“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”

Genesis 2:25 (KJV)

 

We all know how Adam and Eve’s time in the Garden of Eden came to an abrupt end, but what about their lives together before then? They evidently worked side by side in the tasks of tending the Garden and enjoyed fellowship with their Creator every day when He came to walk with them in the cool of the evening. One specific descriptor we have of this time is that “they were both naked and not ashamed.” This is not lurid or sexually charged or deviant in the way our fallen society would look upon such a scene. Adam and Eve were able to be perfectly open, honest, trusting, non-judgmental, and caring, with no sense of discomfort, embarrassment, or shame. That we inwardly giggle at the idea of the naked man and woman in this scenario is a sign of how far we have fallen from the perfect Paradise they enjoyed and a reminder of the innocence we ourselves have lost. Theirs was the innocence in which our Creator intended us to live.

 

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the word “Innocent”? Perhaps you think of a child. But is a child really truly innocent? Or are they just inexperienced and unacquainted with the real dangers and evils in the world? In this case, the innocence is bittersweet, for it will inevitably come to an end. Too often the innocent babe transforms through the Terrible Two’s to become an apathetic teenager and eventually a disillusioned adult. Sadly, innocence lost can never be regained and we are poorer for it.

 

Innocence is not prized as a virtue in our modern sophisticated society. It is synonymous with the idea of being easy prey for the more worldly wise who will eagerly take advantage. Sadly, Eve soon experienced this firsthand.

 

A lesser known definition of innocent is “to cause no harm.” Our first parents not only lived free from harm, they simply had no concept of it. It’s not that they chose not say or do anything hurtful to their partner, it’s that even the thought would never enter their mind. This earthly bliss is beyond our ability to fully grasp, for we live in the aftermath. We only know what is good because we are too well acquainted with the bad. We only know happiness because of our experiences with sadness. The innocence lived in the Garden was true freedom – freedom from ever having experienced guilt, shame, fear or regret. Adam and Eve lived every day enveloped in what C.S. Lewis described as “Joy”:

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“I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?... Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”  ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,

Sadly, the earthly Paradise of our first parents has been lost to us forever. Yet we still retain “a longing for the longing” of the Joy they experienced. This “unsatisfied desire more desirable than any other satisfaction” will only be realized once we reach our eternal Home and experience the return of Innocence.