Genesis 3: The Fall
Part 4: Hide & Seek
Previous essays on Genesis 3:
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
So, lessee… they've been wandering around the garden without clothes for who knows how long, and they just realized they're naked? Maybe they thought they had missed the once-a-year sale at Target, or saw they were a bit chubby and GLP drugs were 4000 years in the future. And certainly their vision was excellent, so what is it about, “the eyes of both were opened”?
Hint: it’s not about vision, or clothing - it’s about spiritual revelation, conviction, and shame. They were naked because they had broken and destroyed their intimate relationship with God. They were uncovered because their sin and their rebellion was in full view. They were exposed because in their pride they had believed a lie, sought the power and autonomy of being “gods” and realized that empty promises had left them anxious, guilty, powerless, and hopeless. They had no defense against the righteous anger and judgement of God.
So they fashioned fig leaves.
They covered their shame with their own efforts, their own hands, their own solution. They lacked our modern conveniences, so they had no drugs, no alcohol, no social media, no money, no makeup or plastic surgery, no shopping or porno.
They tried their best with what they had on hand, to cover their shame.
So they fashioned fig leaves.
And a loincloth? Sex, the gift to enhance love and intimacy, to empower being “fruitful and filling the earth”, became something secret, hidden, dirty, and manipulative. Pornography, promiscuity, prostitution, hookups, rape, welcome aboard. Pleasure became its sole purpose, just another drug to kill the pain.
And they hid:
They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Hiding from God. Yeah, like that’s gonna work.
But we all do it, don’t we?
Ignoring our conscience to get what we want. Replacing prayer with preoccupation and frenetic pace and pressure. Neglecting Scripture for sports, or TV series, surfing, shopping or sedentary self-centeredness. Shutting out the soft voice of the Spirit with the chaos of constant noise, busyness, and distractions.
Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?”
God knew exactly where they were, and what they had done. Why did He ask? It was a call to honesty, to transparency, to repentance and forgiveness. It was grace in the face of sin.
“I was afraid…” Fear. Not fear of the Lord, the sense of awe and wonder to which we are called in Scripture. But rather the fear of God’s anger, the fear of judgement, of death, and perhaps worst of all, the exposure of his shame.
That’s at the core of everything we do, isn’t it? Shame. We spend our whole lives hiding it, denying it, seeking solutions in counseling and pharmaceuticals. We cover it with the fig leaves of fashion, the endless pursuit of youth, appearances, pretense and people-pleasing, drugs and depression. It touches every aspect of our lives, from childhood to our death beds.
And none of these succeed. When all is said and done, we are left with the emptiness, the hopelessness, the anger and resentment that we are in fact not gods despite our self-deception, but creatures deprived of the one solution for our nakedness: a restored relationship with God, who loves us without limit, and who alone can salve our shame.