Origin Story #13.1 of 21:

The two become one flesh… both naked, and were not ashamed. (Gn 24-25)

Our origin story informs our sexuality. The creation hymn, majestic and worshipful, rejoices in how we are to “be fruitful and multiply”. Now the Garden story, fills in the details: “The two become one flesh… both naked and not ashamed.” In sexual intercourse, two connect into one flesh. If all goes well, this sexual union will result, with the help of the Lord, in the one flesh of a new born child.

In popular culture, it’s thought that the eating of the apple brings about sexual awareness and delight—as if God is prudish and Satan is fun. But in our origin story, this graphic and robust sexuality takes place before sin and sin’s temptations enters the story. There’s nothing prudish about God’s good creation. Adam and Eve were “both naked, and not ashamed.”

Neither are ashamed. There’s freedom and mutuality. Though the woman comes out of man, she is not man’s doing. He’s asleep. She is God’s idea. She is God’s doing. She will always remain God’s creature. She must be received as a gift. The only proper response of drowsy man is to break into a love song in praise to the Creator for such a breathtaking gift: “This at last is bone of my bone…”

The next love song we find in the Bible comes outside the Garden where sin is having its way:

Lamech said to his wives:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;

you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say:

I have slain a man for wounding me,

a young man for striking me.

If Cain is avenged sevenfold,

truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold." (Gn 4:23-24)

Sin takes the good things of God’s good creation and bends them away from God and claims them for one’s own purposes. In Lamech’s world, women are no longer seen as God’s gift, but through power and intimidation, women become an object that Lamech claims for himself—for his own use. He takes and uses. Like King David, when he saw Bathsheba bathing: “He took her …and he lay with her.” He’s king, and that’s what kings do.

Maybe circumcision, that strange mark God asked of those who first knew our origin story, has to do with man’s sexual claim to power. In circumcision, this problematic organ that can cause so much trouble, is cut back. Something of that Garden nakedness is to be known within the sanctity of marriage where the other is seen as God’s gift and never as one’s own possession.