Day 10: Insufficient Fig Leaves

Genesis 3:9-10

“But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’”

We are currently 8 months into our third round of parenting a 3-year-old. I know everyone likes to talk about the “Terrible 2s,” but really it’s the “Three-nager” stage that I think is the hardest (of the ones we’ve experienced so far). Don’t get me wrong – Micah is sweet and adorable and way too smart for his own good. I’d absolutely do anything for him. But there’s something about life with a 3-year-old that brings to life the story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from that tree. Is it a coincidence that it happens in Genesis 3? I’ll let you decide, but let’s just say that the fact that everything is flowing along wonderfully for those first two chapters and then wham! everything gets turned upside down – it’s relatable. 

Micah’s favorite expression right now is “UGH!” but I swear he makes it at least two syllables long. Sometimes three. He knows everything about everything, which makes us always wrong, and he can go from zero to tantrum in the blink of an eye. If we say no to candy, it jumps immediately to, “Ugh! You never let me eat anything!” (I swear we feed him.) Did Mom really say you aren’t allowed to eat anything anymore forever? Of course not, but he is definitely receiving it that way. And I think that Adam and Eve were sort of like 3-year-olds at this point in the garden – though I have no idea how human development works when you’re formed from dust instead of being born.

The real temptation in the garden wasn’t really about eating the wrong thing. It was about questioning the trustworthiness of God. 

That insidious question: “Did God really say…?” No, actually he didn’t. They knew that and they said so. Yet the question was enough to plant that little seed of doubt disguised as curiosity. What if God is holding out on us? What if he doesn’t really want my best? What if he doesn’t truly love me? Once they were unsure and unsettled, it was surprisingly easy to accept the lie, even after they had experienced such intimacy with God.

We are never immune from those questions, and they are at the root of all our fears because they are at the root of original sin itself. All the nagging “what if” questions that keep us awake at night – What if I get sick? What if someone important to me dies? What if I lose my job? – they are all different versions of our deepest question: What if I can’t trust God after all?

After that fateful moment in the garden, it doesn’t take long for fear to enter the story. God pursues them despite the recent damage to their relationship and they hide. They hide like a 3-year-old who doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s been doing. The man explains that he was afraid because he was naked. 

I’m convinced that his fear in that moment has nothing to do with nudity and modesty. Let’s remember that God formed each and every part of his body out of dirt then intimately breathed his very breath into his lungs. There was no mystery there. No, the nakedness they felt was about being vulnerable. Exposed. When they started questioning whether or not God could be trusted – if he even loved them – they lost their sense of security. There will never be enough fig leaves to take away this kind of nakedness. They were vulnerable to the onslaught of “what ifs” and left without any good answer for them. Ironically, it seemed that questioning whether or not God really loved them would turn out to be the reason for him to stop. 

But God never stopped loving them. He pursued them. He didn’t erase the consequences of their choices, but he never stopped pursuing them. The whole overarching narrative of the Bible is about God pursuing a loving relationship with his people no matter how many times they rejected him. He pursued us all the way to the cross and he pursues us still. All to answer those nagging questions at the root of all our problems. 

Is God trustworthy? Yes.
Does God really want what’s best for me? Yes.
Does God actually love me? Yes! 

All our attempts to hide our nakedness and vulnerability only push the questions deeper. We can actually deceive ourselves into believing that we’ve succeeded. I’ve hidden how I really am, that’s why God loves me. If he really saw what I was like, he wouldn’t love me. 

The bad news is that we’ll struggle with these questions in some form throughout our lives. Just when we think we’ve worked through it, when we’re at our most intimate with God, that’s when they’ll resurface in a new form. Our enemy has not lost any of his skills. 

The Good News is that God is tireless in his pursuit of us and he won’t give up until one day, the questions are finally put to rest forever, when there is a new heaven and a new Earth. When the “old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

Moment of Beauty

Ponder the poem, “Touched by an Angel” by Maya Angelou:

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.