Jacob Chanikuzhy

God’s master piece the humankind – failed in the very first test! It did not work as God probably wished. In a sense the first humans failed and shamed God! However, the response of God is eye opening. He did not rush to the site with His “wounded ego” to settle the account then and there. But, God kept cool like the evening breeze. He did not even change His daily routine of the evening walk. Yes, He came walking, and not running, perhaps to teach us that He is slow to anger.

When God came in search of Adam and Eve, they were terrified. Until they committed sin they were happy to hear the sound of God’s footsteps in the garden and excited to be in His presence. But, after sin, God’s presence was intolerable to them and they ran away from God. Perhaps, this explains why many people detest God-talk and why many others keep away from divine worship.

Although it was the man and the woman who sinned and offended God by their disobedience, God did not wait for them to come and make the apologies. Rather, He goes to them. Though Adam and Eve did not want to see God and talk with Him, God wanted to see them and started a dialogue with them. Though it was man who broke the relationship with God, it is God who takes initiative to re-establish the lost relationship. What an inspiring model for all, specially the parents, who are grieved by the mischief of their children. If only they could forgive and take the initiative to fix the broken family relationships!

God meets the sinners with a question – where are you? Of course, God knew where Adam and Eve were. So, He was asking them not about their geographical location; it was rather a question about their relationship to God. Where do you stand in your relationship with your creator? Thus, the very first question of God in the Bible is an invitation to examine one’s relationship to God. God further asks whether they ate the fruit He had forbidden them to eat. Again, God must have known their transgression the moment they did it. So, the purpose of question must have been to encourage them to confess their wrong doing.

A game which everyone is sure to win is “blame game.” In this game that many people play on a regular basis, they try to find someone to blame for whatever goes wrong. Adam was the first winner in the blame game. Instead of admitting his mistake, he immediately passed the blame of sin on to his wife, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen 3:12). In the response of Adam, there is an implied blame against God too. “The woman you gave me” was the problem. Alone I would not have gone that far. But, the woman you created for me seems to be a misfit…With sin there comes alienation. Sin alienates us even from our best friends.

When God questioned Eve, she faithfully continued the blame game she learnt from her husband: “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” In her view the real problem is that God’s garden is not that perfect and in this garden there are other creatures who can lead innocent souls astray. Of course, in God’s garden there are possibilities for human beings to fail and fall; occasions to demonstrate one’s love and faithfulness to one’s creator; there is scope for adventures and risks; there is freedom which helps one to prove one’s metal. In God’s plan, it is this freedom that makes the human acts meritorious and the garden where he lives wonderful. Without the possibility of freedom, garden would have been filled with machines; human life would have been just a puppet show.

With sin human beings and nature become strangers – man begins to exploit the nature and the nature attacks him in fury. The blame game of our first parents teaches us that though man freely sins, he is not ready to accept its responsibility. There are a lot of sins, but no sinners. We blame sin on genes and circumstances. We hesitate to accept the responsibility of sin. But we see that the excuses of Adam and Eve were not acceptable to God. He punished them for their sins. The story teaches that we cannot evade the responsibility of our sins.