GENESIS
Gen 3:17 "The LORD said to the man, 'You listened to your wife and ate fruit from that tree. And so, the ground will be under a curse because of what you did. As long as you live, you will have to struggle to grow enough food.'I think instead of analyzing the text from a biblical point of view or trying to break it down like a theologian, I'm just going to write whatever pops in my head for this verse. I can't pretend like I don't know other parts of the Bible, so I'm not even going to try to act like this is the only context I have for this verse, so my "project" will end up being about more than just the ONE verse, but for now, this is the way I want to do it... Creative writing style!!
When I read this verse, I immediately think of a parent/child relationship, but there isn’t really a parent/child scenario I could set up where the children could lose anything like what Adam and Eve lost with God. So I think they need to be adults, but they were also innocent. So maybe it needs to be someone who has been raised with lots of money, or lots of resources and was pretty sheltered… If they both grow up that way, as only children, not knowing the concept of right and wrong for some reason. They could get married at 16 or even earlier if I have it set back “then”… Then I just make sure they lose everything they have… maybe they’re making a way in the wilderness (forest kind), and they have finally gotten everything built and ready to go and they don’t realize that one decision that they make (what could that be?) leads them to lose everything and be put out where they have to work hard for everything they get. Wouldn't they already be working hard if they were living on the frontier? So maybe that premise won’t work. I’ll continue to think.
One of the commentaries I read said this about the Garden of Eden. "Fruitfulness was its blessing for man's service, Gen. 1:11-29, and now barrenness was its curse for man's punishment."
So how can I make something where someone goes from fruitfulness to barrenness? It seems like it would have to be something where someone loses everything, but I’m struggling with how to give them abundance without making them spoiled or “worldly”… How do you even portray a character without “sin”? Maybe it should be some kind of animals. I’m not trying to write this strictly for adults anyway, and maybe an animal would be the perfect way to show something that is innocent and yet goes from fruitfulness to losing everything… but it has to be the fault of the character. So maybe a character flaw of some kind that causes it to lose everything. Will that make it a character that no one wants to read about? Would that make it someone who people think was too harshly punished? How do I portray a “godly” personification onto an “earthly” object or being? The “god” character has to feel bad about the banishment, but it must be done because he also has to follow the rules. All of our movies and books tell us that the rules can be bent if you love someone enough… and as long as no one else gets hurt. So how do we establish a ruling Being who has to follow every rule, and knows what’s going to happen, and provides punishment and nourishment at the same time? The actual earth was cursed… it used to produce fruit because it was a blessing… now it is cursed and only produces fruit when man has worked hard for it. What can I use for that? What can I have that at first produces for the joy of it, and then produces after that only as much as the people work for? Some kind of farmland… but then wouldn't that farmland have to be personified? Would that make it too silly? Would that even make sense to people? What if I just told the story as is in the bible from the point of view of the ground? What if the soil could talk? God said that he could hear the blood of Abel crying out from the soil… so maybe that would work… let’s try!
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