The Self...such nakedness, o such nakedness

 And our eyes were opened and we saw that we were naked.

            Oh, how sad that sentence! Our eyes were opened and we saw that we were naked. And we have seen that way ever since. What did the fruit do to us? It made it so we no longer saw God as Father, but God as God.

Created to live in oneness with our Maker, we chose not to trust him, and we became like him. With opened eyes, we saw our Father as the powerful and immutable God he is and we realized that we were but dust, that we had no right to call him Father, other than the right he allowed us.

And so we made a big bronze statue of him to try and palliate our wrong. It is a statue with angry eyes and flaring nostrils. Because gods deserve statues. Fathers just want their children’s love.

            It is like someone who befriends a kind, compassionate man and the two have a wonderful friendship. But something happens and the person finds out that the man is actually the King of a vast empire, one of the richest and most revered people in the world. Suddenly, he cannot see the man as his friend anymore. He can only see the man as the King. And the friendship gets awkward.

This is what happened to us.

            Before the fruit, we just were. We were living in the fantastic fairy tale God had written.
            God was always God; but we knew God as Father because he wanted us to know him that way, he wanted us to be one with him.

He was our Father, not God!

It was all a gift, always simply an unbelievable gift. We had no merit to this oneness with the Creator who asked that we call him Father. He gave himself anyway. The fruit opened our eyes to the truth of the world. It opened our eyes to our position as recipients of God’s divine image. This was the first time Adam knew that he was Adam.

He became…self-conscious.

The fruit made us like God. The snake was right. The fruit opened our eyes and for the first time, we knew who our Father actually was; the uncreated, untamed barbaric, illimitable, terrifying Creator of any and everything called life! And when we knew who God was, we learned who we actually were—created beings from the dust of the earth. And knowing we were created, we saw, it was inevitable, that we were naked.      

            Yes, physically naked, of course. But I think what Adam and Eve realized, for the first time, was that they were spiritually naked. And to be spiritually naked will always work itself out into the physical. The spell was lifted. Their eyes were opened. Adam and Eve were awakened to the reality of the war—they understood for the first time what was meant by the words good and evil—and they discovered, by this fruit, who their righteous Father really was, and who they as dust-erected beings really were. And they saw that they were utterly naked…and deserved to die.

            In that moment, I wonder what horror must have descended upon Adam’s soul when for the first time he knew exactly what was meant when his Father had uttered the word, death? It made sense now. They understood. And without God in their soul, without oneness, they knew that they were naked. 

            What tears of lament our Father cried that day, “Oh Adam, my Adam! Oh, Eve my daughter! Why? Why!” No words can assuage the grief of mourning parents. And to the first and only Father, fully wise and knowing all that was about to take place because of this, what tears must he have shed?

            Our souls became empty, absent the presence of their Maker.

We chose to be set beside God instead of within him. We had to choose this for we knew we were no longer pure, as he is pure. And though this does nothing to lessen the pain, I wonder if perhaps it was not God who removed himself from us, but after tasting the fruit, and realizing that we were dust and our Father was actually God, we removed ourselves from him—for our new knowledge told us we did not deserve to call him Father? Inconsequential.

The squalls endured, thy crashing waves,

And weak pleas for salvation

The tumbling barge, sickening throws,

No shore line of cessation

What steeliness, I have not an ounce,

To weather a night but more

In silence we sing our longing song,

Whispered hope for the door

O door of heaven, pray open wide,

With grace, upon my knees

The night is o’er, the tempest calmed,

Sweet kisses of thy breeze

O door of heaven, mine eye is fixed,

On thou blood and wooden frame

Accept this wanderer, cold and wet,

In mercy to thy name

Though deserving not, alone and poor,

Of tears and humbled pride,

O door of heaven, Lord of mercy,

Bring us to your bleeding side