A Matter of Choice
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
First Sunday in Lent – February 13, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7/Matthew 4:1-11]

            “Through Adam’s fall we sinned all.” So said the primers used to teach reading in Puritan New England. The story of “the fall” of humanity has engendered study, comment, debate and speculation for centuries. As I have grappled with these texts and concepts over the years I have come to the conclusion that, ultimately, the issue is a matter of choice. Let me explain my point.

            This recent issue of Time [January 17, 2005] has happiness as its cover and its major content. Page after page explores what people think happiness is (a sense of well-being and engagement, as well as pleasure) and how we obtain it (from chocolate and other stimuli to prayer). Sonja Lyubomirsky offered “Eight Steps Toward a More Satisfying Life”: 1) count your blessings; 2) practice acts of kindness; 3) savor life’s joys; 4) thank a mentor; 5) learn to forgive; 6) invest time and energy in friends and family; 7) take care of your body; and 8) develop strategies for coping with stress and hardship. [Time January 17, 2005, p. A8-9] Her steps seem commonsensical, don’t they? Yet they come as the result Dr. Lyubomirsky’s research, which was initially triggered by her observation of how much Americans smiled when she came here from Russia as a little girl!

            In every article there is an implied choice – if you wish to be happy then choose to think, or do, or be whatever the authors say. Life, especially life in America today, is all about choices. All we have to do is go into a supermarket, turn on a television, or walk into a mall, to be deluged by them. With every choice there is a direction taken and a course of action set – the question then becomes, “which choice is best?” And that brings us back to the beginning, to Genesis.

            The Hebrew word adamah means ‘ground.’ Some scholars think that a better translation of it in Genesis would be ‘groundling,’ rather than the proper name ‘Adam.’ The point is that the character portrayed here is a type or a representative for all of us made from the “dust of the ground,” humanity. When we look at this story in Genesis we’re looking at the human condition, which involves the making of choices, and has done so from its genesis (pun intended).

            The nineteenth century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard examined the “fall” at some length and with, I think, profound insight. Kierkegaard thought that the “fall” represents “the dreadful possibility of power.” “Dread-full,” full of dread, why? Because we might misuse this power we have, that is we possess both the ability and the freedom to do something with what we have. Elsewhere in his writings Kierkegaard talks about the despair of possibility that is due to the lack of necessity and the despair of necessity that is due to the lack of possibility. In short, the freedom we have to choose responds to the longing for something we can’t have, which is what concupiscence is, longing. It’s interesting to remember that the original sin attributed to Adam and Eve was concupiscence, longing. Thus, Kierkegaard rightly said in Either/Or, “The greater the freedom, the greater the guilt.” The greater the guilt because when we deal with the freedom we have to act, we have also to deal with the guilt it we fail to use it well, or fail to act at all.

            The freedom the groundlings exercised in Genesis was in pursuit of wisdom, something that should be a good. However, the pursuit of wisdom was undertaken so that they might “be like God.” They, we, longed to be something that they were not and in that act they moved away from the primary relationship with God. Augustine wrote something quite profound about this experience in his City of God: “The conclusion is that the devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something that God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and consequently to take pleasure in the words, ‘you shall be as gods.’ The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have come to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close the ultimate and true source of their being and had not, by pride, imagined that they were themselves the source of their being. . . . Whoever seeks to be more than he is becomes less. Whenever he aspires to be self-sufficing, he retreats from the One who is truly sufficient for him.” [14.13]

Those are wise words, and perhaps it is no mistake that as the word for human in Hebrew is ‘ground,’ the root for humility in Latin is also ‘ground.’ Perhaps that’s the point, to be grounded, to be humble is to have a sense of one’s self and one’s proper relationship with the true source of our being, God? It is unfortunate, however, that Augustine and others would later see ‘original sin’ as some sort of blot on the cosmic copybook of humanity, rather than the attitude and orientation towards selfishness and self-sufficiency that appears, again, as a matter of choice.

            The other thing that comes out of this story is this desire we have to pin the blame on someone else. God asks Adam, “What’s happening here?” Adam answers, “The woman you gave me (note that not only is Adam trying to pin the rap on Eve, he’s also trying to say to God, “You made her, it’s your fault!”) gave it to me and I did eat.” Then Eve blames the serpent and the serpent – an ancient symbol of fertility, healing, and sexuality – ends up on the ground eating dust and out to bruise their seed everlastingly. Later on, and we see the symbolism picked up even in Gibson’s Passion, the serpent becomes a symbol of evil. And, through time, we get the concept of “the tempter” or “accuser” (Satan) pinned on the serpent. Finally, we get down to our own age and “the devil made me do it.” The whole slippery slope begins with a matter of choice.

            The truth is Adam (ground), Eve (life) and the serpent are all creatures, part of God’s creation. Temptation, then, comes from within creation itself, not from outside, and it comes when the creature wants to take the Creator’s place. The creation God makes in freedom, reflection, and choice is to respond to the Creator in the same way (in fact those three elements are the basis of covenant relationship to this day, even in federal systems of government, like our own). When freedom, reflection and choice are turned to the wrong ends the chaos God had overmastered in the creative act thus threatens us again – this time from the inside out. The chaos is not out there, the formless void out of which God created the world. Rather, it is the formless void, the chaos, within that longs to be filled with something cannot fill it, that desires to be something it is not, because it is made only for God.

            If this temptation, chaos, threatens us from the inside, how do we deal with it? Here we turn to Matthew’s account in the Gospel of Jesus’ temptation. Here is the anti-type of the Genesis story of the “fall.” We need to remember a couple of things as we begin. First, Jesus and Adam are corporate personalities, in other words they represent more than just individuals. In fact, they both represent humanity itself. Second, we need to remember that the early church and Christian doctrine refer to Jesus as “the second Adam.” (Had we read the lectionary text from Romans today you would have heard that language in spades!) The first Adam was the beginning and the second the renewal of humanity in intimate relationship with God.

            Holding those thoughts in mind we look at Matthew. Now, there is a ton of symbolism here from the wilderness (which both represents the emerging garden and the place of Israel’s wandering) to the temptations themselves (which reflect on the Exodus experience of Israel and the “fall” stories, even the forty days and nights remind us of themes from the Exodus and Noah and more). Clearly, these are to tell us that God is doing something through God’s Son to reverse what had happened to humanity at its genesis. God is doing something new. Note what happens in each temptation, Jesus is offered a choice. The choice is the exaltation of self, to, again, pull away from the primacy of the relationship with God the Creator. Every time Jesus chooses to maintain the relationship, Jesus chooses to remain faithful to the God who is faithfulness itself.

            Jesus shows us a way of living in and for God in the moment. Adam and Eve played the “what if” game, the same game Jesus is tempted to play. “What if I was like God?” Instead of giving in and realizing – “their eyes were opened” – that the wrong choice has been made, Jesus listens to his heart and chooses wisely. Jesus is obedient and it is important that we remember that the root of obedience is listening. Jesus listens with the ear of his heart and lives in the moment with God. He doesn’t play “what if,” he enters the moment and experiences the full presence of the Creator.  We spend so much time playing “what if?” What if this situation were different? What if I had this or that? What if I could get this or that? What if I had said, or hadn’t said, this or that? I think that’s why Jean Pierre DeCaussade wrote his maddeningly powerful little book, Self Abandonment to Divine Providence, in which he talked about the “sacrament of the present moment.” We’re so busy playing those games that we miss the reality that God is underneath every moment of every day, if we took the time to look. We’re so busy playing the “what if?” game, so busy trying to be what we are not that we can’t be what we are.

            Obedience, listening, choosing to live where we are rather than always looking to the “what ifs” are difficult concepts for those of us living now. We have so many opportunities and possibilities – and we’re always looking for more. Perhaps what we need to learn is that to choose to be faithful to God as God is faithful to us is enough. Jesus certainly shows that way and, indeed, it is through him that we accomplish the task in our own lives.

            Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, is quoted in the Time issue I mentioned. He says this, “. . . in a world where anything is possible, religion can provide guidelines to those who are overwhelmed by an abundance of options.” [p. A48] The guidelines Jesus gave were to love God with one’s whole heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love our neighbor as our selves. In other words, we are to live toward the Other and others, moving away from self-centeredness.

            Our Lenten journey with Jesus offers many opportunities to exercise the right choices, to live toward others, and thus to grow in our relationship with God, neighbor, and self. If the temptation comes from the inside, so too will the means to overcome it come from the inside. As educator, philosopher, and Madison-dweller, Parker Palmer writes: “Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” [Let Your Life Speak, p.10] God calls us to listen, to listen with the ear of our hearts and to respond to what we hear and to become the persons-in-relationship God meant humanity to be. Our lives are a matter of choice, but choice need not lead to despair, to dread, or to guilt, or even to sin. Choice can lead to life and growth, wholeness and oneness with God and other and self, if we choose to live toward God and not toward our selves. Our life, our growth, our happiness are, ultimately, a matter of choice.