So if anyone’s interested in my opinion of the creation story, I’d have to approximate it as nil. Seriously, the world wasn’t made as-is and that can be proven in 15 seconds of a variety of subjects ranging from biology to geology and even astronomy. However, it isn’t long after the creation story that we reach our first interesting set of passages. Not long after a little snake (who is at no point [so far] referred to as Satan) tries to give Adam and Eve some fruit, we come to the scene where God is punishing his newly-created humans. He starts off his punishment by putting Eve in her place (just kidding) and telling her she is forever inferior to her husband. Now I don’t want to start off completely bashing this book…but this religion is taught to little girls and boys. Imagine little Jimmy’s face when he finds out he’ll be little Susie’s superior one day just because he’s a boy. Oh yeah, Christianity is really rubbing that Y chromosome the right way.

God goes on to clothe them and banish them from Eden, but before he turns them out he has one last thing to say. He declares that Adam and Eve have become like him in his knowledge of good and evil and that they might decide to eat from another tree (called the Tree of Life) and live forever. Apparently that’s bad because he banishes them right away and sets an eternal guard of Cherubim (which according to Ezechiel were terrifying ox/man/lion/eagle things) to protect the Tree of Life forever. This is interesting to me. Why did God make sure humans couldn’t live forever? It is generally accepted that God knows good and evil and lives forever and it doesn’t seem to be a bad gig. And we can see so far that according to Genesis, God made us with at least those two key differences from him. After humans learned good and evil like him, he made damn sure they wouldn’t live forever like him.

So Adam and Eve go, and then they get busy because they have two sons named Cain and Abel. Abel is the younger and cares for a flock of sheep while Cain, the elder, takes to farming and grows many fruit. Soon after, Cain brings an offering of fruit to God and Abel brings an offering of sheep fat. God likes the sheep fat, but has a problem with the fruit. He doesn’t say why. For fairness’s sake, let’s say Cain and Abel brought the same amount of each offering. This means God loves fat way more than he loves fruit. This may lend credence to the claim that America IS a Christian nation.

Not long after, Cain kills his brother in jealousy and God punishes him by making sure he can’t grow anymore of his awful fruit and makes him a wanderer. Cain claims that he can’t be a wanderer because anyone he meets will kill him. God says no because he will punish anyone who does so. Now I don’t wish to infer too much, but we can agree that anyone who wanted to kill Cain would do so because he had done something evil, yes? That’s why God is punishing him. But didn’t God just say we know good and evil like him? Why is he overriding our opinions of Cain when he just admitted we are a good authority on the subject of good and evil?

So, four chapters in and while my faith my not be broken, I wouldn’t call these four chapters faith-making either.