Neighboring Collective

NeighborReader, What if everything we’ve been taught about Genesis 3 has buried one of the most profound blueprints about neighboring— by obscuring how God responds to victims of deception and abuse? Well, hang on to your fig leaves, because after the masterclass in accountability evasion and attempted gaslighting we just got from the first man, now we are about to get schooled on caring for the victims of it. We left God and the man having just wrapped up their conversation. Then God Turns...

When we left our story yesterday, the man and woman were eyes wide open, sporting their artisan fig leaf fashion, hunkered down among the trees, with hearts pounding at the sound of God’s footsteps.Now God is on scene with some pointed questions: “Then the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” “And he said, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’” Many of us have been taught that God addresses the man first because he's "the...

Reader, So they're covered, they're hiding, and she's staying loyal despite everything. But where did the serpent go? The Serpent Vanishes As abruptly and boldly as he came on the scene, making incredible claims about wisdom and identity and knowing what God knows, his silence is marked. He's not helping them to sort out their fig leaf fashion or process their soul-shaking new reality in the aftermath of having taken him seriously. He didn't disappear entirely, since he was still there when...

Reader, So she took the fruit and she ate.She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too. And then—reality hit. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Let’s sit with this scene. The Awakening That...

Reader, We left off in the garden, where day after day, man and woman lived in harmony— frolicking in the flowers and fields of a flourishing friendship. Until one day… 🐍 a slippery tongued serpent showed up. Genesis 3:1 describes the serpent as “the most cunning of all the wild animals.” In classic predator fashion, it starts by identifying and honing in on its target. Although there were plenty of other creatures available, it chose to engage the humans. It drew them into conversation with...

Reader, We just walked back through the earliest moments of humanity—when man and woman lived side by side, co-stewarding creation in full trust and belonging, in uninhibited friendship with their Creator. It was luminous and untainted and wholly soul-satisfying.It was safe in every way, so intimacy was effortless.It was a limitless reservoir of new things to discover, adventures to have and joy to be savored. The kind of peaceful, purposeful, playful and plentiful existence we all have a...

Hey neighbor, Yesterday, I asked: What changes if we reframe “the Fall” as “the Attack”? Today, let’s go back to the beginning to see what was happening before everything got twisted. 🌿 In the beginning...there was harmony. Genesis 1 and 2 set the stage: God is bursting with creative energy and execution is flowing. This Creator has created the earth and a whole solar system, separated water from dry land, spoken oodles of animals, plants, sea creatures and birds into existence. Somewhere in...