As Is Instead of As If

As Blair explained last week, during the season of lent we are going to explore the great story of the Judeo-Christian tradition through an organizational device we got from N.T. Wright called “The Five Act Play.” We are doing this because at St. Matthews we consider story itself to be a practice—the practice of finding our small stories within God’s Great Story. But we can’t do this if we don’t know God’s Great Story in a life-giving way. 

Last week we explored Act One, Creation. In it we learned that God created the world good, not perfect; that humans were made in the image of God; and that we were made for a vocation—to care for the earth and to be generative.  This week we are going to explore what has traditionally been called “The Fall.”  The Fall has been understood in lots of ways – most commonly, the introduction of sin and death into the world in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This particular story is perhaps the most well-known in all scripture, but it is an incredibly difficult story to understand. The word “fall” is not in the story. Nor is the word “sin.” In fact some of our Jewish brothers and sisters don’t consider this story to describe the first sin—for them, the first sin does not occur until Cain murders his brother Abel in Genesis 4.  Some have used this story to justify men dominating women, and it was also used in the 15th century to justify two centuries of burning women at the stake in Europe if they were accused of being witches.   

So there is a lot to untangle, a lot to distract, here. How can we find a loving God in this story? I’d like to invite you to take some time to think about how this story been interpreted in ways that prevent you personally experiencing God’s graciousness in it?  What are your questions, your doubts, your struggles with this story?

Thank you for sharing all of this.  Before we move on I want to share a story to help frame the dialogue. Many of you know that my brother Steve Wiens is also a pastor, and for the last several years he has been writing a blog that he calls “The Actual Pastor: Living my life As Is, instead of As If.”  In the introduction to that blog he writes that one day he realized how often he was saying things like “in the ideal world I would ….” Or “in my perfect life I would have ….” Etc. etc.  He realized that every time he said that, he was living in a fantasy world instead of accepting and working with the life and person he actually was.  So he decided to begin to name the complicated realities of life as it is, stop wishing for something ideal or better or different, and instead try to find God’s love and presence and grace in the actual messiness of his actual life.  As we approach the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, we might be tempted to see life in the Garden before the snake came as some sort of perfect paradise we have fallen from and are seeking to reclaim for ourselves.

But when God created the world, God said it was good. God did not say it was perfect.

I think the story in the Garden isn’t so much a story about what we have fallen from as it is a story about life as it actually is.  One commentator I read on the story of the Garden of Eden says that it never happened—but that it happens every day with every one of us.  The story of the Garden shows us what life is actually like, in all is complicated messiness.

That mess includes our problems, and doubts, and fears about the way this very story has been interpreted. I want us to invite you to hold those questions in mind as we move forward.

So what is the Garden trying to say about the way life actually is? First, we have God who puts the man and the woman in a garden, for a purpose – to till it and keep it.  They are there to work; to serve the Garden.  If this is Club Med, they are not vacationers, they are the groundskeepers or the garden staff.  They have a vocation and a mission.  As their children, we continue to share that mission: to care for God’s creation. So that’s the first fact about life as it is: it names our vocation.  But what happens next? The snake shows up.  Whether or not you see the snake as the devil, as tradition calls it, or just as a created being the way the text describes it, either way one thing is clear: the snake tells just enough truth to lie well. The snake tempts the woman by offering her something that seems good in itself – wisdom.  But he does so in a way that sets up antagonism between her and God.  The snake offers the woman what she already has: she is already like God in a way, because she is made in the image of God. She already knows the difference between good and evil, or there would be no fault in her disobeying God’s command.  The snake is really offering her the chance to make decisions in isolation, without reference either to the good of others or the presence of God. 

What if the woman had answered the snake by saying, “I would love to have wisdom.  I wonder why God forbade us to eat this fruit? Let’s wait for God’s evening stroll through the garden and ask God about it.”  What would have happened if she had done that? What if they had involved God in the conversation? What if they had addressed their doubts and fears and anxieties and anger directly to God?

We could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly the fault of Adam and Eve was in the garden. There have been lots of theories about that – from simple disobedience, to a lack of trust, to trying to set themselves in the place of God.  I don’t think that’s as fruitful a line of questioning as it might seem. Whatever their fault, the end result was shame, and hiding, and blame, and distortions in the relationships between humans and between humans and God. And the truth of life as it actually is is that all of us experience shame, and the desire to hide, and fairly or unfairly the desire to blame others for our condition. 

I think this story invites us to do two things. The first is to see our lives and our world as they actually are: to see them as is, instead of as if.  This story invites us to look at ourselves and see how often we make decisions in isolation—focused primarily on our own needs and wants, without involving God or the wider world or our loved ones.  And then, in the gaps in the story, in what doesn’t happen, I think the second thing this story invites us to do is this. It invites us, instead of getting stuck in shame and hiding and blame, to address our reality directly to God.

So now I want to invite you to do something difficult. I want to invite you to look at your life as it is today, and see it as is, not as if.  See it not for the ideal of what you wish it could be, but the reality –in all its complicated messiness; in its beauty and in its pain. Yes, you were made in the image of God. Yes, you were made with a vocation to care for God’s creation and be generative.  And yes, we all also experience shame.  Returning to your doubts and questions and struggles with this story, I invite you to include them in the survey of your life as it actually is. What has caused you to experience shame, and hiding, and blame? 

The next move I want to invite you to make is to imagine yourself not in an isolated bubble that is private and tucked away from the world, but is instead lived in the presence of God. Imagine that God is already there, inside the bubble with you, with love and compassion and truth-telling, as well. Imagine that God already sees and knows you in your life as it is.  What would happen if you were to address your life, exactly as it is, with all your gifts and your mission in life, and also your shame and hiding and blaming others, directly to God? If you are angry, to express your anger toward God? If you cannot understand why the world seems the way it is, ask your questions to God.  If you blame others for wrongs they have done to you, and they may indeed have done terrible things because this too is part of the world as it is, have you ever addressed your pain directly to God?  And if you yourself have participated in things that do not serve life for yourself or others, what if you took the time to look God in the face and admit what actually is true?  Or, you may have denied that you were made in the image of God. You may have believed cultural prejudices that say one kind of person is better than another – that men are better than women, or straight people are better than gay people, or white people are better than people of color, or any of the other outrageous lies that have caused so much violence and pain in our world.  Perhaps you have denied God’s will for creativity and purpose in your life.  What if you could drop all pretenses, all wishes for an ideal, and instead face the reality of who and what you have experienced, in the presence of God? 

This is a difficult act, this Act II. It is uncomfortable, and messy, and strange. It is not the end of the story. But it is an essential part of the story; and unless we can face ourselves and our world and our God as we actually are, we will forever be seeking fruit that does not in fact make one wise, and forever re-enacting the experience of shame, hiding, isolation, and blame that leads to so much suffering for ourselves and others and God.

Let us not seek to return to some impossible and ideal Garden, for we can never go back. Instead, let us move forward, seeking the actual presence of God with us in our actual reality. Let us trust that from there, God can and will continue the act of creating and redeeming us—for in Christ, God is always making everything new.