punkfaery:

“What if we read the story of Adam and Eve with different eyes? What if we stop reading it through the lens of popular assumption and allow it to speak in a different way? What if it isn’t an account of punishment for one monumental mistake, but a fable-like wisdom story about humans graduating, evolving from the relatively uncomplicated existence of animal innocence to the messy experience of moral responsibility? What if Adam and Eve didn’t fall? What if they were pushed? What if the voice of God in the story is a poignant warning about what lies ahead for a more highly evolved species than a straight-faced prohibition? What, in short, if we read the story with irony instead of literalism, with a grin rather a grimace, as wisdom instead of dogma?Hard work, sexual intimacy, parenthood, a sense of mortality, the knowledge of good and evil – these are the sort of things that make humans different to other creatures in a positive way. They present challenges and demands, and bring anxieties, but they are also the ultimate source of imagination, creativity, rewarding struggle and achievement. In order for humans to be human, the fruit had to be eaten…Thus the story of Eden is not about paradise lost, but about paradise outgrown.”

— Dave Tomlinson, The Bad Christian’s Manifesto: Reinventing God