CREEDE HINSHAW: An exploration of temptation

Last week, I observed a confirmation class at the church I attend. This boisterous and enthusiastic group of a dozen 6th graders will spend six months meeting weekly to explore their faith, culminating in a decision when each adolescent will decide whether to profess his or her faith openly in Jesus and join the church.

Those 11 and 12 year olds are still young enough to wave their hands wildly in the air every time the leader asked a question. The sight of a dozen flagellating arms accompanied by the sound of a dozen voices pleading to be selected was such a contrast with the reticent teenagers these precious children would soon become.

The lesson was on Jesus’ relationship to the Trinity, a topic that I daresay would baffle any adult class of Bible students. These students stuck right with the topic, although one question that had nothing to do with the topic left me intrigued and puzzled.

“How long were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they ate the apple?”

My first reaction was relief that I was not the one being questioned! The class leader noted that somebody somewhere probably knew the answer to the question and the class moved on.

But I didn’t move on. I was hooked.

I knew that there was no real answer to the question. Genesis 2-3 does not portray that kind of specificity. One could quickly dismiss the question by saying, “Nobody knows.”

But such a dismissive reply would be wrong. The real topic this child was exploring was temptation. How long does it take before temptation is introduced into a situation? How long before a person succumbs to temptation? Can one successfully resist temptation for all time?

The question sent me back to a pleasant re-reading of Genesis 2-3, the timing of which is left to one’s imagination. How long did it take God to create every living animal and bird and bring them before Adam to name them? How long did Adam dwell happily with the animals before he realized he still needed a partner? How long, after Eve’s creation, did she and Adam dwell naked and unashamed in the Garden before the serpent appeared? Did the serpent succeed with Eve on his very first conversation or after a lengthy series of enticements? Finally how much time elapsed between the serpent’s conversation and Adam and Eve’s fateful bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? The text is silent.

It would be interesting for a class – 6th-graders, teens or adults – to put themselves in the Garden and try to answer these questions: Would you have recognized the serpent as tempter or mistaken the serpent as friend? Would you have held out at length before chomping the fruit or would you have immediately bitten? Are you a pushover or a determined resister? As John Wesley asked his followers on a weekly basis: what temptations have you had since last week and how have you succeeded in overcoming them?

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].