Among the many striking realizations of my new foray into fatherhood is my daughter’s innocence of the world. She has no inkling that things ought to be thus and not so, that this is right and that wrong.
Nakedness is a case in point. So far, my daughter lacks any sense of value attached to nakedness (very convenient, given the size of our apartment!) At most she knows that Mom and Dad seem to find it necessary to force her into various brightly colored, soft coverings—sometimes multiple times a day!
At some point, however, this will become an issue. Probably before it does for her, being naked around her will feel inappropriate, and I will feel the need to cover up.
This realization reminds me of Genesis.
Genesis 2:25 reports that the primordial man and woman “were both naked...and were not ashamed.”
As we read on, however, we learn that after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” (3:07)
According to the Genesis account, knowledge of nakedness first comes with knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong. And this knowledge awakens shame.
Whatever your beliefs about the story’s historical veracity, it seems to me that this particular insight is certainly true. We all recapitulate such a fall from innocence to shame, and it always comes with a sudden realization, an infusion of knowledge that we have something to be ashamed of.
More interesting, however, is God’s response to his creatures’ sudden awareness of shame. He never once tells them they’re right to be ashamed of their nakedness. His concern is that they now know they are naked—and think they know what that means. Eating of the fruit has indeed opened their eyes, but it has more importantly emboldened them to pass judgment on what they see, to decide that they ought to be ashamed of their nakedness.
It is with good reason that God forbade his human creatures from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Such knowledge, the capacity to judge between right and wrong—and the right to exercise it—belongs to God alone.
This might sound quaintly antiquated to modern ears, as it seems to rob us of one of our most prized capacities as enlightened humans. But even a brief review of our history as a species will lend at least a little credence to the idea that precisely this assertion of the right to judge lies at the root of our deepest conflicts. The fact that the US Constitution allows for amendment of its laws is a humble acknowledgement of this reality.
But as enlightened moderns we cannot accept that there might be anything or anyone beyond us with the right to perform this function for us. So we go on judging, carving up the world into so many binaries: right and wrong, good and evil, pretty and ugly, true and false, praiseworthy and shameful. And we go on fighting with each other when our judgments don’t agree—at turns more or less brutally.
One day my daughter, too, will learn to judge. She will lose her innocence and join the fray, celebrating her "well-informed" view of the world and earnestly believing that she is right—as we all do.
But one of the reasons I will try to teach her my Christian faith is to chasten this tendency, to make her pause and consider the possibility of a higher Authority, a Final Judgment. If nothing else, perhaps these considerations will make her a better person, more humble and open-minded in her dealings with others. Perhaps she can avoid some of the mistakes of her forebears, simply by knowing that she might be wrong about what’s what.
* OK, so this post is more than 500 words. Turns out the ethos of this blog is very difficult to realize!
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