Bible-bloggin

Slate's got a new feature--a guy who's reading through the Bible and blogging about it as he goes. He thinks of himself as an "ignoramus," but it seems to me like he's reasonably smart. Here's the first installment on Creation to the Flood in Genesis. The impetus for starting this project? A particularly racy passage in Genesis 34 about the rape of Dinah.

An interesting quote:

The Lord—not so good at follow-through. In Chapter 2, He is clear as He can be: He commands man not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and bad: "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die." No wiggle room there. You shall die. But then when Eve and Adam eat the fruit of the tree a few verses later, do they die? Nope. God punishes Eve with "most severe … pangs in childbearing" and curses Adam by making the soil barren. Any parent knows you have to follow through on your threats, or your children will take advantage of you. God makes a vow He can't keep—or if He did, He would undo all his good work. So, He settles instead for a half-hearted punishment that just encourages His children to misbehave again. Is it any surprise that we sin again? And again? And again? All the way down to the present day. You can call this "original sin," but maybe it's just lax parenting.

God as a softhearted parent. This might not be such a bad description of how things work. After all, people aren't always punished for doing wrong, and they aren't always rewarded for doing right.

My theory on the Garden of Eden is that for us to be able to make a choice about whether or not we love God, we have to also be able to choose not to love God. This moment in the garden is the beginning of our free will, and it's also the beginning of our ability to freely love God, not as dependents who are forced to act a certain way, but as free people. But maybe that reading is too American--all this talk about individual freedom and will.