““I would also encourage you to see the text literarily. (Did your brain fill in a different word you were expecting?!) By literarily, I mean that you accept the text as what it is, which is a piece of literature. It is holy, inspired literature, but it is literature nonetheless. Genesis 3 is not journalistic live reporting. It is a story passed down through storytelling from one generation to the next, until at last we had the means of writing the story down to preserve for future generations. It has an audience, and a narrator, and primary characters. Because it’s good literature, it has a crisis, and a climax, and a resolution, too. Rather than asking the text to be the first, sole, or primary spiritual, philosophical, psychological, and sociological statement about humanity, we could choose instead to accept it as what it is: a story from scripture, meant to provoke us in ways that will move us toward God. It can far and away exceed that particular expectation.””
