It’s Adam and Eve, Not Christopher and Olivia

Something funny happened on the sixth day of creation:

Genesis 1:27

So God created humans in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

You see, it says right there in the first chapter of the Bible that God created man and woman. So does that mean there’s nothing sacred about any kind of LGBTQ+ relationship or marriage? Does that mean that your gender should somehow “match,” what’s in your pants?

Not so fast.

Genesis also states that God separated the light from the darkness. So there must not be any such thing as dusk or dawn. Every time you enjoy a famous Colorado sunset, you are blaspheming God. God separated the earth and seas, so I hope you don’t enjoy marshes and estuaries either. Those are an abomination.

I wonder if Adam and Eve were black or white or Asian or absolutely anything else. I mean, probably black given that the scientific consensus maintains that modern humans originated in Africa where the sun’s rays would favor high melanin. Sorry white people, God created black people and you are an affront to our scriptural traditions.

Were Adam and Eve musical? Were they artistic? Were they good with a bandsaw? Could they understand calculus? Did they keep domesticated cats? Were they as fond of the air fryer as I am? I’m probably committing a lot of sins because it’s impossible that any of these things were options on the sixth day of creation. Although I’ll be honest, I wisely keep my distance from bandsaws.

But wait another second… it says God created male and female, not Adam and Eve. To get to Adam and Eve you’re going to have to take a trip to the thrid book of Genesis, because Adam gives Eve her name after the fall. But if we want to use them as a model for God’s intentions, then we should name every man Adam and every woman Eve. You’ve heard some trashy people say things like, “It’s Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve,” but I’m here to tell you, “It’s Adam and Eve, Not Christopher and Olivia.”

The book of Genesis gets a lot weirder and you might at this point be excused for confusing what our popular culture believes about its creation myth as opposed to what’s actually in the Bible. For example:

Genesis 2:18-22

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 

Fun stuff.

First of all, the creation order doesn’t match Genesis 1. Male might have been created on day six, but not female. Next, God thought that animals would be a great companion for Adam and didn’t consider making a woman, so if you really want to stay true to God’s original intent, “It’s Adam and the beasts of the field, not Adam and Eve, Adam and Steve or Christopher and Olivia.” You’d be right in wondering, “God thought that beasts would be a great life companion for Adam, is He stupid?” Yes, in this mythological story, that is in no way history, God is stupid. Is the God of all creation stupid? No. But here in the Bible the character of God is acting cluelessly. That should reinforce for you that the Bible is not the inerrant word of God; Jesus Christ is the word of God and the Bible is a collection of stories, sayings, warnings, poems and more from people in our past who have been trying in their own way to follow God, but mostly just kept wrestling with God and we’re very lucky they thought to write it down. And sometimes the things they wrote down can’t possibly be historical fact.

Apparently, God wanted Adam to find a helper among the beasts. I mean, I have had Hamburger Helper, so thank you cows. And speaking as someone who at times himself seems like a gorilla-human hybrid, maybe that’s what God had in mind. Adam, here’s a bunch of animals to choose from as your life companion. To me the story emphasizes something more important. It’s obvious God, at least at this point, doesn’t care about man and woman. What God does care about is curing our loneliness. Start there when you consider any thought about gay marriage. God in this ancient myth doesn’t care if you even choose a different species as your companion, God just doesn’t want you to be lonely. Deep in your heart you know you want to celebrate when you see a loving LGBTQ+ couple. I’m not crying, you’re crying. I know God wants this for everyone, no exceptions.

I want you to pause and reflect very seriously about this. There are a lot of things our ancient Biblical traditions got wrong such as a literal six-day creation, three-level cosmology complete with a flat earth and dome, geocentrism, acceptance of slavery in any form, misogyny, and many other ideas we’ve since abandoned. Don’t even get me started on the impossibility of a global flood, talking snakes and talking donkeys. None of this bothers me because the Bible wasn’t really meant to speak authoritatively on science, math, astronomy, psychology, history or anthropology. So if you’re willing to accept evolution, our solar system and stand against slavery, then what is stopping you from accepting that our ideas of human sexuality have greatly improved over thousands of years? What we understand to be a loving, committed same-sex relationship today is vastly different than anything written about in the Bible. Yet, what God has said about curing loneliness, and the importance of marriage and connection can still be held up as sacred regardless of sexual orientation. Sexual preference has nothing to do with that sacredness because the Bible writers knew as little about human sexuality as they did about evolution or the solar system. Can you not see that opposing same-sex marriage is directly opposing God’s will for everyone to experience the fullness of what it means to be human, to end loneliness and find sacred partnership in life? If you stand against same-sex marriage, how confident are you that you aren’t misinterpreting ideas from 3,500 years ago and in so doing violating God’s plan?

So how did we go from saying God created male and female on day six to this story where God is ripping a rib out of Adam on a day much later because Adam didn’t want an animal as a life partner? They are completely two different traditions that the ancient editors of Genesis thought were important and interesting enough to pass along. They thought they were fun, too. That is all. You are not supposed to take this fun little origin story as an excuse to gatekeep other peoples’ love. Frankly, Adam and Eve are really not that important to the rest of the Bible. They are mentioned in later genealogies. Paul mentions Adam as introducing sin and death, but I’m far from convinced he had anything more in mind than an analogy to contrast with Christ, a kind of bookend to the resurrection that only makes sense looking backward after the resurrection, and certainly didn’t intend any theology of marriage or original sin.

Setting this fun mythology aside, what does seem evident to me is that God loves diversity. Diversity has flourished under God’s watch since creation. Why wouldn’t that diversity include sexual preference and gender? We have many races, many talents and yes, a wide spectrum of gender identification and sexual preference. People are just born these various ways. Some are black, some are musical, some are gay. It’s all a diverse gift from God. Diversity gives rise to more life and perspective and creativity and joy than homogeneity ever can.

My grandmother was proud of her rose garden featuring “Mister Lincoln,” roses. They were taller than I was as a young child, thorny, and remarkably fragrant. They were also not created by God in the Garden of Eden. According to Wikipedia (caveat lector): ‘Mister Lincoln’ was created by Herbert Swim and Weeks Rose Growers in 1964. The stock parents of this rose are the hybrid tea rose cultivars ‘Chrysler Imperial’ and ‘Charles Mallerin’.

Does this mean this particular rose is an abomination to God?  Of course not.

At this point, my conservative readers may bristle that stories like Sodom and Gomorrah and the writings of Paul show that same-sex love is a sin. I disagree but this blog article is now over so I’ll have to take those issues up later. My point here is just to demonstrate the many reasons why we cannot take ancient mythology to be normative to anything having to do with modern, loving relationships.