Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, January 18, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
This is the moment humanity realized its own mortality. Opening their eyes to good and evil, as I see it, is really about people moving from the instinctive, animal-like innocence they had into the full self-awareness that distinguishes humans from other animals. I think it comes down to the understanding that we will die and all the fear of the unknown that kicks up for us.
From that fear of mortality comes all evil. In one of my seminary classes, a beloved professor talked about how slavery came into being as a buffer between the hard, early-mortality life of hard labor (especially farming) and those who owned the land/resources. Fear of mortality underlies the hoarding of wealth and resources, war, genocide, imperialism, you-name-it.
The serpent was hardly an ordinary animal here—as I understand it, snakes aren’t aware of good an evil or their own mortality. Instead, the serpent was whatever jump in human evolution took us to the place where good and evil became a choice, and evil won out again and again in the service of our fear.
Of course, this text is ahistorical—a sort of folk tale like Pandora’s box to explain the entry of evil onto the scene. But at the same time, it is a perfect allegory for what actually transpired in the development of humanity. To this day, that moment or choice or evolutionary jump is at the root of our propensity for self-preservation by any means. It is also the moment at which we realized that rather than taking God for granted or even being unaware of God, we absolutely need God in our lives to help us navigate a challenging world, trusting that God will provide for us so that we do not need to resort to evil in order to feel some kind of control over the uncontrollable.
How do I interpret this scene when I read it? Who is the serpent? What is the fruit?
