The second account of creation seen in Genesis 2 can be seen on many levels. Paul Julienne did a beautiful job of describing Adam’s new self-awareness here. Primarily using the notes from our Rectors Forum on Original Solitude, I see it in one sense it as a coming of age story.
(In surfing the web to see who also had thought of Genesis 2 in this way, I discovered that some critics saw Genesis 2 and 3 together as a coming of age story. They then horribly turned the original sin in Genesis 3 into some sort of original goodness! I, however, am only covering Genesis 2 in this idea of a coming of age story, though. And please bear with me in a little artistic license—this is liable to be the most unusual retelling of Genesis 2 that you’ve heard.)
The father had an empty house (v. 5). The father births the baby and blows gently into her face, and she breathes in and becomes his living daughter (v. 7). He gives her the gift of a beautiful home (v. 8, 9) and tasks her alone with chores to take care of it (v. 15), cautioning her not to leave his house (v. 17). The father realizes that it is not good that she should be alone (v. 18) and he gives her pets (v. 19). She names the dogs and birds, but they can never be the friend she now desires (v. 20). She is different from them; she is still alone. She loves spending her Saturdays talking on the couch with her father and she wants to be with him all week but can’t. The father causes her to sleep for a time (v. 21), and she awakes to the father bringing her to a husband who is different than she, yet complements her perfectly (v. 23). Knowing that she is loved by her father, she can fully give herself to another in love including with her body—totally and therefore uniquely and exclusively (v. 24 and JPII, Man and Woman He Created Them, p. 59). And she receives the gift of love, as well.
Humankind is created for love: love for God and others. As we mature, we realize that God has made us to be devoted, which finds its highest expression in devotion to God but also to others.
If a person is not both devoted to God and others, he is not actually devoted to God. As it says in 1 John 4: 19, 20: “We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” If we’re not loving and affirming towards all others, it’s a clue that we’re not actually loving God, either. It’s not because of duty that we love others but because love is defined as being oriented outside of ourselves. Devoted means you are outside of yourself (like in ex-stasy or ex-perience as Elizabeth was explaining to us), and you can’t truly be devoted to God if you are doing it “selfishly.” In our loving of God by His Holy Spirit, that same Spirit causes us to love others, as well.
It is not good when humanity doesn’t live in love. Maybe my overly-simplistic coming of age story needs work—but when in your life did you begin to realize that work alone doesn’t satisfy?
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