Pushing the Limits
Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17, 3:1-8
Pushing the Limits (2012), a young adult romance novel by Katie McGarry, has received several accolades from critics and readers. It was a 2013 ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Readers and was also short-listed for a Reviewer’s Choice Award by RT Magazine and a Goodreads Choice Award. Pushing The Limits: Book 1. No one knows what happened the night Echo Emerson went from popular girl to the outsider, even Echo can't remember the whole truth. But when Noah Hutchins, the smoking-hot loner explodes into her life, Echo's world shifts in ways she could never have imagined.
September 13, 2020
1.Excuses
The Irish author Frank McCourt tells of his experience teaching English at a rough-and-tumble public high school in Staten Island. After he had been at the school for a time, he began to collect the notes he received from students excusing their absence or their inability to complete an assignment. Those notes supposedly were from a parent, but they were clearly forged. But that’s not what intrigued McCourt. What interested him and why he saved the excuse notes, is how wonderfully written they were, far superior to any other writing his students would do. He writes, “If [their parents] could read those notes they’d discover their kids capable of the finest American prose: fluent, imaginative, clear, dramatic, fantastic, focused, persuasive, useful.” And here are some of the excuses he collected:
“The stove caught fire and the wallpaper went up and the fire department kept us out of the house all night.”
“Arnold doesn’t have his work today because he was getting off the train yesterday and the door closed on his school bag and the train took it away. He yelled to the conductor who said very vulgar things as the train drove away. Something should be done.”
“Her big brother got mad at her and threw her essay out the window and it flew away all over Staten Island which is not a good thing because people will read it and get the wrong impression unless they read the ending which explains everything.”
McCourt reflects, “Isn’t it remarkable, I thought, how they resist any kind of writing assignment in class or at home. They whine and say they’re busy and it’s hard putting two hundred words together on any subject. Why? I have a drawer full of excuse notes that could be turned into an anthology of Great American Excuses.”
One day McCourt gave his students an assignment. He wrote it on the board: “An Excuse Note from Adam to God” or “An excuse note from Eve to God.” He told his students that they could start their essays in class and finish them at home. He writes, “The heads went down. Pens raced across paper. They could do this with one hand tied behind their backs…. The bell rang, and for the first time in my three and a half years of teaching, I saw high school students so immersed they had to be urged out of the room by friends hungry for lunch.”
That assignment prompted the most imaginative and expressive writing he had seen from his students. They came up with some brilliant excuses for Adam and Eve.
McCourt reflected on his desk drawer full of excuse notes. I wonder how big that drawer was. And if that drawer was big, I wonder how big the drawer God must have to hold all of our excuses.
Humankind wasted no time before making excuses for our behavior. According to the biblical account, among the very first words spoken by a man or a woman were words of excuse. God asked Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Adam responded, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.” God then turned to Eve: “What is it you have done?” Eve replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” From the very beginning, we’ve been practicing our excuses and casting blame.
2. Purpose
So how did all of this get started? Well, God places the man in the garden “to till it and to keep it.” From the beginning, humans are made for a regular rhythm of doing work that has meaning and purpose for the good of creation along with regular periods of sabbath rest and enjoyment (Genesis 2:2-3). While there is great freedom for the human (“you may freely eat from any tree”), the garden also contains one boundary that restricts the human. God decrees the first biblical law (eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the consequence of breaking the law (immediate and certain death “in the day…you shall die [the Hebrew is emphatic–you shall surely die!]” (Genesis 2:17). While there is permit, there is also prohibition. The primary human task, a task we share as partners, is to find a way to hold the three facets of life together, purpose, permit, prohibition. The prohibition makes sense only in terms of the other two.
Sometimes we do better when we know what’s expected. There is certainly a train of thought that believes that with little expectation comes greater freedom. I think it might well be the opposite. I think there is greater freedom when we know the expectations; when guidelines are established, when a code of behavior or civility or ethic is communicated.
It has been said that without clarity, commitment wanes.
3. Distraction
Maybe that’s the approach of the serpent, to muddy the waters, and challenge the clarity of the purpose, permission and prohibition.
The serpent is a very clever “that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). The serpent is one of God’s own creatures who simply poses some questions and alternative explanations concerning God’s motivations in creation for the humans to consider. A new agenda is introduced. The prohibition which seemed a given is now scrutinized as though it were not a given but an option. The serpent twists the story enough to miss the point. The distortion opens up an alternative. Instead of trust and fidelity, we have analysis and calculation. The givenness of God’s rule is no longer the boundary of a safe place. God is now a barrier to be circumvented.
At any point in the conversation, the humans could have told the serpent that he was full of it and to please go and bother someone else. But there was something already in the human that resonated with the suspicion that the serpent offered as one option for interpreting the words and actions of God.
The serpent and the woman engage in conversation, she takes and eats the fruit, and she gives the fruit to “her husband, who was with her” all along! God had earlier observed that “it was not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Likewise, in Genesis 3, it was not good that the woman should be alone in fending off the serpent’s temptations and suspicions about God’s motivation for restricting the humans’ access to the forbidden fruit.
The man failed to speak up, to speak out, and to join the woman in an alliance against the serpent’s attempt to appeal to the suspicions and yearnings that somehow were already within the humans’ heart.
Genesis 3 is less about “explaining” the origin of sin and more about describing the reality of what it is to be human and our mysterious human tendencies to continually rebel against God, to resist the gracious boundaries and limitations that God places around us for our own good, and to desire to be like God rather than thankful creatures of God.
God made us to serve and protect the great garden of God. But we would rather control and plunder and take over, forgetting that God is Creator and Sustainer of all.
4. Disconnection
The couple stands exposed. Beyond the safe parameters of purpose, permission, and prohibition, now having taken life into their own hands. The prohibition is violated. The permission is perveted, the purpose is neglected (Brueggeman).There is no mention of tending and feeding. They have no energy for that. Their interest has focused completely on self, on their new freedom and the danger that comes with it.
The power of guilt, shame and blame takes on its own life. It works its own destruction and causes Adam and Eve to hide.There are so many I’s. I heard, I was afraid, I was naked, I hid I ate. Their focus is not on the Gardener and the Gardener’s purpose, permission, prohibition. The focus is on I. Instead of tending the creation, the energy is spent on excuses and covering up the shame.
We don’t have to look far to find examples of how our life together is undermined by the refusal to accept the gracious limits of God’s truly liberating grace. How often we have found that what we thought we would gain from overstepping boundaries, asserting self-will, denying restrictions, actually ends up hurting and restricting us and others.
5. Restoration
But the Gardener cares for the garden. Everything hinges on that. The voice of God presides over the entire garden and will not yield the garden, even to the most crafty of creatures.
But when the facts warrant death, God insists on life for creation. The cursed ones are protected. God does for the couple what they cannot do for themselves. They cannot deal with their shame. But God can, will and does. They are clothed and restored to relationship.
This is what we find in Jesus, who came to be with us, save us, forgive us and reconcile us to God. Then Jesus gave us our purpose – love God and love neighbor. Jesus gave us permission to live abundant full lives in perfect love which casts out fear. And to trust the prohibitions, the boundaries.
Along the journey of learning from and following Jesus, we discover that excuses have no place in the Christian life. As Christians, we don’t have to make excuses. Our justification is God’s work. Our forgiveness comes from Jesus. And our purified life is of the Holy Spirit. We are free to recognize that we are not perfect people. We can do that because we rely on the perfect love of God. So the Christian alternatives to excuses are confession and forgiveness.
I don’t know how it is with you, but sometimes I am tempted to throw some excuses in with my confessions. “God, here’s what I did and I’m really sorry, but let me tell you why I did that. I had my reasons. Everyone has his reasons.” But that’s not really a confession, is it? Author Kimberly Johnson advises, “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” That’s good advice that applies to confession as well: “Never ruin a confession with an excuse.” We can afford to do that because we rely on the forgiveness of God.
How big is that drawer where God keeps our excuse notes? It’s got to be really big. But this is also true: it is not as big as God’s capacity for forgiveness.
Next time a crafty messenger seeks to muddy the clarity of God purpose, permission and prohibition, respond with a few personal questions:
- Is there any unconfessed sin in my life?
- Are there unresolved conflicts in my world?
- Are there any unsurrendered worries in my heart?
These questions require truth, instead of excuses. These questions take us out of hiding and engage us with the God who from the beginning has tended to our lifeand the life and well-being of all creation. The sooner we can trust the Creator and receive the forgiveness of our Savior, the sooner we can be about our purpose of tending to, blessing, and protecting the lives of those entrusted to our care. The sooner we can put our energy into doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God. That a far better use of our energy than carefully crafted excuses.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Pushing The Limits Human Body
They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.