The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame—Moses, Genesis 2:25, New International Version
The Earth is never going to come across another you in its storied history. You only have one lifetime to live, and the Earth only has one lifespan to see you dazzle. So give a performance worthy of the ages—Author
God treats every one of us as though we are the only ones in His world—Author
I was thinking maybe you should come with me
You just play your song, and I’ll accompany
Always knew the greatest things in life are free
So I invested my money in your company
Like where you wanna go girl, I’ll take you there
Let me put another flower in your hair
When I’m with you, I can’t even have a care
Take all of my soul, I’m not afraid to share—Forrest Frank, Your Soul
I can see Your heart, eight billion different ways
Every precious one a child You died to save
If You gladly chose to love them, so will I—Hillsong Worship, So Will I (100 Billion X)
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is towards me—The Shulamite, Song of Solomon 7:10, New King James Version
Let us imagine a scenario where Adam and Eve were allowed to enter a time travel machine to go to the future before the Fall took place. Let us also assume that they went to twenty-first-century society. What they would have seen would be an intense cultural shock.
There are many things they would struggle to understand or even conceive of. The technological gadgets at our disposal that make life a convenient luxury for us, the imposing, high-rise buildings that indicate the power of the human intellect would have never come to them in their wildest dreams. The presence of hospitals and the sound of music—a noisy place far different from Eden’s tranquillity—would be too uncomfortable. And where did all the animals go to? Many other things would leave them heartbroken—inequalities in class and wealth, the prevalence of death and disease everywhere, poverty, the use of drugs to get high, the way everyone is fixated on sex, broken marriages, and vices too numerous to count. But the eyes of our forebears would have widened when they saw two things—the fact that we eat meat and wear clothes.
But while our behaviour to them might seem strange—why people are weirdly moving their fingers across a flat object at perfect angles for instance—they had an eccentricity that immediately put them out of place in their world today. Such behaviour is illegal. It is a sign of social decadence. If you were a parent with a child, you would have told the child to steer away from the weird couple and even close their eyes when you see them.
As pre-fall Adam and Eve navigated the world in their wonder and amazement, these unsophisticated and simple people would be walking around butt-naked. And this is where our differences really come into sharp focus. While we wear clothes to hide our bodies and showcase our beauty, Adam and Eve need no clothes; the beauty itself comes from nakedness. While we blush at immodesty and call it immoral or rebellious, nakedness is part of the lifestyle of Adam and Eve, and it comes with no apologies. That is because nakedness is a critical feature of their identity.
When God created the first humans, He did some unique things not seen in the other creatures. For one, He made them individually and separately, but not together. This observation is something Jewish teachers and rabbis point out as noteworthy, because it defines how God sees every individual. If you read Genesis chapter 1, you will see that the plants and animals emerge as a group of individuals at once. These individuals bear the same physical features to the point that they look like identical twins. You cannot tell one from the other. Therefore, if one is killed or taken away, it would not affect the integrity of the species as a whole because each individual is dispensable. You can do without them because they all look the same. Not so with humanity.
On Adam's creation day, he came into being in the innermost darkness, where only Father, Son, and Spirit were present. It was such an intimate moment for the Triune God because when God created Adam, it was only him and his Maker. That event did not take place in a mass factory where companies produce similar vehicles in large numbers. No, it was only one Adam, for all times.
And it begs the question: if God created Adam without having any form of identical replacement on the ground, what would happen to humanity if the lone man were to die? Before Eve entered the picture in Genesis 2, there was no other person in Eden. Unlike the rest of the animals, whose individual disappearances might appear insignificant to the survival of the species, the death of just one man is a big blow to the human race. There would never be another person like him—his personality, voice, laugh, physical appearance, voice, smile, interests, talents. From the dawn of time to the end of civilization, there would never be another. God can do many things we cannot even imagine, but He cannot create the same human being twice. Just like us, Adam was a rare breed, a collector’s item worthy of being in the trophy room of divinity.
In other words, an attack on Adam—and indeed on every individual human—is an existential threat to humanity. There would not be another one. Here is why the Jews and Christians place so much value on human life. It reveals why those subtle insults we make about someone’s personality and body are un-dignifying. It explains why murder is so devastating to the heart of God. As we were not there while the Lord was forming the parts of any human and gave life to them without our contribution or input, it is not for us to choose to take a life, whether ours or that of others. For all the conversations and debates of suicide, euthanasia, and abortion in the West today, God takes every human life seriously because they came from His hand, as His intellectual property. Their coming here might have been unplanned by the parents or may have been in the most terrible circumstances—like the presence of congenital problems—but it was ultimately God who let them come. And for that, they deserve to live. We mean a lot to God. As far as He is concerned, every human being—you and me included—is the last of its kind.
Have you wondered why Adam happened to be sleeping while God was working on Eve? The sleep was so deep that he did not move throughout the process. The Bible does not say how many hours God spent making Eve, but Adam slept like a patient in surgery. But here is another possibility: what if Adam was awake after God took his rib and started working on the woman? Well, I cannot speculate, but I am inclined to say he—as characteristic of all humans—would have started giving God all kinds of suggestions, specifications, and recommendations to God on how she should have come. But again, this was not his office. Creating a human is one of the most intimate activities God can ever engage in.
The Bible suggests that Adam did not tell God he wanted a woman or even had a checklist to determine what he wanted in the first place—tall, olive-skinned, long hair, short nails, pink lips, curved hips, slender waist, and high intelligence. So when he saw the woman who was a gift from God to him, he had to accept her for who she was. That would be reasonable; how many times has God taken time to meticulously create someone for us that we would now say we don’t want?
When the first man and woman saw themselves for the first time, what would they have thought? Would Adam have wished Eve to be a bit shorter? Would Eve have expected an Adam with more muscle? Would Adam have wished she bore his resemblance? Or would Eve be bothered by his dentition? Which one did Adam prefer doing: cuddling lions or smelling flowers? Instead, they both saw nothing but differences.
As humans, we have a habit of constantly connecting with people like us in some way or form. The things that bring us together are the things we share in common. It is easier to strike up a conversation between two people if you are both K-drama fanatics (who’s a Lee-Minh Ho fan here?), crushing over the latest trending celebrity, both like food, follow Christ (a son of God is my brother by default) or following the same football club (a fan of Manchester United is my friend anytime, any day). Books that talk about developing social skills mention that we should look for something people have that we share to strike up a relationship with them. Friendships are born and sustained by common grounds. People who have the same job, same ideological and political views, same interests, same hobbies, are in the same season of life—about to get married; political revolutionaries; undergraduate students in a university; just getting children —are always going to congregate around themselves because they have shared experiences. These commonalities enable us to understand and connect with them well enough to create the seeds for a friendship.
That has been the norm from the day societies developed and will continue until the consummation of history. All relationships start from a common ground and gradually graduate into a tribe, community, or clique. In the clique, members get preferences and attention that strangers are not privy to. You are not as likely to help a hungry beggar on the street as you would be inclined to pay for your struggling friend’s bills, and that is not because you are a heartless person, but the stranger does not have enough of his presence in your life to elicit your help as compared to the friend. We are always attracted to people of our kind, and they become the object of our affection and attention. We accept them because they are like us.
But Eden operated on a different principle.
Before Adam fell into a God-induced deep sleep, he was very busy at work. A typical day in the garden consisted of the following activities: regulating how the animals were behaving, how to use their abilities for the good of the garden, trimming the grasses and shrubs, planting some crops, discovering two things about Eden, defending the garden from any perceived threat, and thinking of how to spread Eden into other unexplored areas and uncharted territories. Being the manager of the garden was not a small occupation.
Nevertheless, it was a sweet job. The man could hear the serenading voices of the birds as they chirped for their Maker, be amazed by the graceful majesty of the lion as he walked, feel the warm, soft rays of the sun on his back, and be wide-eyed in amazement at the different beautiful structures God had made—the geysers, intimidating rivers, waterfalls and so many other things. I am sure that every day he spent working in the Lord’s garden would have so overwhelmed him to give thanks to God. But there was an issue; the man had a God to thank but no other person to cherish these moments with.
The way God created Adam was that he was supposed to be a relatable being. Being an image of a tri-personal God (just another way of saying God in three Persons) who was in eternal, intimate communion with Himself, man has ingrained with him a desire for relationships. To receive and give love in reciprocity. But humans were created to relate on different levels. At one level, he was the head of all creation. That means everything on this planet was subordinate and accountable to him. Since they were animals and not people, they could not relate to him on a personal level. Secondly, if the animals could talk and think, they would have likely held him in high esteem; they were not created to see his flaws. That naturally prevented them from really knowing Adam. At the other extreme, he was a creature designed to worship a Creator who transcended him in every sense of the word.
For instance, what moves you towards gratitude because you have food on your table? Why do you think it a small thing to thank God because you are healthy?
On December 24, 1968, the crew of the first American astronaut team to walk on the moon, Apollo 8, held a television broadcast. The shuttle-dwellers had a message for the world. One out of every four persons across 64 countries watched the broadcast; that is roughly a billion people. What did they say? They brought out a piece of paper and started reading it. But this was not just any paper. Written in the text was the message they wanted to declare to the universe and to the earthlings watching below; it was directly taken from the book of Genesis. So they started with the history-setting words, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," and read it all the way to the tenth verse.
They were millions of kilometers away from the Earth and had seen things that even the most visionary prophet will never see till the day the Lord calls them home. And they were so struck by the breathtaking beauty of the universe that they concluded that this was the handiwork of an unbelievably intelligent God. But how did they even have the sense to conclude that God was behind this?
Somehow, we have the awareness that the good things we receive are neither deserved nor come to us by our power. We have the capacity to take note of the beautiful, the commendable, and attribute it to a Divine being. So when we give thanks, we acknowledge that we enjoy these things because there is a Being up above who is so intimately acquainted with His works that He knows their needs and is so good that He delights in loading us with daily benefits and gifts.
This attitude of gratitude is a part of the fibre of our being, as Homo gratitudinem. It cuts across all generations, ages, and nations. It is so strong that we find it weird, pitiable, deluded, and even defiant if someone acts like he is self-made. This inability to be grateful is one reason why atheism is a sad religion. The unbeliever has no God to thank for the good things that come his way.
In giving thanks, we perform our roles as the creature towards a kind Creator. There are many things to say about the Creator-creature relationship that are beyond this written piece. But the point is, we were created to know our God and fellowship with Him as a creature. Deciding not to do that is the spiritual version of suicide.
Yet, as beautiful as this relationship is, it is just not complete.
I want you to do something. Think of someone who answers the questions I am about to throw at you. When you take pictures and videos of yourself, who do you send them to? I am sure you don’t take pictures and content for nothing. When you wear that new dress for the first time, and feel like you are killing it, who do you have in your corner to hype you and say you look gorgeous or dashing? Who is around to see your tears and bear your pains? When you get that landmark job, that certificate, hit that exercise milestone, and that accomplishment, who is around to celebrate your success?
Who do you constantly talk to about how your day went? When you watch a movie, read a tweet, watch a comedy skit, read a book, or hear something new, who are you so eager to share this with? When someone offends you or behaves inappropriately towards you, who is there to fight for you and defend you like a loyal dog to its owner?
When you have something going on in your mind, and you feel like you are the only one thinking this way, do you have a listening ear nearby? When you make your plans, who is your partner-in-strategy? When you fall, who do you call to raise you? In your deepest struggles, who do you confide in? Is there anyone who knows of the fears that ravage your heart? When you face the demons and struggle with addictions, who is out there to hold your accountable? Are you such a person who does these things for your people? Do you have a community that makes you belong?
If you are the hyper-spiritual person, you will likely say God to all the answers, and that is true. But it is incomplete. God can do these things, but it would not effective if He did not place you in a community of people. And I reckon that names would start popping as images in your mind as you read question after question. That is exactly the point.
Now let us go back to Eden and ask an unmarried Adam these same questions and hear his thoughts. His bewildered look would have let you know that he was utterly alone. And it is sad.
Until Eve came, the man had nobody to share his vision, dreams, concerns, burdens, and problems with. When he saw something that elicited wonder, there was no human around to share his surprise. There was no one to create memories with. He rode on the backs of elephants with no one alongside to form new experiences. He had never known the feeling that comes with a human hug when skin touches skin tightly. He did not know what it meant to be corrected because there was no one to call him out for his wrongs. His heart had never leapt from being with someone who blew his mind away.
He had no one to think of giving an apple to. No one to watch together what the birds were singing about or the utter ease of the monkeys as they swung around trees. Yes, God was up there, but Adam had no one to exchange ideas with and have the meaningful conversations that keep us up at night, even when we know it’s past bedtime. He had no one whose presence was so sweet and soothing that he would rather skip work to be with this person. While the animals played in their groups and did their thing, he had no one that made his existence meaningful. There was no one around to make him feel like he belonged here.
Being alone, Adam had no community to celebrate yearly events and traditions. The things we take for granted in our relationships that make human life rich were non-existent to Adam. Indeed, Adam was someone to be pitied. God was not joking when He gave His commentary on Adam’s situation, saying, “It is not good for man to be alone.”
So yes, he had a God to worship and serve. But being human, he was designed to show love and give love back to people of his race who could estimate the extent of his love and willingly shower their love on him. Without being with his fellow people, there was no way Adam was fully expressing his humanity. And that meant the world had never met the real Adam while he was alone because there was no one to show himself to.
So what does God do? Create his “Ezer Kenegdo.” These two words appear in Genesis chapter 2, and they mean ‘helpmeet.’ The word ‘Ezer’ indicates the kind of assistance or aid, which comes from a strong person. In the Bible, the word is usually associated with military aid—sending soldiers to help a friend’s chances of winning a battle, strategizing, helping to train soldiers, or sending weapons. In such a scenario, you do not receive military assistance from someone who submits to you—that is subservience or giving tribute. You seek assistance from a person who is either your equal or superior to you. The person can choose not to help you and would not be weakened if he did not give you. They would also probably be doing well without you. But the assistance they render is something you lack and that is why you need them.
Picture a case of an entrepreneur seeking capital from an angel investor to improve his business. The investor does not need the enterprise—he is already very successful. And dropping the money would likely not put a dent in his finances, so it would not hurt him. He might even choose not to benefit from giving you the money. It is the businessman who needs the money and requests for help. That is ‘Ezer’ at work.
But ‘Kenegdo’ is more difficult to interpret because it is a complex word. It combines two words together. Kenegdo consists of ‘ke,’ meaning ‘like’ or ‘as’ and ‘negdo,’ meaning ‘correspond to,’ ‘opposite,’ or ‘against.’ That means they share something in common but, at the same time, have very prominent differences that they cannot sweep aside.
In other words, God was giving Adam a person who was every bit his equal while lacking what he had and having what he lacked. They complemented themselves like a hand fit a glove. With her in his life, things were going to become more dramatic.
Adam might have called the woman the “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones,” but I reckon he had no idea how different they were when he uttered those words. Oh, he didn’t know what type of package he had just received from Divinity.
So Adam saw Eve and broke into poetry. In calling her his missing rib, he knew they had the same nature. They had eyes, a nose, hair, skin, the same number of legs and arms, a back, an abdomen, a beating heart, and a working mind, and were both God's image-bearers. Finally, he had someone to connect with as a human. There was no experience or feeling he had been through that she could not relate to. But as they spent more time together, he would have seen many differences that would have both scared and excited him simultaneously.
Now he had someone he could do all those things with, but Eve was also her person. Like her man, she had her concerns, desires, interests, pursuits, and behaviour that were fundamentally different from Adam's.
As his complete opposite, the woman and her husband had physical, emotional, mental, behavioural, and perspectival differences. They thought on two completely different wavelengths, even though their thoughts had the same biochemical processes behind them. What one was weak in was masked by the strength of the other. They fit each other like a jigsaw puzzle. To Adam, Eve was his missing piece and the other half.
However, this partnership could only work if both parties acknowledged and respected their differences. That means they could not see the opposite as a threat, requiring it to be changed because it was unprofitable. They had to understand that that made the person tick and relevant. They needed to see that the presence of the other was for the benefit of the whole. Adam was never supposed to see Eve’s perspective as challenging to his position and authority. In fact, with the way God made them, he needed to discuss his plans and problems with her to get the whole picture and make informed decisions. Our strengths have a way of inducing selective blindness. Our perspectives naturally make us oblivious to holes and gaps that another person with a contrasting perspective will naturally notice. Ignoring that and being one-sided can lead to peril.
It only takes a humble heart lacking insecurity and ego to accept this and value the person for their contributions.
Herein is a paradox of humanity. We may be the image of God, regulated and bound by a universal moral code that reflects divinity and may have the same physiological, psychological, and biochemical processes working to sustain our bodies. We may be subject to the laws of nature, but none of us are clones. We are persons with a will, intellect, personality, memories, logic and emotions that get stirred up for different reasons and are applied for diverse pursuits, purposes, and interests. We are persons made by one God, yet with a different visage, that each of us can equally say, just as the patriarch Jacob called his brother “the face of God.”
What is so captivating to me might be boring and dull to another person. What someone treats as sacred enough to ritualize may be another person’s common thing. What may be someone’s once-in-a-lifetime experience is another person’s daily routine. What is a memorable date to me might be a monotonous day for any other person. The differences are what make the human race not a species in the spiritual sense but a society of individuals that play out the movie of the universe, suitable for God’s viewership. A community like that can only thrive if tolerance and acceptance are the norm. So what would happen if the two decided not to work with their differences? The Fall.
So, it is a paradox indeed. On one hand, Adam had someone just like him—skin, arms, ears, nose, a beating heart and an image-bearer of God. Someone who could understand him as a human being and was an equal in all respects. But yet, she was completely different—her personality, perspectives, way of thinking, and interests. To get the richness of the relationship, Adam needed to be Adam, and Eve needed to be Eve. This is what it means to be naked and not ashamed.
It means being willing to reveal everything about oneself to the other without fear of condemnation. It means being willing to show the bare soul and not feel bad for doing so. It means showing the good, bad, ugly, and goofy to a person without fear of weaponization. It also means being willing to receive everything about a person and accept them for who they are. There is the ease that comes with being accepted and fitting in. And that is a product of vulnerability.
Regardless of what creation thought of Adam as a strong, dependable, capable human being, Eve’s opinion of him was what truly mattered. She was the one who knew him for who he was.
It was Eve who could see his scars, fears, problems, and the challenges that gave him sleepless nights and questioned his intelligence. Eve was the one who saw those silly mistakes Adam made that the other animals were blind to. Eve knew his secrets. But as she saw Adam in full display, there was no bone in her to condemn or think low of him; she was also prone to falling, being human. Instead, they worked together on the relationship and the assignment.
Vulnerability sets the foundation for the deepest and most intimate relationships humans can ever have. It precedes true love, trust, and stability. There is no need to try to please someone by doing things that do not come from your soul because you are accepted for who you are. That's what families do, right? For love is really about accepting the differences of the other person.
We tell ourselves to find our kind of person—and this is good advice—but are we ready to see and love their differences? Real love desires to see the total package. It never suppresses but encourages, even pushes us to express our individuality. That was how Eden worked.
Adam and Eve were free to be themselves. They presented themselves to the other fully and with the assurance that they would not be condemned for the differences that were part and parcel of their identity. Differences that they could not change. No one would tell them that their emotions were a mistake, or that their logic was a curse. When the other noticed an excess in one person, they took it seriously. There was no gas-lighting, no twisting of fact, or distorting reality. All that played was the drama of love. It is in Eden that “happily ever after” really exists.
So yes. If Adam and Eve came here with their fully exposed bodies, they would be very out of place in our time. We would call them lunatics. But they would not likely be concerned about that, insofar as Adam had Eve and Eve had Adam. The world may burn, but they were with the one their hearts beat for. That is bliss.
Is this a beautiful thing to think about? Yes, it is. But then again, you might ask yourself: “Okay, this is wonderful, but our world does not look anything like the Eden you have been talking about. In today’s society, where fickle relationships characterize our generation, where did we go wrong?”
Two reasons are sufficient for an answer. The day the first man and Eve were no longer satisfied with their finite imperfections and desired to play God and the day these same people felt something God never created them to feel: guilt. That, my friend, is the next direction for our journey.
Recommended Readings (if you would like to pursue this subject further, you should try the following materials):
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—The Great Partnership
Os Guinness—The Magna Carta of Humanity
Patrick Lencioni—Getting Naked: A Business Fable (this is an unusual selection because the book was written within the context of business, but Lencioni’s message and principles are thoroughly biblical and countercultural, which is what we stand for).
The Meaning of Marriage – Timothy Keller
I came across this wonderful research article by the National Geographic Society on what happens to people who fall in love and how they respond when heartbreak occurs. Really, we were made for relationships. You might find it beautiful indeed, for only a brilliant God could orchestrate this. So here is the link.
So I have a very healthy hobby of downloading pictures of animals and space to appreciate God for the way He designed the universe. I have never been to space before, but seeing the pictures, I cannot imagine the awe those astronauts while in space. So come behold the work of his hands. All pictures were taken from CNN.
The Heavens declare the glory of God
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Unimportant Information:
So a few days to the release of this post, I experienced something like a mini-intellectual crisis. My mind was blank for days. I came across a piece of information that countered what I had believed to be true and it was very difficult to reconcile them. It seriously threatened my releasing this post, and I found myself lamenting to my friend, Pastor Farinuola Emmanuel, about my confusion. Telling him about my problem was very therapeutic because it made me see how to resolve the issue, which I did. It’s funny and also fulfilling to have something like a human ranting table, and he plays that role wonderfully, even though he is very busy. As a matter of fact, he has never shushed me. I think something is honestly wrong with me if his phone does not have at least ten messages from me in one day. So yes, I appreciate him in my life. He reminds me to be that person to others as well.
Homo gratitudinem is Latin for ‘The grateful human.’
I should appreciate a friend of mine called Marvelous Iyun. Right from the first post, she has read every one of them faithfully and always releases snippets of the writings with enthusiasm. I find it weird. Some days, she enters my DM and asks when the next post would be ready. She seems more interested in the posts than me. It’s amazing and very touching to have someone this concerned, and this is my little way of appreciating her. It may be little to her, but it is an ocean to me. So thank you Marvelous.
Truth be told, this specific post was not planned. It was never in my sights or my content calendar. But while working on the “Naked But Not Ashamed I” post, I reached out to a friend, Olusanjo Oluwatimilehin, about her thoughts. I felt that she would have something to say about it. I did not have enough time to pick her mind, but she said right from Adam and Eve, we have constantly been battling with the issue of vulnerability. That unlocked an idea for me to exploit, and this is the result. I am aware that the posts of a writer are never completely his ideas. He borrows from concepts, from observations of life and people, and from conversations with humans. This is a way of giving credit to whom it is due. So thank you Timi for those few words you said. I’m grateful.
Mind blowing sire 🤯
I never knew something like this existed on this space .......well concerning this article, it actually changed my perspective in regards to so many things.....well I would say to life in particular.......Thank you very much sire I spent close to two hour's digesting this with my dictionary 😀
This is really insightful, intriguing and beautiful.I couldn't stop reading till I got to the end and after I got to the end I still had to confirm if I really had gotten to end of this work. Thanks very much for writing. I had an amazing read. And, yes, I plan to re-read this again when I'm less busy. One can't get enough of the amazing insights in it at one read.#my opinion though.😌
Lest I forget, thanks for this line. It serves as a reminder to us.
"we were created to know our God and fellowship with Him as a creature"