In an age that fancies itself scientific, the first book of the Bible comes in for much scoffing. “What’s this about a talking snake?” “So you think the world was built 6,000 years ago, after people in Sumer had already started brewing beer?” “Doesn’t Genesis blame all our problems on some chick named Eve, dooming women to centuries of misogyny?”

In C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the noble lion Aslan tells a girl named Lucy that the older she grows, the bigger he will become. Genesis is like that for me. The longer I read the Book of Beginnings, the greater it becomes. Whatever Genesis intends to teach about origins (we’ll get to that hot topic later), I regard its first chapters as among the most insightful and inspired (in every sense of the word) texts in literature.

The book may actually be a victim of its own greatness. Its words pack such a wallop that, taken out of context, they churn up towering heresies: Misogyny. Feminism. Gnosticism. Deforestation. Radical environmentalism.

“It is Good”

Rightly read, though, Genesis can help mend our broken and confused world. First it reveals the line that separates good and evil.

“It is good!” said God, on creating the world. Mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said God created “the best of all possible worlds.” Here on a sunny late-summer day, having just returned with my family from Crater Lake and the Oregon Coast, and picked the last peaches and the first blackberries, the goodness of creation seems to palpably rest upon Nature.

“It is Bad?”

But the skeptic Voltaire persuasively replied in a book whose main point could almost be summarized, “It is bad!”

A young man named Candide grows up in a castle owned by a baron with a beautiful daughter, Cunegonde. Candide is taught by the estate’s in-house philosopher, Professor Pangloss, that he inhabits the best of all possible worlds.

He buys this “Panglossian” theory, and those words “best of all worlds” become a running gag, like “Who’s on first?” in Abbott and Costello’s famous routine. For when Candide is caught kissing Cunegonde he is evicted, like Adam, from the paradisical realm. (Which is soon sacked by enemy soldiers, anyway.)

The gullible young man is then press-ganged into the Bulgarian army, beaten to within an inch of his life, escapes, and sets off to explore a world brimming with cannibalism, disfigurement, earthquakes (Voltaire was partly inspired by accounts of the fatal Lisbon earthquake of 1755), impaling, inquisitions, massacre, rape, robbery, plagues, and slavery.

The Philosopher’s Distempered Garden

Candide finally meets his love again, who has by this time sampled other men and miseries, and grown ugly. But they marry anyway, and while she also has a bad temper, she develops a knack for baking tasty pastries.

So what, in the end, do the heroes of this pessimistic masterpiece, this supposed rebuttal of God’s verdict on Creation, do? “Cultivate our garden.” (Cultiver notre jardin.) They follow Adam into the field with a hoe.

Pangloss cites Genesis to explain: “For when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there … that he might cultivate it.”

The Philosophers’ Debate

“Cultivate” (cultiver) is from the same root as “culture.” Voltaire begins this final section by speaking of “the little society” and “little world” which Candide’s community forms. His point is clear: Our duty in this trampled garden is to nurture succulent fruits from a trained and fertile life.

This was a rebuke to another French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that ownership was how our ancestors “bit the apple” and fell into ruin. No doubt Voltaire would be similarly disgusted by the sexual nihilism that denies that God created “male and female,” and by the ugliness of much modern architecture, which ignores centuries of artistic cultivation.

The Genius in Genesis

But Genesis recognizes that every garden “east of Eden” demands hard work.

If you belong to the tribe of worm whisperers yourself, you will not be impressed by my garden. True, the corn grew better than last year, when I harvested a grand total of one single kernel (not ear)!

But because this is no longer the best possible world, Genesis warns of raccoons. Peach leaves curl and blacken in spring. Bugs burrow to the cores of apples and pears. Fruit flies now set siege like Bulgarian armies on my grapes. Aphids suck life from bean stalks.

And because I failed to fertilize the soil well, the Yukon golds and Peruvian purple spuds are so small most barely need to be sliced before being covered with olive oil, garlic, and salt, and tossed in the oven.

The Glory Still Visible

Yet the glory of Creation still rests visibly upon the flora. Two summers ago, I compared the progress of produce in the hot months to a fireworks display:

The show begins with a ground bloom of ruby strawberries from late May to the Fourth of July. Blueberries and blackberries begin to light off like savory sparklers. Then branches overhead fire with showers of yellow-orange peaches and green Gravenstein apples dappled with streaks of light red. Bartlett pears light the canopy with yellow, and Italian plums with royal purple, as if to the sound of Handel’s Water Music as King George floats down the Thames. Then Concord grapes, in a grand finale of regal opulence, loose a crescendo of dark fruity flavor that fades only as pearls of dew grace early Halloween cobwebs.

The arc of summer heat is long, but bends towards succulence.

We, the Gardeners

J.R.R. Tolkien described our role by the term “sub-creators.” We are called to nurse life, order, and beauty out of grounds that have gone to pot. In the best of possible worlds, or a garden without slugs, what would we need gardeners for?

Think of Sam Gangee standing at the heart of the Shire, throwing fertilizing dust from the magical land of Lothlorien into the air. America, in 2023, needs gardeners called to nurture our culture, like a “secret garden” neglected for many years, or a Shire ravaged by ruffians from Mordor, back to health.

This article begins a series of essays, from which I hope you will grasp the value of Genesis for our task of “gardening.”

Our age forgets what a woman is, or what family is for, and fears to walk in the cool of the evening with our Maker (what with all the needles and tents on the street). We need the wisdom of this ancient book. For whatever else “divine inspiration” means, the Bible calls the story of Adam and Eve practical:

“All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” (II Timothy 3:16)

We need not only to be taught and trained, but rebuked and corrected. Genesis can teach jaded youth why Creation is still essentially good, and our job of improving it. It reminds us there are two sexes, and shows how they should (and should not) relate. It explains fashion, holidays, and how to train your dragon (or hound). It rebukes polygamy, racism, and slavery in embryo. The first book of the Bible also explains the origins of social rivalry, murder, and daft ideologies, like socialism and BLM.

Later I will talk about the scientific questions surrounding God’s Creation. But let me first focus on God’s call to cultivate our secreted gardens, and how to deal with yellow jackets, raccoons, and other “thieves who break in and steal” its sweetest fruits.

Next to come: Moses at the Movies: two hit movies about dolls that come to life, and the ancient questions, “What do women want?” and “What must I do, to become a real boy?”

 

David Marshall, an educator and writer, has a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.