What if God was one of us? In the Beginning, he was — and it didn’t go well

In Genesis 3, God walks among creation, until the humans start wearing clothes.

Genesis 3:8: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

One imagines the God of Genesis 3:8 strolling through the coolness of the Garden of Eden, eating one of the good apples and looking for his two humans. Utopia was a nudist resort, and God was there for it.

Literally. Not inspiring man or acting through women, but walking among them like he built the place.

God expects to find Adam and Eve naked, and blessedly unaware of it. Just the way he made them.

But something has changed. When he hears them, they hide. Odd.

“Where are you?” God asks in Genesis 3:9.

“I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked,” Adam says.

“Who told you that you were naked?” God asks. “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

God’s questions were perceptive. They’re also telling.

“Who told you?” means God knew his people were malleable to rumor and manipulation. They didn’t know to wear clothes. They had to have been told. It’s just a matter of who told them.

In asking that question, God shatters two myths: Eden as an idyllic place, no worries except for disobedient humans, and God as all-knowing.

Even in the first days of the world he made with his own hands, God knows one of his animals is sowing dissension.

How could this be, in a perfect world?Adam and Eve ate from the tree, yes. But the serpent planted a seed of doubt. All three are beings God created.

In asking whether Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God is asking whether they have fallen.

Are his people merely listening to others, or acting on what they’ve been told? The God of Genesis 3:11 is the questioning husband asking whether his wife is just texting with that guy, or actually seeing him. He’s a slob, like one of us.

Adam was history’s first snitch

In the Christian tradition, God is often presented as omniscient, a global Saint Nick who knows if you’ve been bad or good.

But the God of Genesis 3 walked Eden among his people, and had to ask about events he didn’t witness personally. If God was one of us, he’d be jealous and suspicious, no different than you, or me, or the stranger on the bus.

Genesis 3:1 depicts the serpent as “more crafty than any of the wild animals,” but man had been given dominion over all animals, wild or otherwise.

How could a wild animal, even the craftiest, outsmart a man and woman created in God’s image?

What are we to make of the God of Genesis 3? A nudist whose day in the garden was going just fine, baby, until his guests started wigging out, and wearing clothes, and showing a knowledge of good and evil? And then he never walks among them again?

A deity who made a perfect world, except for that apple tree — and who didn’t cut down the tree.

Whose animals live in perfect harmony, except for that crafty, fork-tongued serpent.

What if God was one of us? He was, in Genesis 3, and it didn’t go well. God is best experienced from afar.