or more aptly titled: my struggle to follow Jesus

We’re beginning an experiment here, and for the sake of sense and some semblance of organization, I will try to do this as uniformly as possible. These posts will come each week on Saturday (maybe more frequently if I get a wild hair or feel like a break is necessary).

I am doing a chronological reading again, so the books of the Bible won’t always come in order.

Immediately below is a key, a legend, if you will, of the way I’ll lay this out each time.

Summary: This is just what it says: an exceptionally brusque summary.

Tidbits: This is interesting or odd things I notice or have noticed before (both processed and unprocessed, with more of the latter than the former).

Thoughts: This will contain actual formed and processed thoughts.

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Aside: The last time I read through the Bible, I did it in the New American Standard Version. This time I am reading through in The Message. I will probably have times where I quote from it (and perhaps other translations/paraphrases). If you don’t like The Message, that’s fine, but I won’t be debating the merits of which version to use in this forum. We can have that conversation another time.

…

Here goes nothing.

Summary: Genesis 1-11

Genesis covers a lot of ground very quickly. So, deep breath, here goes…

We start in the beginning. God made the universe (which includes time as we understand it). He was there before it. God made the earth, sun, and stars. He separated the waters and made land. He made things to inhabit the land. Then He made the crowning jewel of His creation: Man (used in the overarching general mode meaning humans, not in the sexual/gender-specific mode). He made man in His image. But He only made one, incomplete on purpose. Then once the man was aware of his need for companionship, God made woman (well done, God).

Adam and Eve were placed in charge of the creation. Take care of it. Eat, enjoy, but don’t touch this one tree and it’s fruit. You can have anything, except that. You eat, you die.

Along comes Satan disguised as a serpent. He convinces Eve that God is tricking them, and she tries the one thing she wasn’t supposed to. Then takes it to Adam. OOPS! Now they see they’re naked.

They cover up and hide when they hear God coming. God knows what they did. He asks them anyway. Everyone blames someone else, and they are banished from the garden, condemned to live mortal lives.

They have two boys, Cain (the older) works the ground, and Abel (the younger) keeps livestock. Cain gives to God from his crops, but Abel gives God the best from his flocks. (Note the difference there is not in what was given, but the quality/priority.)

God is more pleased with Abel. Cain is jealous. Cain kills Abel. God banishes Cain. (Do we see a pattern here?)

Then a bit of genealogy to let us know who the descendants of Cain are, as well Adam and Eve have another son, Seth.

Then more genealogy = from Seth’s descendants comes Noah.

At this point Noah was basically the only good guy in the world. God lets him know and tells him to build a giant boat. Noah starts building the boat. Takes him about 100 years. The flood comes. Noah and his sons and all four wives (Noah’s and his sons’) get on the boat with pairs of every kind of animal.

Everything on earth (outside the boat) dies.

After almost a year Noah is able to get out of the boat. Noah and his family start the world over. God makes a covenant with Noah to never destroy the whole world by flood again (rainbow).

We get some more genealogy to let us know where all the “ites” come from, then the massive amount of people (from said genealogies) start to build a tower together to show their own amazingness (yes, that is a word… it is now anyway). God is frustrated with their independence and self-absorption, and confuses them. He creates multiple languages for them, and forces them to spread out.

One more genealogy for good measure, and we’re to Abram (eventual Abraham).

Tidbits:

Did Eve not immediately recognize her nakedness when she ate from that tree? Why did she not see until Adam did?

Adam and Eve must have had more kids. Cain gets married. Not sure how all that works, but they all lived such a long time who knows…? Cain could have married a sister or cousin.

Enoch (and I quote) “walked with God. And then one day he was simply gone.” He didn’t die. God just took him.

Can you imagine living as long as these people did? Methuselah = 969 years. Imagine all the things he saw. Imagine the wisdom he could have had. We think people who live to be 96 or 97 (and are still coherent) possess something special.

Thoughts:

We all love to play the blame game. It’s much more fun to deflect than take what’s coming to us.

It’s not surprising (though I wish it were) that Adam and Eve both immediately tried to blame someone else for their poor decision-making. We all possess this innate “self-preservation mode.”

No one is immune.

Even my perfect children are, at times (though few and very far between), prone to blame the dog or each other for their bad decisions. I know it’s tough to believe, but they do. Me too. Sorry to burst your bubble.

We all do. Something is coming down the pike, something failed at work, something didn’t work out as planned, or maybe we just did something we knew not to, and our first instinct to to try to find a way out.

And the easiest way out? Pass the buck.

“Well, if upper management would just get me the tools I need…”

“If the deadline was reasonable…”

“If he/she hadn’t said that…”

“If there weren’t so many rules…”

And the funniest part? We will blame anyone and anything. Person, animal, object, place, weather… It doesn’t matter as long as it played some minuscule part.

From “the dog ate my homework” to “traffic was terrible,” we love to shift the blame.

The cool part (this is always the cool part) is that God has given us the ability to overcome ourselves (fully when we trust in Him, but even in part on our own). We can turn off, or at least override “self-preservation mode.”

While sinning or choosing wrongly is fairly unavoidable, we can begin to rectify the wrong choice with the right one.

Take the blame.

Take responsibility.

Own up.

Confess.

We don’t like that last word. The other phrases sound at best heroic and at least responsible.

But confess? Ew… Now I sound like a criminal.

But I am. Breaking the law makes me a law breaker. That’s what it is, and confession is the only way we can begin the journey back to where we need to be.

We never hear much more about Adam after that moment of nakedness in the garden. We know he and Eve were banished from the garden, and his work of the soil would be difficult where it wasn’t before. We know they had more kids (at least one), but that’s it.

Genesis 5:5

Adam lived a total of 930 years. And he died.

That’s it?!? And he died?!?

I always wonder, when the Bible leaves us up in the air about someone, if that really was it. Was there no more to Adam’s story? Did he leave the relationship with God fractured at that point and just move on?

“Sheesh. This was all Eve’s fault, or at least God’s for putting her here. And I got punished?!? Lame.”

Could that have been the summation of Adam’s life? The effective end of his real relationship with God?

Or did he, at some point, confess to the mistake? Did he own up and begin to journey back to the best relationship with God he could muster?

If you were someone God wrote about, how would your story finish? Would it be like Adam’s?

I hope my story ends like Enoch. Although it was brief, the Bible leaves little doubt about what kind of man Enoch was.

Genesis 5:24

Enoch walked steadily with God. And then one day he was simply gone: God took him. (MSG)

Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (NASB)

Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away. (NIV)

I sincerely hope my story can end as well. Maybe it won’t end exactly the same way, but I hope that there is more written about me than how many years I lived.