The Magnificent House of Cards

Genesis 2:7-9 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground — trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s quite obvious to thoughtful people that the bodies of all creatures, both plants and animals, are composed of soil. Plants grow out of the soil, and animals grow by consuming plants, or by consuming one another. When plants and animals die they immediately begin to disintegrate and return to the soil; no great mystery here. The mystery is not, what we are made of, but how we are alive.

Life animates plants and animals, including human beings, and that life comes from somewhere. Some have believed it comes from the earth, in which case the earth may be thought of as our mother. Others have surmised that it comes from the sun. Consider how things spring to life when the sun returns in spring. – The Egyptians thought this way and identified the sun with Ra, their supreme god. – But for this Hebrew writer life comes from the LORD (Yahweh). He identifies this life with air, or more precisely with wind or breath, the movement of air. In chapter one we are told that the “ruach” or “wind” of God was moving over the waters. And now the “neshamah”, which is a little puff of wind, a breath or breeze, comes into this body of dust and brings life. It comes again and again, moment by moment. And, when a body dies, this little breeze or breath returns to God.

It is not said in this passage that the man received a soul of any kind, and certainly not an immortal soul. But rather, when life from God animated the dust of the ground, the man became a soul, or living being, a self.

The Hebrew word for man in this passage is “adam” from “adamah” which is the Hebrew word for soil, so there is a great complementarity here. The man is made to till the soil; from the ground, for the ground. Ecology may seem like a new idea to us but it is really the recovery of an old idea that is obvious to all pretechnical cultures. Things fit together and prosper by taking their part in a system that is far greater than they are. This dynamic harmony is the basic idea in the Hebrew word “shalom”, a word we inadequately translate as “peace”.

So we see that all living things, and particularly Adam (mankind) – who, at this point, quite literally contains woman – are dependent for life, moment by moment, on God, and that everything is interdependent with everything else. This means, of course, that all creation, and especially life, is relational and dynamic. It’s all about flow and movement together, community.

Now, this is all well and good, but let’s be frank, it’s a house of cards; every relational system is a house of cards. And, with human beings at the centre of it, this system is particularly vulnerable. So the question must inevitably arise, Does God know what he’s doing here? Well, not surprisingly, I think he does, and I think the story indicates that he does.

In the middle of the garden, we are told, were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Note, it isn’t knowledge. The man will be given lots of knowledge. It’s the knowledge of good and evil. This word “evil” (rah) is a very broad negative word applicable to almost anything that’s really bad in the sense of being disruptive; adversity, calamity, distress. This, of course, is the introduction of the concept of sin, which is much more than just the naughty things we do. It’s those things we do that destroy relationships, disrupt the flow of blessing, and make it hard for us to move together. It’s that grasping, self-centredness that is so at odds with nurture and community and, so, ultimately cuts us off from the tree of life.