Adam and Eve: Don’t fall for it! The Snake’s only trying to make trouble between us humans and God! But he’s too late. The woman—probably because women are more trusting than men or at least they were back then in the beginning—believes the Snake. And of course once she’s taken a taste and likes it she talks Adam into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil too. And suddenly they go from feeling innocent and like babies not even aware that they don’t have any clothes on to feeling guilty and also ashamed which is worse than just feeling guilty and when God shows up again to check on how His garden’s doing they hide in the bushes. When God calls Adam out at first Adam says I didn’t do it. Then he claims that actually the woman made him do it. And the woman turns around and says the Snake made her do it.
The Kid knows how they feel. He’s felt that way since he was about eight or nine. Maybe even younger. First you deny that you did it and then when it’s obvious you’re lying you blame somebody else. It’s what people do when they’re ashamed. It’s always about sex too. First it was from watching his mother making it with some guy and then it was from jerking off all the time since he was ten and then skin magazines and Internet porn and when he got older it was porn DVDs and shows at sex clubs and sex chat room conversations on the Internet with teenage girls until finally he got caught in the act so to speak and busted by the cops and it’s all on YouTube for the whole world to watch and judge.
The Kid wonders if it’s possible that this whole tree of knowledge of good and evil thing was set up by God as a kind of prehistoric sex-sting with the Snake as the decoy. Maybe from the beginning the Snake was secretly working for God who was mainly interested in testing Adam and Eve because in spite of being all-seeing and all-knowing He couldn’t be there in the Garden of Eden 24/7 to watch over them and protect their innocence. If God was going to trust them to behave themselves and follow His rules when He was elsewhere in the universe they would have to be capable of protecting their innocence from temptation on their own. They would have to be like angels. God probably wasn’t sure they could do that. Maybe God didn’t know what sort of creature He’d actually created when He blew into that handful of dust and came up with Adam and then later took out one of Adam’s ribs and made Eve.
Without knowing it the Kid is drifting toward sleep and his theological and philosophical speculations are starting to shape and misshape his reading. According to the Kid the punishment that God lays on the Snake for beguiling the woman into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is to wrap the Snake in a sex offender’s sleeping bag and sink it to the bottom of the Bay, there to lie forgotten and despised by all mankind and mourned by none except for Adam who in a cowardly moment exposed himself to the fear of men with guns and abandoned the serpent to suffer their wrath. God punishes the woman by making her bear a son who will be dependent upon her for many years and will restrict her in her enjoyment of the company of men until she reaches the age when she no longer attracts them and then the son will disappoint the woman and publicly humiliate and shame her all the remaining days of her life. And because Adam listened to the woman and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he is condemned to homelessness living in a tent somewhere east of Eden until he turns back into the dust from whence he came. Then there is something about Adam becoming a farmer and fathering two sons with Eve and naming them Cain and Abel but by now the Kid’s candle has burned down nearly to a stub and he is asleep and dreaming freely.
All of a sudden the flap is pulled back and a bright white light floods the inside of the tent. The Kid wakes and sits up and rubs his eyes
The Kid knows how they feel. He’s felt that way since he was about eight or nine. Maybe even younger. First you deny that you did it and then when it’s obvious you’re lying you blame somebody else. It’s what people do when they’re ashamed. It’s always about sex too. First it was from watching his mother making it with some guy and then it was from jerking off all the time since he was ten and then skin magazines and Internet porn and when he got older it was porn DVDs and shows at sex clubs and sex chat room conversations on the Internet with teenage girls until finally he got caught in the act so to speak and busted by the cops and it’s all on YouTube for the whole world to watch and judge.
The Kid wonders if it’s possible that this whole tree of knowledge of good and evil thing was set up by God as a kind of prehistoric sex-sting with the Snake as the decoy. Maybe from the beginning the Snake was secretly working for God who was mainly interested in testing Adam and Eve because in spite of being all-seeing and all-knowing He couldn’t be there in the Garden of Eden 24/7 to watch over them and protect their innocence. If God was going to trust them to behave themselves and follow His rules when He was elsewhere in the universe they would have to be capable of protecting their innocence from temptation on their own. They would have to be like angels. God probably wasn’t sure they could do that. Maybe God didn’t know what sort of creature He’d actually created when He blew into that handful of dust and came up with Adam and then later took out one of Adam’s ribs and made Eve.
Without knowing it the Kid is drifting toward sleep and his theological and philosophical speculations are starting to shape and misshape his reading. According to the Kid the punishment that God lays on the Snake for beguiling the woman into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is to wrap the Snake in a sex offender’s sleeping bag and sink it to the bottom of the Bay, there to lie forgotten and despised by all mankind and mourned by none except for Adam who in a cowardly moment exposed himself to the fear of men with guns and abandoned the serpent to suffer their wrath. God punishes the woman by making her bear a son who will be dependent upon her for many years and will restrict her in her enjoyment of the company of men until she reaches the age when she no longer attracts them and then the son will disappoint the woman and publicly humiliate and shame her all the remaining days of her life. And because Adam listened to the woman and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he is condemned to homelessness living in a tent somewhere east of Eden until he turns back into the dust from whence he came. Then there is something about Adam becoming a farmer and fathering two sons with Eve and naming them Cain and Abel but by now the Kid’s candle has burned down nearly to a stub and he is asleep and dreaming freely.
All of a sudden the flap is pulled back and a bright white light floods the inside of the tent. The Kid wakes and sits up and rubs his eyes
Similar Books
