Genesis 2 seems like a metaphor for what I don't like about religion. Genesis 1 lays out a scenario in which everything is good. Men and Women are created equally. Everything is so simple...and then in Genesis 2, the story gets retold. Now, everything seems different...God can't just metaphorically create, literal real-life rivers flow from Eden. Women have to come from man's side and forever be submissive. It seems so forced: "It is not good for man to be alone." But in Genesis 1, everything was good. What happened? And there is a bad tree now too...one of knowledge that you can't eat. And a bad animal--the serpent. It bothers me that the tree is of knowledge too. I'm not comfortable with how learning is vilified. Why would God put something in the garden he didn't want people to have. It seems like a trap.
Then, God starts cursing people: They eat from the tree, which was okay in Genesis 1 and not Genesis 2. People have already messed up and God has left people clueless, and then chastised them to make them feel guilty.
I don't blame God for this. I see this as a way that people view God. Here he is hovering over the water, creating and giving, and then people feel the need to over explain everything, take over, and make a mess. Then, they blame God for feeling naked and for pain. Because who else do you blame, I guess?
I guess I didn't have to look far to find a contradiction in the bible. But right here in the first 2 chapters, you have a big question we all have to grapple with: is God the good creator in Gen. 1, or a punisher who only created a good earth to set up humans and inevitably watch them suffer? How does one explain suffering, if not because God allowed it?
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