Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. — Genesis 3:1
Ever wonder what a serpent was doing in the Garden in the first place? Any one who knows me understands that snakes are not my favorite of God’s creatures, and yes I bypass the snake house when I go to the zoo.
But getting back to my question — what was a serpent doing in the Garden in the first place? It raises all kind of philosophical questions if you are a literalist, and if you understand it as an allegory it still raises the question how do we innately know the difference between good and evil, at least most of us do.
Call it conscience if you like, each of us have a sense of good and evil and most of the time react toward the good and reject evil. C.S. Lewis wrote a lot about the subject in his book Mere Christianity. I need to go back and read his classic to see if he explains why the snake was there in the first place.
I’m not sure I buy into the belief that we bear the burden of the “original sin.” Seems to me that each of us, to some degree, have enough of our own sins to worry about.
However, I have discovered that a morning’s meditation about “snakes in the garden” can bring on some heady thoughts about the nature of God and man. Good thing I brought a hoe.
I’ve always felt a little sorry for the snake. Why would God toss any of his creatures under the bus weight of “original sin”? Another reason I’m not
a literalist. And, no, you don’t need a hoe!