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I am the youngest of four. I was also the youngest in the neighbourhood we lived in until I was 7. Back then if you can imagine it, all the kids in the neighbourhood would go outside and play together all day. That proved problematic for me. I don’t know why it is but when you are the youngest among the kids, it seems you have a sign on your back that says “Pick on me.” That, of course, did happen to me both from my siblings and the other kids in the neighbourhood. It has its effect.
I remember the first time I prayed something that wasn’t like bedtime prayers. I was five. I had been up the street playing a game of Red Rover with my siblings and the rest of the neighbourhood kids. They started making fun of me which resulted in me running home in tears. They just kept on playing as if nothing ever happened. At home there wasn’t anybody around to comfort me. I don’t know where the parents were. So, I stood in the living room looking out the window and for some reason I prayed, “God, what’s wrong with me that other kids don’t want to play with me?” There was no still small voice or wave of peaceful assurance or sense of God being present. God was predictably silent. But, a month or two later a boy my age moved in across the street and we became best friends until well after high school. You could say God delivered me from having to go play with older kids if I was going to play with somebody. I also find it remarkable that at five years old I was turning to God for answers.
Looking back on that day, the answer to that question is obvious, “There’s nothing wrong with you per say, Randy. You’re likable and lovable. Kids can be mean. There’s a reason for that. It’s a sickness everyone has called Sin. Even adults suffer from it. Try your best not to be mean too.” But, I was too young and the bullying happened too often for me to hear anything from God so I kept believing there was something wrong with me that people don’t want to play with me and that false belief persisted most of my life. It was part of the “Stinkin’ Thinkin’” that fed alcoholism in me years ago.
Well, a couple months after that little boy moved in across the street, I decided I was going to exact some revenge on my siblings and it was devious. While they and my parents were all elsewhere around the house doing their thing, I went and got the stapler and took the stables out of it and then I stealthily worked them into the cushions of the living room couch. My plan was that at least one of my siblings would sit on the couch and get a healthy dose of staples in the bum. They wouldn’t know I did it because I was going to hide in plain sight over at my new best friend’s house. One of them would get staple-bum and I would just lie and say, “It wasn’t me. I was at Ronnie’s.” They would believe me because I was the good kid.
Well, my buddy and I were playing in his room when the knock came at his door. It was my sister Jan and she said, “Mom says to please send Randy home.” There was no reason given, but I knew what it was. My devious plan which I hadn’t even divulged to Ronnie was figured out. Fortunately, it didn’t result in me getting a sore bum. I just had to remove all the staples which had done a lot of damage to the upholstery on a very nice all but brand-new couch that we had gotten from the Grand Piano Furniture Store. Then, I had to go to my room for a couple of hours, and I couldn’t go to Ronnie’s for a few days.
I can’t say that my mother was over the top angry. It was “Why Randy, would you do such a thing. You’re usually such a good kid.” It disappointed her. I’d have fathered that she just be angry. But in this moment of uncharacteristic behaviour on my part, she was bewildered, disappointed, and scared. She didn’t know where I was at. If you’ve been a parent, then you’ve had those kinds of disappointing and scary moments with respect to your children and not knowing where they are at.
Well, looking here at Genesis and Adam and Eve I could go on for hours on this story. It helps that we don’t get bogged down in whether this historically happened or not. The real power in it is how brutally accurate it is in describing how we humans are. In our inner world we have these things called core values, what we know is right and what is wrong. We will betray these core values and there are characteristic patterns of behaviour that we go through when we set about betraying those values mostly it's rationalizing, self-justifying, and we finish up with blaming. We deceive ourselves in order to betray ourselves. When we betray those values we break trust with and hurt ourselves and others and God.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they didn’t suddenly gain the ability of knowing right from wrong. That had been spelled out already when God told Adam what tree not to partake of. What they gained is the knowledge of good and evil. That’s when it seems good to do evil and evil to do good. They’re mixed in together. Have you ever had it happen that when all things are considered the best thing to do is the evil thing so that good can result? Assassination and war can appear good when you’ve got to get rid of a cruel tyrant. Have you ever done the right thing and all it did was hurt people?
This story says that there is something wrong with us. What’s wrong with us is that we twist the truth, concoct false narratives, and accept misinformation as fact so that we can rationalize our way into doing what we know in our cores to be wrong. We deceive ourselves into believing that what we know to be wrong is actually good for us and we wind up betraying ourselves and others. We then hide behind our rationalizations and self-justifications to keep from having to accept responsibility for our actions. Like back at my childhood, the kids who bullied me were just having fun, right? I thought the staples were a fair means to justice. And, that’s just kids being kids. We don’t outgrow it when we become adults. We just get better at it…especially the hiding ourselves because we feel that there’s something wrong with us…and you know what? There is!...and we die from it.
Well, this story isn’t just about us. Notice how God is. God doesn’t appear as an omnipotent Judge here. He doesn’t show up knowing exactly where Adam and Eve are at and what they had done so that he could exact a verdict of “Die and go to Hell!” Oddly, God doesn’t seem to know what’s happened. God’s just strolling in the Garden in the cool of the day looking to catch up with his Beloved ones to hear what they had discovered that day in the Garden amongst the trees. But God can’t find Adam and Eve. They’ve hidden themselves from him because they are ashamed of their nakedness. The trees of the Garden which were supposed to be discovery places are suddenly hiding places. The Seeker can’t find his Beloved Ones, the apple of his eye, the crown of his creation. Like my mother, God doesn’t know where they are at. So, God asks, history’s most powerful rhetorical question, “Where are you?”
And so it is with each of us, “Where are you?” What rationalizations, self-justifications are we deceiving ourselves with so that we can betray ourselves and God and one another. What tree are you hiding behind? Come out from behind it. Your Beloved is seeking you. Amen.
