Friday, July 17, 2009
The Duration of Perfection
A most random and startling observation came across my mind this evening. Scripture does not indicate how long Adam and Eve were together before the fall. It could have been one year, one hundred years, one billion years. We simply don't know. Presumably, since there was no death there also was not aging. Although the earth rotated and revolved, it as though the reality of time had not yet become part of the human experience. Did monotony not fatigue them and dull their senses the way it does ours? Perhaps that is why there have not been more fictional stories written on life before the fall. Still, one could find room to speculate. Was Eve simply looking for some drama when she picked up the fruit? I mean, what do you talk about when the weather is always perfect, there are no neighbors or children and work is not a chore? Did they travel at all or stay within close confines of the garden? What do you do when all your days are spent in blissful perfection?
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3 comments:
Adam lived for 930 years (Gen 5:5). Adam had Seth when he was 130 years old (Gen 5:3). Seth was born after the fall because the Lord spoke about sin with Cain (Gen 4:6). So it appears that Adam and Eve were in the Garden for less than 130 years. However, that is still a long time.
CS Lewis addressed a similar issue in Mere Christianity when he talked about how some people thought heaven would be boring because all people would be doing is "flying on clouds and playing harps". Saying "Holy Holy Holy" before God seems really boring, unless you know what the presence of God is like. Since God literally walked amongst them, I don't think Eve did what she did out of boredom, but out of, among other things, a doubt about her relationship with God and God's character. The Father withholds no good thing from his children, and the serpent convinced her that this was true.
The most poignant thing to me is that God didn't child-proof the garden. From the beginning, there was potential for error. The difference between a glorious existence of mankind and their fallen state was a thin as a fruit being plucked. Truth and falsehood are often very close relatives.
To add to D.H.'s comment:
Lewis seemed to hint at a similar thing in Perelandra - using imagery fruit that satisfies so intensely, so completely that it would seem wrong to eat another because it was not needed and would reflect gluttony.
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