NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews/ 27 March) — Adam and Eve were the most unfortunate of human kind.
They had no biological parents. They had no grandparents, no relatives, and no neighbors to relate with. Thus, love, whether filial, platonic, erotic or whatever, was beyond them.
They were also sadly deprived of childhood. They had no friends and playmates to experience the joy and thrills of youthful adventures or misadventures. Thus, they experienced neither broken bones nor broken relationships.
Adam and Eve had no misfortunes, no accomplishments, no memories to treasure, no nothing. The life they lived was totally bland and colorless.
But God is a self-correcting creator. When He noticed that Adam was terribly lonely in Eden, He created him a partner. When He noticed that they were not doing anything to increase their kind but were simply eating and sleeping in the garden, He gave them sex. This He did by allowing them to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. He opened their eyes and revved their desire to crave for each other to produce their kind. God thus was spared from the tedious routine of continually molding dust to form humans again and again to increase their number.
The fall in Eden was God’s way of reprogramming the nature of man: From a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge; from being dependent and submissive to being willful and decisive; and from being a plain user of creation to being a productive creator himself.
Truly, man was created in God’s own image. (MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental, Philippines.)
