09-10.07.2026
Even as a child, I rejected the idea of original sin, instinctively knowing better than to take the rap for something I hadn’t done. I knew, even then, that I would probably do enough stupid things in life to legitimately feel guilty for, there was no reason to front load that weight. I would later come to believe that the way of the spiritual warrior would be to accept one’s failings and move past them; learning, and changing, not bemoaning.
The creator we meet in the Old Testament is, by admission, a jealous and vengeful god, a god that needs a nap, Sunday apparently not having been enough. Upon rereading Genesis recently, I recognized the whole Tree of Knowledge scene as what is most definitely was: a total set-up. As a former high school teacher, if there was something I did not want my students to mess with, or something that I thought might distract from the day’s lesson, I simply would not have it sitting in the middle of the classroom, unless it happened to be the lesson.
What was it that angered Yahweh so much to see what He/She/Them surely knew was going to happen play out? Was it the fact that, as we were created in the image of the godhead, the creator recognized one of His/Her/Their own tendencies reflected back? Regardless, it all seems a little petty for an entity that just created the universe. Could it have actually been the bittersweet anger of a parent that knows their child must defy them at some point to grow beyond the nest? It seems like only yesterday the kids were a pile of dust.
Can we really proscribe human frailty and psychologically-driven peccadillos to an all-being? I think we have to. That would certainly be part of being “all.” Of course there would be countless unrecognizable motivations that color a creator’s actions. God moves in a mysterious way, indeed.
Another thing that stood out was that Adam was a straight-up snitch. When Yahweh comes walking down the garden path, Ad-Rock doesn’t hesitate for a second to throw his partner—and not unimportantly, the only other person to talk to in all of creation—under the bus. Could this be read as humankind’s sublimation of the corporeal in deference of the spiritual? Maybe. It could be that Adam had no real father figure to tell him not to be a tout. But I digress.
In Genesis, our man Adam actually comes off as a little dim. It is Eve who has a healthy curiosity and nascent agency, and, to be fair, FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out) hadn’t been invented yet… whoomp, there it is!
As far as getting kicked out of the garden, our whole concept of a garden is based on the environments that we have known, only not degraded. I would argue that the garden is all around us, and the sooner we start acting like it and treat it with due respect, the better off we—and the creatures we are supposed to be taking care of—will be.
Román Leão 
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