The First Parents Learn to See

The first thing the family had to learn, down in that hard place, was how to see.

In the garden, Adam and Eve had everything, and so they thought they needed nothing. We are rich, they could have said, we have need of nothing — and that was the only thing wrong with them. Not wickedness. Comfort. They were asleep in a beautiful room, and a person who has never lacked anything cannot yet know what they are. They could not see that they were not finished. They were like someone with their eyes still closed, standing fully clothed and calling themselves dressed, when the real clothing — the glory of knowing — had not been put on yet.

And the One who is the Beginning, the faithful and true witness, loved them too much to leave them asleep. He does not leave the ones he loves comfortable and small. So the choice came, and they took it, and their eyes opened — and the first thing they saw was the truth: that they were poor, and blind, and naked, and had only just begun. It stung. It always stings to wake up. But it was the kindest thing that ever happened to them, because you cannot become what you cannot yet see you are not.

Here is the pairing they learned, the second balance of God: truth and mercy, held together. Truth alone, with no mercy, is just shame — you see your nakedness and you hide, the way they hid. Mercy alone, with no truth, is the lukewarm sleep they started in — I have need of nothing — never growing, never waking. But God is both at once. He opened their eyes so they could see exactly what they were (that is the truth), and in the same moment he made them coats and clothed them with his own hands (that is the mercy). He let them see their nakedness, and then he covered it himself, so that seeing the truth would never have to mean despair. To know what you are and to be loved anyway, in the same breath — that is how God sees, and it is how he was teaching them to see.

And then the promise — the one this whole book is built toward. He said: I have been standing at the door this whole time, knocking. I never barred the garden to keep you out forever. I closed it so you could grow up, and I have been waiting on the other side to be let back in. Open the door, and I will come in, and we will eat together like family. And to the one who remembers, I will give a seat on my own throne — just as I remembered who I was, and sat down on my Father's throne. The same throne. The only difference is that he remembered first.

So the first parents began the long walk home — awake now, clothed now, able at last to see — knowing that the door was never locked from his side, only from theirs.