
Then according to Genesis 1:26, the very first thing God says after the land has become dry and separated from the waters is, "Let there be grass." It's like God knows what he's got in store for mankind and thought He'd have a couple of joints rolled for Adam when He woke him up.
So after he makes the support system - water, light and pot - God creates Adam out of dust. Then God gathers all the creatures in front of Adam and makes him name them all and pick a mate. Adam, it seems, didn't see anything he liked as a companion in the animal world and so God put him to sleep, took out a rib and made a woman who Adam called "Eve," the sound he made when God took the rib out.
God then says to them, "Leave your father and mother and be joined as husband and wife and become one flesh." (Gen 2:24) Where has God been? Does he not realize he just created the first two people and they don't have a mother and father to leave in the first place?
The overwhelming message of the story of Adam and Eve is the same message that most twentieth-century fundamentalist diehards are giving out today - Stay stupid.
God, the owner of the garden, has leased it to Adam and Eve on one condition - that they stay away from the fruit that will give them knowledge of good an evil. But God has made man inquisitive. God already knows that the thing man lusts for the most is knowledge. It's almost as if God is insecure, saying, if you know too much you'll forget who made you and stop believing in me.
Not to eat of the tree was like the cruel trick a master will play on his dog. Balance the most precious piece of food you can image on the end of your nose but don't eat it. Just look at it. Crave it. Desire it and want it with every fiber of your being but know it's forbidden to you. Eventually, the dog will realize that the master doesn't really love him but is just torturing him. The dog will eat the food and the master will be angry. But will the master seek constant revenge on the dog and every litter it bears until the day it dies?
Adam and Eve want to know the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong for themselves. They had an innate sense of it and thirsted for more knowledge. But God has told them that if they eat of that fruit, they will die. He will kill them. Just as preachers tell their congregation that faith is more important than knowledge.
Adam was never very bold. He had a lot of responsibility in the naming of things, it really tired him out and he really didn't want to take on any other obligations. He wanted to eat of the tree but he was also enjoying life and believed God when God said he would kill him. Along comes the servant and says to Eve, "He isn't going to kill you guys...who else has he got? He wants you to stay stupid because he's a control freak."
The serpent explains to Eve that's it's all been like a hidden camera investigation...a lot like Abscam...God is watching them to see what they'll do but since He's God He already knows what they're going to do and so it's like the cruel trick of the dog with a bone on its snout. Now that the Adams know it was all an experiment, they could eat the fruit and gain the knowledge.
Eve convinces Adam to have a bite and after he doesn't get hit by a lightening bolt, they realize that they ate the fruit and lived. God lied to them right off the bat. He said he would kill them and he didn't.
So they run into God strolling around the garden and God is humming and pretending that He doesn't know what's going on. So, like Mike Wallace jumping out of a hedge to confront his quarry, He finds Adam and Eve and says, "So nu? What have you been up to? You've been avoiding me. You never call, you never write, you never take me for a ride on a Sunday. And you ate the forbidden fruit."
Adam, being the typical man he is, blamed the whole thing on Eve. "She made me do it." Eve, of course, blamed it on the servant. She said "The serpent deceived me." What she wanted to say was, "You deceived me, God. You lied." But she could see He was pissed enough already and didn't want to take any chances. So then she told God she didn't want to see Him because she had nothing to wear.
"Gotcha!" said God. They told God they were ashamed to see him because even though they were just a few days old, they had been eating so much fruit that they were a little puffy. So what does God do?
He kills an animal and creates clothes for them out of the pelts (Gen 3:21). Within the first three chapters of the Bible, God established the fashion industry. Because he fashioned the clothes out of skins, the implication is that God was also the first furrier and advocates the use of mink and sable for every day wear.
Then God really goes ballistic and he curses Adam and the ground he's standing on - not for eating the fruit, but for listening to his wife and doing what she told him (Gen 3:17). Just as he throws them out of the Garden, he points out the Pishon River in the Land of Havilah where there is a lot of Gold and onyx, further implying that God created the world's first Jewelry business as well.
At this point, it was a wholesale business since there were only two customers. Actually, by this time there seemed to be four of them - Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel. Eventually they talk about Cain's wife giving birth but they don't talk about where she came from.
Could it be that she was the daughter of Adam and Eve? Besides Cain and Abel, was there a daughter they just didn't talk about like the retarded Kennedy girl the family was ashamed of and kept out of the public eye?
So God creates Adam and Eve and gives them a Garden to live in. He is not only their landlord, He is also their parents and since they are married he is also their own in-laws. God is father of Adam and Mother-in- law of Eve and perhaps that's where the conflict lies.
Since Adam and Eve basically live with their parents and don't play by the rules, God has thrown them out to live on their own. Wouldn't that be enough? Just to get thrown out of the most beautiful place on the planet?
But no...the mother-in-law side of Him comes out and God keeps harassing them and their children.
There is a second "creation of man" story that runs currently with that of Adam and Eve.
In the second chapter of Genesis, it states that "God created them. He created them men and women," which implies that He used mass-production on the first round and not just two prototypes. It explains where Cain's wife would have come from but opens the door to many other questions.
For one, if God made thousands of people at once, were they all living in the Garden of Eden? If there were a lot of people romping around the Garden and they all got thrown out because two of them broke an agreement, I can see why mankind turned grumpy.
Just because the Adam's family down the tulip patch couldn't play by the association's rules, why did they all have to be expelled? Eden provided for mankind the sight of the first picket line. Hundred marching around carrying signs saying, "God Unfair!" and "We Don't Love the LandLORD!."
Back in the first story of Adam and Eve, it says that God put Adam to sleep so that he could remove the rib, but nowhere does it say that God ever woke him up again. Maybe he's still sleeping and all of us are just a part of Adam's dream.
PART 1: THE ADAM FAMILY
PART 2: CAIN & ABEL
PART 3: NOAH, CAPTAIN OF THE FIRST LOVE BOAT
PART 5: SODOM, SARAH & ISAAC
PART 6: THE ISAAC FAMILY PLOTS
PART 7: JACOB & HIS WILD KIDS
PART 8: I DREAM OF JOSEPH© 1998, 1999 by Jim Brochu. All rights of reproduction are reserved.
This book originated at Bonusround.com.