Genesis 1 & 2: Why We Must Get This Right

I have often wondered about the stranger the first human encountered when God presented the woman. What must the man have thought of this person that looked so different than him? She was a stranger. Stranger is inherently a scary word. When we meet a stranger, our intuition and analytical thinking systems work hard to assimilate new information and assess safety at the same time. I was wondering completely wrong.

Evangelical church teachings, often delivered by male preachers, emphasize this strangeness or difference—particularly sexual difference—between these two. A common, albeit offensive, interpretation involves the man exclaming "WHOA-MAN!" upon seeing the woman, usually, and unfortunately, accompanied by gestures emphasizing her curvaceous physical features.

“This interpretation is not only highly offensive, but also unbiblical and irresponsible.”

It’s a lazy misinterpretation which establishes hyper-sexuality of women as foundational theology. It also undermines the equity that is actually being established in these first two chapters of the Bible. These two things (hyper-sexuality of women and lack of equity between human beings) are insidious interpretations in the Evangelical Church and are ultimately responsible for rendering the Church impotent (or unfruitful, but the pun was intended).

Let’s look closer at what is actually happening.

In Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good for the human being to be alone…” But God doesn’t immediately make another person! What does God do?

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.” The LORD God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. Gen 2:18-19

By bringing the different species, God had the human look closely at differences of species, and in doing so would have made salient the sameness in the gender pairs. God anchored the human in the sameness of each pair of creatures. Therefore, when the human saw that each creature had a “same” partner, the human realized it didn’t have a same corresponding creature.

God created a longing in the human being for a same parter: The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal; but for the man no helper was found corresponding to him. (Gen. 2:20)

So, when the human wakes up as a man from a surgery where God created a woman partner, the man exclaims, “Finally, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” Or, in other words, “You’re the same as me inside and out!” He recognizes the sameness in the woman. She is familiar…not a stranger. God primed the man to see the woman as the same human form.

We have been taught this passage completely wrong.

“The implications for the correct reading of this passage are massive!”

It is not until after the fall that we begin to see our differences, “Who told you that you were naked?” “Who told you that you were anything other than my beloved image bearers?” “Who told you there were differences to judge as good or not good, or more valuable or less valuable?”

How good is our God to prime the human in this way to meet his partner? I believe God’s true intentions were for all humankind to see our sameness in one another—to recognize the familiarity of our humanity, not the strangeness in gender, race, or any other difference.

A true and honest interpretation of Genesis 1&2 demands an understanding of equal partnership among all humanity in our universal vocation and purpose:

To cultivate, care for, and fill the Kingdom of God.