Shame and the Blame Game

In these past couple weeks, we've watched as human history derailed from the path to a blissful destiny, only to become a slow-motion trainwreck. Into paradise slithered a serpent, and Genesis laid out for us the dynamics of deception. Plus, our desires have power to lure and entice our wills. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life – these add up to a love of the world that competes with love for God, making our hearts contested terrain.

Last week, we left off at the exact moment it went truly awry. Corrupted intellect and perverted will gave birth to evil action. The woman reached out to snap a piece of fruit off of the tree that represented our one lawful limit; she ate what she sacrilegiously stole; she then offered some to the man, and in a shocking twist, he imitated her – 'monkey see, monkey do' was his childish impulse – and ate, totally disregarding what their LORD God had said to them. Now the pair of them were partakers together in this unlawfully assailed tree and its dark sacrament of forbidden knowledge.

And with that, a change took place. The serpent had told them both, “In the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened” (Genesis 3:5). And, sure enough, “then their eyes were opened” (Genesis 3:7). But it isn't what the serpent led them to believe. Their new knowledge reveals conflict, confusion, chaos. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle warns that the more precisely we know a particle's momentum, the less precisely we can know its position. What the serpent failed to mention was that this tree makes us 'knowers of good and evil' only at the expense of becoming unknowers full of uncertainty. Humans no longer have the luxury of just taking the world as it is. Their minds are churning, souring, as badness stares back from every bush.¹

The grand insight to which their eyes have been opened is this less-than-heartwarming realization: “they knew that they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). Why couldn't they see it before? After all, when the LORD God made humanity, in one sense we were more naked than any of our fellow mammals (Genesis 2:25). But in another sense, the psalmist reminds us that the LORD “made us a little lower than heavenly beings, and crowned us with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). Among Israel's neighbors, divine images – whether idols or kings – were portrayed with the god's glory radiating from their heads; that's what a crown was there to symbolize.² What the psalmist might be saying is that Adam and Eve's heads were “surrounded with a brilliant, dazzling light which was a physical manifestation” of the LORD God's own glory, thus clothing their nakedness with majesty.³

If so, then now this glory has fled away, their light has died, and they see themselves and each other cracked open and leaking purpose. Hence, for the first time, they see themselves reduced to a bare natural condition, like shaved chimps. Shorn of glory, they see themselves in the naked light of day, where they can really scrutinize themselves for the first time. And so begins the first voyage of self-discovery.⁴ The trouble is, they actually do 'find themselves.' Now they're self-conscious, subjects of their own sustained but uncertain introspection. They have a new capacity to not just feel good about themselves, but also to feel bad about themselves. What before was innocent nakedness is now shameful baldness, born in loss and defeat and failure.

With this newfound power to judge, we have the ability to judge ourselves faulty and feeble and foolish, to feel a divorce driven between our reality and our requirement.⁵ And so, at some fundamental level, the human is now alienated from himself, swept up by the discovery of an inner warfare of the flesh against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).⁶ If a human can judge himself, then surely he can judge and be judged by others. Other humans, even those who are 'one flesh' with you, can see you, judge you, diminish you. It used to be that this total transparency toward each other was a gift; but now it feels like a mugging.⁷ To be so exposed to another's gaze feels like being defined, captured, enslaved – an existential assault.⁸

It's not just in their heads, either. To be exposed as naked means to be made powerless and poor; to be stripped of identity, status, honor; to be devalued and degraded in the sight of oneself and others.⁹ So, thanks to this new knowledge, humans are humiliated by the collapse of their once-lofty dignity. Before, in having nothing but God to their name, they had more than the world could hold; now they know they've lost everything.¹⁰ They are, in more ways than one, dis-graced.¹¹ With the loss of grace, guilt and shame have now invaded paradise.

What's worse, each human has just proven to the other that he or she is willing to transgress boundaries – so how can he trust her to respect his boundaries, or how can she trust him to respect hers?¹² Even to be naked in nature is to contend with sharp rocks, poison ivy, insects, beasts; how much more being vulnerable to people? “Such is the evil that sin is,” it's said, that “not only does it deprive us of grace from above, but it also casts us into deep shame and abjection, strips us of goods already belonging to us, and deprives us of all confidence.”¹³

Tragically, the ironic opening of their eyes to their shame was the last action they take as “the both of them.” Now, too ashamed to speak, they begin to work separately but in parallel. “And they sewed...” (Genesis 3:7). It would be easy to miss this, but sewing isn't something people do bare-handed. To sew, you need a needle, don't you? Where's that coming from? This calls for “the first human invention” – and not just any invention, but one that pierces, that pokes holes in God's world.¹⁴ A fitting metaphor for what they've done to themselves.

And what they sew together, using I-don't-know-what, are fig leaves they find nearby. Fig leaves, can be over nine inches across, usually have five lobes, and have a sandpaper-rough upside but a soft and hairy underside.¹⁵ But, vivid green as they are, once the humans yank them from their tree, they're cut off from life and fruitfulness. They're doomed to decay; everything until then is just running out the clock on rot. Also a disturbingly fitting picture for the state the humans have seized for themselves.

So the humans “sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves girdles” (Genesis 3:7). This is the first time in the Bible the word 'make' has somebody other than God for its object.¹⁶ The first human act of making is to make a concealment, a way to disguise the naked truth. In a world of shame, we constantly trade in disguises, trying to gussy up our shortcomings as other than what they are.¹⁷ To that end, what we made are girdles, belts (2 Samuel 20:8; Isaiah 3:24). Skimpier than a bathing suit even after today's fashions, such a thing as the sum-total of an outfit barely passes as a token gesture toward either modesty or self-protection. Stitching leaves into a jockstrap – oh, how absolutely godlike!¹⁸ It closes us off in a way we were never meant to be, yet we treat it as a natural cost of our begrudging coexistence.

What's more, fig leaves sewn together aren't going to last long; and once they shrivel and decay, nakedness will just reassert itself, the problem once more staring us in the face.¹⁹ They must realize they'd have to make a new one every few days, meaning their pitiful attempts to disguise their shortcomings are going to keep occupying monumental amounts of their time and energy.²⁰ And we haven't stopped. How much time and energy does the human race waste in fashioning fig leaves for ourselves, over and over again? What about you and me?

Eventually, they hear “the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the wind of the day” (Genesis 3:8). He regularly came to the garden for fellowship with these creatures who bear his image, and ordinarily this would've thrilled their hearts, a cue to run toward the sound of the LORD.²¹ But this time their hearts don't thrill. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). In the aftermath, God looks like a threat, a danger, perhaps even an enemy. So they react to his presence with dread, fear, aversion. Rather than open themselves to their Lord's stormy care, rather than hurl themselves into this oncoming hurricane of divine love, rather than submit long enough to let God blow away their guilt and shame, they yearn to get away, to save themselves from the risk of salvation! How foolish. Yet how typical of us.

And so, in the last thing the human pair does as a 'they,' they hide. They seek shelter from their Father God in the midst of the garden's trees, the very same trees he planted for their nourishment and delight and blessing.²² What we see here is an ugly-stupid picture of our desperation to make the world not a site of encounter but a shield of avoidance, to flee deeper and deeper into created things for an impossible escape from their Creator – and seeking “the creature rather than the Creator,” Paul reminds us, is the seed of idolatry (Romans 1:25).

Left to our own devices, we each run and run and run, scouring creation for smaller and smaller places to hide, shriveling ourselves to fit our fears, our restless hearts too caught in their own inertia to ever reclaim rest.²³ We'll run to tireless artifice, achievements, accolades. We'll run to sports and games, adventures, amusements. We'll run to affairs of the heart and pleasures of the flesh. We'll run to family and friends. We'll run to politics, to philanthropy, even to religion. Whether we hide from God behind stained glass or at the bottom of a bottle makes little difference in the end. “The farther man withdraws from God, the farther still he desires to withdraw.”²⁴ So we'll run when we're out of steam. We'll run beyond our last breath, run till we're nothing. We'll run all the way to hell to hide, if we have to, despite its patent pointlessness: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

And so now, to that end of calling us to give account, the LORD God speaks, his first recorded words since the commandment. Like the serpent, he asks a question, one meant this time not to manipulate but to give voice to “the cry of a broken heart.”²⁵ He's not come to lecture them, yell at them, denounce them. He's filled with deep concern, like a parent rushing to the side of a collapsed child. His questions are an opportunity, an invitation to confess, to repent, to be forgiven.

Question 1: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). “God knew where Adam was, but Adam didn't.”²⁶ In his effort to hide from God, this man has lost track of himself, of his own place, of his own soul. He's sleepwalked his way to a pit without knowing it. As much as he may now know good and evil, he no longer knows himself. His journey of self-discovery has left him further in the weeds and further in the dark. And he is us. The only cure is self-examination: Where are you? In all our pride, do we even know where we are? Or are we in the dark as to our position? Are we close to God, are we creeping to the margins, or have we strayed even to a far country? Do we present ourselves to him in the open, or is there something we're still hiding our sensitive bits behind? And how is it we got here?²⁷

The man should've shouted, “I'm fallen and need rescue, that's where I am! I'm in sin, I'm in shame, I'm in sorrow, and I hope, O God, I'm in the path of your mercy!” Yes, even still, he could've taken the initiative to nakedly present his lostness to the LORD. But he responds as we do: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). It's just nine short words in Hebrew, “the stiff-armed response of a man trying to barricade himself.”²⁸ This nakedness to which he confesses sums up here everything that now makes him unfit for God's presence, unfit for God's garden, unfit for God's world.

I can almost hear the pain in God's voice when the second question comes: “Who told you that you're naked?” (Genesis 3:11). Who made you feel ashamed of yourself? Who dared ruin your innocence? Who robbed you and left you in dirt and blood and woe? Why are you wallowing in this muck that's so beneath you? Who is it, exactly, who opened up for you this gulf that now gapes between us?²⁹ It wasn't God who created the distance, not God who caused the ruin, not God who authored the shame.

Then follows, hot on its heels, the third question: “From the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, have you eaten?!” (Genesis 3:11). The tone is one of absolute heartbreak, as though born from disbelief: “The one and only thing I said no to, the one thing I banned for your own good... seriously, you did that?!” If God were a man, this is the part where he'd rend his garments, don sackcloth and ashes for us, and wail in lamentation over our choosing sin over his perfect love. And this threefold barrage of questions is, make no mistake, the relentless pursuit of God's love for his prodigal sons and daughters.³⁰ So here God pauses, yielding the floor, making space for us so we can share his shock and sorrow over sin. How much swine-slop do we have to slurp down before we spit sin out? Will we come to our senses and run home to our Father, even if only at the last hour? What will we say?

We reply – we have no choice but to give account – and in this scene, every word the humans utter is... 'true.' But true words don't add up here to a whole truth; they're sewn together like the fig leaves, artfully arranged to obscure.³¹ What ought to happen is full confession, not just of an act, but of an act as sin. We shouldn't minimize our culpability. Rather, we should own and disown: own up to what we've done (“Yes, that happened; yes, I caused it; yes, I am the responsible party”), and disown it as an act which was wrong (“No, it oughtn't have happened; no, I was not in the right; it's something I'd like to have not done”). We ought to embrace God's attitude as ours, ought to take up God's point of view. “No one can be justified from sin unless he has first made confession of his sin,” as sin.³² Then, and only then, can healing begin.

That's not what happens. Before conceding that he ate, the man will rationalize why he ate, claiming all the extenuating circumstances and exculpating factors he can imagine. Earlier, he waxed poetic in celebrating his wife: “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2:23). Now that same beloved wife is cast off as a burden and an imposition, a cancer in his bone and in his flesh. It's as if he says: “God, it's her fault! She was so alluring and charming and irresistible; she'd already eaten and seemed fine; we're one flesh, acting as one, so once she'd acted for that one flesh, how could I do anything but follow along? I was peer-pressured by the only peer I've got. So yes, I ate – but I ate because she ate, I ate because she gave. And if she hadn't given, I wouldn't have eaten. So don't look at me, God; look at her! I accuse her!”

As if it weren't enough to begin the stupid trend of men shaming and blaming women for their own failures at self-control, he objects doubly to the gifts he's received: not only the woman's gift to him, but God's gift of the woman to him. “The woman whom you gave to be with me – she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Indirectly, the man blames God for the man's own sin.³³ It's like he's insinuating: “She gave me the fruit, but you gave her to me – well, didn't you know women are only trouble? You presented her as my helper, so really, in taking what she gave, wasn't I in a way trusting you blindly, trusting that what you gave me would always be a true help? And if that blew up in my face, then whose fault is that really? So yes, I ate – I ate because you gave me a defective helper, who hurt me with her poisoned gift. I'm a victim of the system! So don't look at me, God; go look in a heavenly mirror!”

God could, at this point, tear through the countless holes in the man's story. Instead, generously, God does turn his attention to the woman, giving her the opportunity to confess that her husband refused. But she rationalizes just as much as he did. She doesn't hit back at the husband who just threw her under the bus – that won't work – but she points the finger at the now-silent snake. “This serpent came along with blasphemies, God, and I had only the best of intentions, to defend your good name! But who prepared me to face a criminal mastermind? I was out of my depth, I hadn't a prayer. I was seduced, corrupted, deceived, tricked, tempted. How could I win? My decisions were all downstream from these alien thoughts sown in my mind like tares among the wheat. So I plead an insanity defense. Yes, I ate – I ate because this creature of yours cornered me, blinded me, turned my thinking upside-down. If he hadn't deceived me dizzy, I wouldn't have eaten. The devil made me do it! Don't look at me, God, look at him!”

Both their answers are off-base. But are they really any different than what we constantly do, to God and to others? We, too, evade questions. We, too, make excuses. We, too, pass the buck. We, too, play the blame game. Out of an instinctual awareness of our naked vulnerability, most of us find it a lot more comfortable to try to justify ourselves rather than step into the light with our guilt and shame and weakness. So our pride incessantly “tries to shift its own wrongful act to another” – another person, another cause, another situation, another explanation.³⁴ “The desperate human need for self-justification,” it's been said, “blossomed instantaneously and never has left us, except with divine treatment. Perhaps more than any other perverse human 'need,' this one splinters relationships, often rendering them (absent divine grace) beyond the possibility of repair.”³⁵ And so, rather than admit our shame, we accept separation from ourselves, separation from each other, separation from God.³⁶

What we've had in today's passage is a painfully cutting study of what sin is like from the inside: guilt, shame, fear, avoidance, excuses, accusations – anything but what's good for us. This “new fear and tension,” this turn from mutual cherishing to mutual blaming, this spiteful aversion to God, adds up to this truth: sin yields, every time, a “reduced quality of human life.”³⁷ There's only one cure for that alienation, and one of the studies I read sums it up beautifully: “As the light of God's word reveals our transgressions and we sense greater depths of our shame, we may feel overwhelmed. But your sin does not overwhelm Christ. … The very reasons you think he should depart are the very reasons he tells you to come.”³⁸ Ain't that the truth!

I'll let the Apostle John, then, have the last word: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is Love! And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:15-16). “Abide in him so that, when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (1 John 2:28). “By this is love perfected in us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:17-18). Amen.

1  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 89.

2  Catherine L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden: The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:25–3:24 in Light of the mīs pī, pīt pī, and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 159-163.

3  Catherine L. McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden: The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:25–3:24 in Light of the mīs pī, pīt pī, and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt (Eisenbrauns, 2015), 164-170.

4  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 67.

5  Tremper Longman III, Genesis, Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 65.

6  Augustine of Hippo, City of God 13.13, in Works of Saint Augustine I/7:78-79.

7  Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 46.

8  Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan Academic, 2022), 148-149.

9  David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (IVP Academic, 2000), 25.

10  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 65.

11  Augustine of Hippo, Literal Meaning of Genesis 11.31 §41, in Works of Saint Augustine I/13:453; cf. Paul O'Callaghan, God's Gift of the Universe: An Introduction to Creation Theology (Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 334.

12  J. Richard Middleton, “Reading Genesis 3 Attentive to Evolution: Beyond Concordism and Non-Overlapping Magisteria,” in William T. Cavanaugh and James K.A. Smith, Evolution and the Fall (Eerdmans, 2017), 90.

13  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 16.19, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:220.

14  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 90.

15  Badii Gaaliche, Diganta Nazary, Mehdi Ben Mimoun, and Ali Sarkhosh, “Taxonomy, Botany, and Physiology,” in Ali Sarkhosh, Alimohammed Yavari, and Louise Ferguson, eds., The Fig: Botany, Production, and Uses (CABI, 2022), 18-19.

16  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Corrupting and Redeeming Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 70.

17  R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, 2010), 92.

18  Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 254; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 76.

19  William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder (Oxford University Press, 2010), 86.

20  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 123.

21  C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R Publishing, 2005), 174.

22  Mitchell L. Chase, Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall (Crossway, 2023), 96.

23  Patrick Henry Reardon, Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis (Conciliar Press, 2008), 44.

24  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 3:9, in Luther's Works 1:173.

25  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 126.

26  Patrick Henry Reardon, Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis (Conciliar Press, 2008), 44.

27  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 92.

28  Mitchell L. Chase, Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall (Crossway, 2023), 97.

29  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 17.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:227-228.

30  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 17.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 74:222.

31  Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory (Ignatius Press, 2022), 47; cf. C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R Publishing, 2005), 174.

32  Ambrose of Milan, On Paradise 14 §71, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 42:350.

33  Augustine of Hippo, On Genesis Against the Manichees 2.17 §25, in Works of Saint Augustine I/13:88.

34  Augustine of Hippo, City of God 14.14, in Works of Saint Augustine I/7:121.

35  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 131-132.

36  Paul O'Callaghan, God's Gift of the Universe: An Introduction to Creation Theology (CUA Press, 2021), 335.

37  Chris W. Lee, Death Warning in the Garden of Eden: The Early Reception History of Genesis 2:17 (Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 28-29 n. 36.

38  Mitchell L. Chase, Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall (Crossway, 2023), 105.