Naked

I started reading Searching for God Knows What not too long ago. It is a bestseller written by a Christian author named Don Miller.

Many sections in the book made me pause, mark the page, and think about whatever the author was presenting. I definitely find the book presenting many thought provoking ideas. A few chapters in, he starts to talk about human relationships – with each other and our relationship with God. He called that chapter “Naked”. And not to anybody’s surprise (I’m sure) that title made me pause briefly and chuckle – yes I am a 7 year old boy.

At the beginning of the chapter, Miller talks about the story of Genesis –or the beginning of time. He talks about a place called Eden, which was where Adam lived. Adam was the first and only human being on earth at that point in time. I have always kind of viewed him as a lucky guy, someone that lived the “good life” for a bit, until he decided to screw up.

But that’s not how people viewed him back when the story was written. See, the way that people 4000 years ago wrote their stories was different. They jammed a ton of information into a few short sentences. The story of Adam and Eve was carried down from generation to generation orally. So when Moses came to write it, he assumed that his audience knew all the contextual and cultural background stuff that went with the story to make it more colourful. All of this to say, I always thought Eve appears magically into Adams life a couple of days after God noticed that he was bored. When I think about the story that way, the only thing that comes to mind is: “that is not fair”. Adam never had to wait for anything. God just catered to him like he was special or something – and I am sure he was a very special guy, don’t get me wrong.

Well, the issue for me here is not Eve or how fast she appeared onto the scene. If I want a girlfriend, then I would get one – plenty of Eves around in this day of age. But the idea here is waiting. I am fully aware of the fact that I have talked about this idea previously, but Don Miller made me think about it again. When God noticed that Adam was bored, God told him to go name all the animals. If you look up how many animals there are on the planet, it is something between 50-100 million animals. If you believe in evolution, then that is between a million and 50 million. That is a lot of name-dropping. It is estimated that Adam had to wait a hundred years before Eve came along. Long, lonely and sexless hundred years.

Naturally, this wait period made Adam appreciate, love, and treasure Eve - when she finally appeared. It made him realize that whatever he was waiting for was worth it. I want to be the kind of guy that has the same attitude about waiting. I want us to be a generation that believes that waiting is good. Instant getting is bad – think about instant coffee, for example – and that whatever we are waiting for, will be worth the wait.