Beginning in Genesis 2

Children love hearing stories about their parents and grandparents.

"Mom, do you remember being a rib? What was that like?"
"Dad, what was it like to walk with God?"
"Tell me again - why did He kick you out of the garden?"

Did questions like that make Mom and Dad uncomfortable? How did Adam and Eve respond?

"Let's not talk about that right now."
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"Not now. I'm busy."
"Go ask your father."
"God had it planned that way all along. We had no choice."
"We blew it and things will never be the same."
"We blew it but God still has a plan."
"God never liked us anyway. It was all a big mistake."
"Women, He really doesn't like women. And serpents...oh my gosh He hates serpents! Especially now. "

We don't know any of this for fact. God doesn't tell us these things - so maybe, in God's economy none of this is important.

Do we have the freedom to engage our imaginations as we process and ponder the sacred, living word of the Living God or are we limited to a literal legalistic theology? (I'm the literalist at my house, remember, but we both fear God enough to know that the living Word is to be handled carefully. In the same breath, let me say, it's not fragile.) How much freedom do we have? Why did God give us an imagination if we can't use it to know Him better? I'm not suggesting heresy. I'm not suggesting we get presumptious and arrogant but Adam and Eve and their children were people, we're people. God was God, and He still is.

It's interesting the details included in the scriptures and the details that aren't - all for good reason. Reasons, I expect, we'll never know.

As I say, the stories are there and I think it's safe to say they filled the ears and imaginations of little people generation after generation. I think it's safe to say that these stories began to shape a child's understanding of God and man and their relationship to one another. Have we tired of God's stories? Are they somehow less relevant today than they were when they were fresh and new? Are these the stories we share with our children? Are they playing and pretending and processing God's stories?

Or are we saying to ourselves, and to them, "Don't touch. You'll break it."

It's not touching it that does the damage, it's teaching it wrong and misrepresenting God that does the damage.