“Let’s get back to Eden.” These words didn’t originate with me but were written by legendary gospel songwriter, producer and artist, Donald Lawrence.
Growing up, I heard this song constantly on the radio and at local church services during the offertory appeal. I was so enamored by the music that I didn’t bother paying attention to the lyrics or the theology behind it. I was just in love with the music that caused me to sway from side to side in what we call the “Baptist rock.”
As I grew older, I began to pay more attention to the lyrics. The moment I did, I erupted because I couldn’t understand what “let’s get back to Eden and live on top of the world” meant.
My first instinct as a Baptist preacher was to interrogate it.
What on earth does this mean?
How in the world could I get back to Eden?
Why would I want to live on top of the world?
I was at a crossroads until my professor, Dr. John W. Kinney, unpacked cosmology in class in a way that very few have ever done. Dean Kinney, as he is affectionately known, begins by suggesting two essential pillars.
First, “Creation is an act of divine release for the living empowerment of all.”
Second, “In creating humans in the divine image, God calls us to life-giving responsibility. Many times, when we think of creation, we’re prone to think about what some have deemed ‘The Fall.’”
But why not start with God and the sustaining principle established for creation and life?
In creation, God is the greatest giver because God gives life to all life. God gives power not marked by being “over” but among.
This is life-giving power. God isn’t intimidated by the life-giving power given to creation.
God created humans and charged us to be life-giving, not death-dealing. Hence, the original command, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
This isn’t necessarily a biological charge alone but a command to be like God, who gives of self to bring forth life. Dr. Kinney states, “To be fruitful is to experience the gift of life from the life giver and to live to give.”
This all shifts when the snake presents a paradigm that is, in fact, death-dealing. It suggests that God is over you rather than walking with you, and that God desires to “keep you in your place.”
We all know the story from there: the lie prevails, and humanity is distanced from the God who once walked with them.
Adam and Eve went from being “naked and not ashamed” to hiding themselves from the presence of God, from union with God to being alienated from God. Now, humanity is swallowed up by death, division, coercion and intimidation.
We began free in our authentic being (bodily, mentally, emotionally, and sensually) but now feel the need to repress who we are at the core. “Domination is divinized, superiority is sacralized, and stratification is spiritualized,” Dr. Kinney teaches. Hence, hierarchy enters the world.
Humanity embraces what Dr. Kinney calls “snakeology,” where we are so invested in the lies of the snake that the life-giving power of God isn’t enough. The snake introduces duality or a split between the body and the spirit, the sacred and the secular, the “church” and the “world.”
“But does the bad have the last word?” James Cone asked. The answer is no, which means there’s still hope!
The beautiful thing is that sin cannot remove the seed of God within you! I love how Paul gets it right this time by saying, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”
Or, as I’d like to say, nothing can separate us from God’s life-giving essence. Isn’t this what Jesus came to remind us of?
“Let’s get back to Eden,” where the creator is with us and not against us, where the mandate for humanity is one of mutuality and cooperation rather than intimidation and manipulation. Let’s get back to Eden, where Eve wasn’t marked as “secondary” but as necessary.
Let’s go back to Eden, where we aren’t ashamed of our bodies, for they are a testament to God’s ever-living, ever-loving, ever-present Glory. Let us go back to the place where black women aren’t what Zora Neale Hurston calls “the mule of the world” and men aren’t marked by their means to provide and protect.
Let us go back to Eden, where a child is indeed a gift from God and not an uneasy yoke. Let us go back to a place where all of us are truly loved and embraced by God and each other.
Whether male, female, nonbinary, impoverished, young, or “seasoned,” whether one has a Ph.D. or GED, let us embrace ourselves and each other as God already has. Let’s get back to Eden!
