Here at Liberty, this account of creation has been referenced in the first few sessions of almost all of the classes that I have this semester (could have something to do with half of them being Bible-related requirements...).
Most of you are also aware of what happens next in the story. God tells Adam and Eve to take care of the garden, which they happily do because it's beautiful and everything is perfect and dandy, but the one thing that they cannot do is eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or they will surely die. At that point, nothing died yet, so I'm sure that sounded even bigger and scarier than it does to us now. So anyway, they go along on their merry way, and take care of the garden and of the animals, until one day, Satan, in snake-form, comes to Eve. Here's where the trouble begins. The serpent is "crafty" and deceitful, citing all of the reasons why God surely will not kill them, and going on about how He's just trying to keep Adam and Eve from knowing the truth. Sneaky little devil...
And Eve falls for it! She reaches up and takes one of those forbidden fruits and bites right into it! I think it's pretty often that Eve gets the brunt of this whole situation. Yeah, she did what God told her not to, and yes, obviously that's bad. But many people forget to mention the part where Adam "was with her" in the garden, and he ate of the fruit as well. He was with her. He could have easily stopped her, or set some ground rules like, "let's just not go near that tree, since we can't eat from it anyway." Both Adam and Eve were at fault, not just her. And that sneaky little serpent was making some pretty good points about how she "surely wanted to know the truth!" Didn't she?
I'm not saying that the choice she made was right. In fact, it was the beginning of all the wrong. But I wouldn't have done a thing any differently.
