Teaching Nonviolent Atonement
The truth about the Adam and Eve story isn’t so much found in literal historical event, but that the story of Adam and Eve is the story of all of us. In a sense, we are all Adam. We are all Eve.
The story tells us that there are invisible forces in the world. Rene Girard calls this force mimesis. Mimesis speaks to the fact that human identity is not based on individualism. Girard states that we are not individauls, rather, we are inter-dividuals. We are highly relational creatures and our identity is given to us based on our relationships.
For example, take a look at the creation of the human being in Genesis. God creates human beings in God’s image. God breathes God’s spirit into the human being, giving it life. God says that humans are good, indeed, very good.
This is what it means to be human. We receive our identity from God as we carry within us the image and the spirit and the goodness of God.
Richard Rohr says it like this, “You are who you are through the eyes of God.” Who you are through the eyes of God is the object of God’s love, fundamentally good. Receiving the gift of that love is to receive our true identity.
But there are other mimetic forces in our world. These forces aren’t based on receiving our identity as a gift, but rather grasping onto identity. When we grasp for identity, it leads us over and against another as we fall into rivalry.
The serpent in the Garden of Eden is the ultimate symbol of this invisible mimetic force that leads us to grasp for identity. The mimetics of the serpent works like this – it suggested to Adam and Eve that they really aren’t that good and that God isn’t that good, either. In fact, the serpent suggests that God, the one who has given them life, spirit, and even the gift of participating in the divine image, is actually holding them back from the knowledge of good and evil. Why did God prohibit them from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? According to the serpent, it was because God knew that on the day they ate from the tree, their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good from evil.
Eve, and then Adam, were both influenced by the serpent to grasp ahold of divine identity – to become like God by grasping onto the fruit. According to the serpent, to become like God you have to take from God.
But notice how the story begins. All God ever wanted to do was to give the divine image, the divine spirit, to humans. The serpent tells the lie that to become like God you have to grasp for it. That’s a lie, because humans were already made like God, in God’s image. The difference between these two mimetic forces is that God simply wants to give to us the identity of being good just the way we are; whereas the serpent influences us to grasp onto goodness and keep it for ourselves, leading us into relationships rivalry and accusation with God and one another.
For example, after Adam and Eve ate the fruit, God asked what happened. Adam blamed Eve, and also God for making Eve. Eve then blamed the serpent. And the truth about this story is that we’ve been blaming one another ever since. That’s the danger of the knowledge of good and evil. When we claim to possess that knowledge, we grasp onto it by claiming the mantle of goodness for ourselves and accusing others of being evil.
Unfortunately, human societies are usually run by the serpent. We are constantly told that we have to grasp onto goodness by elevating ourselves above others. In order to know that we are good, we define ourselves in opposition to someone who is bad.
The wisdom of Genesis is that it calls us away from grasping onto identity that leads us into rivalry. Instead, it calls us to receiving our identity from God, who makes us good, just as we are.
Image: Flickr, Kim Stovring, “Adam-and-Eve”, Creative Commons License, some changes made.
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For more in this series:
Part 1: Creation is No Myth
Part 2: How the Bible Hijacked the “Image of God”
Part 3: The Bible is Progressive
Part 4: The Apocalypse Revealed
Part 5: The Key to Biblical Violence
Part 6: Adam, Eve, and the Mimetics of Being Human
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