My first encounter with Ken Ham was not the great Ark in Kentucky.
No–it goes back twenty years ago, when I was a camp counselor and a representative from Answers in Genesis gave sermons to our little campers in central Colorado.
I have tried to wipe away the memory, as I do with most confrontational moments, but to sum it up–it wasn’t all puppy dogs and dinosaurs.
I was only eighteen and not on my game when it came to apologetics. There were sneaky things that popped up when the speaker engaged the kids, and I remember feeling alarmed but helpless to reason against him. He was an expert, after all, and I was just crowd control.
What I remember the most was the tip to always “answer a question with a question”–my pet peeve when it comes to just about any touchy subject discussion. But other things must’ve imprinted on little minds–probably the “question everything” attitude and rude, know-it-all superiority complex of the speaker.
The campers, at least some, went home and told their parents. There was swift backlash. Apologies were issued on Answers in Genesis letterhead, the situation was swept neatly under the rug, and AIG never again returned to rear its head in that small corner of Colorado.
Maybe I’ve become over-familiar with the story, having hashed it out again and again via assigned Sunday school curriculum. I mean, I’ve told Genesis 1-3 to hundreds of kids, but Sennacherib’s siege on Jerusalem? Or Ezekiel down by the river? The time Israel just about wiped out the Benjamites and then let them steal women to re-generate the clan?
The not-so-ancient history that is so fascinating always gets left out because the spotlight is so hot on Adam and Eve.
This said, I begrudgingly accept the fact that Genesis is the key to unlocking the rest of the Bible. And every January when I begin a read-thru-the-Bible-in-a-year program I look for a new pop or sizzle.
The fact remains: Genesis presents the problem and the solution. The rest of the Bible is just watching it play out.
Before you get to the “he will crush your head and you will strike his heel” eleven-word summation, Eden is a beauty to behold. We conjure up vivid imagery of the two humans in the garden, a paradise full of birds singing, animals peacefully playing, a babbling brook meandering through the canopy of trees in perpetual summer sans mosquitoes. Fruit hangs thick; no mouth will go hungry. Two trees stand taller than the rest.
And the Lord, wrapped in shekinah glory, strolling through it all on his morning walk.
Surely He heard the serpent capture Eve’s attention. Surely He heard Adam tease her as they both ate forbidden fruit. Surely he saw them hastily grab fig leaves and sew them together. Surely he heard them scramble into a hiding place. He wasn’t born yesterday, after all.
“Where are you?” the Owner called.
Adam and Eve exchanged glances. Her eyes widened and she motioned for him to hurry up and say something. They were sort of born yesterday, and neither one was quite familiar with a lie.
Adam hesitantly offers an explanation:
“I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked…so I hid.”
God asked them,
“Who told you you were naked?”
Adam and Eve weren’t really naked before–not in the way we think of naked–embarrassed and shivering. They were likely shiny with shekinah glory like their Creator, and though their human bodies were technically physically naked, otherwise they were as un-naked as possible.
Every need they had was met automatically.
The garden where they worked was already irrigated and the vibrant trees already produced delicious fruit. It was an open buffet, free for the grabbing.
They’d been given the amazing tasks of tilling and planting and multiplying to fill the earth–making babies before pregnancy and labor became a thing with curses attached (a worthy assignment). They had no fear of being cut by rocks or devoured by wild animals, didn’t have to deal with weeds or parasites, blood or bruises.
They didn’t feel the burden of peer pressure or keeping up with the Joneses. They weren’t gratified by self-actualization; they didn’t desire to climb ladders and build prestige. They didn’t overemphasize flesh, didn’t tattoo their skin to symbolize individualism.
They weren’t looking for novel ways to express themselves, no concern for a deeper tan, new car, nicer house.
Envy hadn’t yet entered their world. No nitpicking marital spats. It was harmonious.
And they were naked, but only in the way we can’t be naked today. Naked, unclothed, without clothes on–but their vulnerability wasn’t a physical threat. They weren’t cold or sunburnt. They suffered no overexposure by the elements. They were safer naked than any protection chainmail armor would offer.
But they were easily duped. And the one thing the Owner warned them not to do, they blatantly did. They traded in their freedom, their shekinah, wrapped-in-God’s-glory nakedness and intimate paradise with Him for a half-baked lie that they might be God-like, too. That they might also get to stroll through the garden as the Owner.
They didn’t know how good God had made it, how perfect their paradise. The serpent told her it could get better and they were just curious enough to give into the temptation of finding out.
Humans today are still very adept at believing a pretty lie.
And I wonder if we don’t do the same thing all the time, listen for little tasty whispers instead of talk to the fellow who owns the Garden and the trees full of delectable fruits, the cattle on every hill, the stars in the sky, all universes yet to be discovered.
There are answers in Genesis, but there are also questions. God catches us rushing off to our hidey-holes and asks, “where are you?” when He already knows.
Like the mother of a two year old who’s just been caught swishing their hand in the toilet, He wants an honest answer, not for His benefit, but for our own.
Are you in the bathroom? Don’t you remember what I said about touching the toilet? Did you obey?
He sees us ashamed and groping around for a fig leaf to sew.
The Owner asks gentle questions, “who told you you were naked?”
Have you been lied to? What tree did I tell you not to touch? Did you fall for temporary pleasure when I promised you paradise?
These questions all still apply. Most of us are still worming our way out of answering them because, like our Adam and Eve ancestors, it feels a bit terrifying to stand before God and realize we are quite naked.
Have you ever tried obeying–as in, actually doing what God said to do? Staying away from tempting, but disastrous lifestyles? Avoiding people and behaviors that are temporarily fun but wreak havoc on your faith walk? Have you ever correlated your sin behavior to the consequences you’re now facing in your life, naked, poor, lacking virtue? Who fooled you into thinking fleeting temptation offered a grass-is-greener, more-whole-version of yourself? Why do you keep reaching for fruit that the Owner declared off-limits, if you know He’s already provided you with the best fruit in the garden?
These questions aren’t asked to induce shame, but to reveal how unclothed we are apart from Him. It is a kind question that gets to the heart of the matter–we get to the point where we feel a breeze, look down and realize we are bare. We can either keep running naked in the opposite direction of Him, or we can acknowledge He’s talking to us–we are accountable to Him.
The good news is this: naked and awkward isn’t what God wants for us–He wants us clothed in glory, intimately associated with Him. He wants us back in His garden, feasting at His table.
He doesn’t want us in the dirt, swapping gossip with snakes. And I am convinced of this: if we can avoid the snakes and tempting hissing of the world around us, we can move on to the good stuff in God’s word, all the stories full of intrigue and drama, walking with Him as He reveals glory after glory.
Praise be to the God…who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Eph.1:3
(**that’s a lot of not-nakedness)
