Earthfolk
Big Questions and Big Answers
Exile, Nakedness and Sacred Sexuality
Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden. They become exiles. The
Big Question is, “How are we to live
on Earth?” Big
Answer: “We
are to live on Earth as if in exile.” We are strangers
in a strange land. The Earth is not our human
home, no, the Garden of
Eden is. Consequently,
the core question for humans is, “Can we ever return?”
The exile taps into forlorn fear.
This is an anxiety caused by being driven from one’s
homeland and thrust into unknown territory. It is the feeling of
abandonment, of hopelessness,
and of stark terror. The exile’s relentless quest is to escape from the hostile land in which he/she is a stranger.
What caused the Lone Male god to
exile his creations? Before Eve is formed, it is revealed that there
is a Tree of Life,
a tree which
gives the knowledge of Good and Evil. It is stated that with such knowledge humans are doomed to die!
As common to Big Stories, contradictory facts
appear to be asserted by inference. Here, the inference is that
while Adam and Eve were in the Garden they would not have died.
In the
Garden they would have experienced a certain aspect of immortality.
In a later
verse, it says that if they stay in the Garden now that
they do have the knowledge of Good and Evil, they might also
go and eat of
the
Tree of Life and become like God
who lives forever.
This implies that
humans in the Garden are not immortal. What is of note,
at this point of contradiction, is that Adam and Eve are
tending the garden.
This
is Adam’s prime task as assigned by God, and Eve was created
to be his helper. There is no discussion
of them filling the Garden with children.
It appears that they will live in the Garden, alone in
their togetherness, in a non-sexual relationship.
The immediate effect of eating from
the Tree of Good and Evil is that Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness.
Before they ate, we
can assume, Adam and Eve were in the Garden unclothed and so naked.
Why did
they not see each other’s nakedness? What
caused them to all of a sudden blush and seek
to place fig
leaves over their genitals?
Here, eating the Apple is the metaphor
for their breakthrough to their fuller humanity,
to their nakedness, and so to an awareness of
their sexuality.
Continue—Abrahamic
