A thing

            And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:11)

You know the story behind the verse from Genesis. Adam and Eve listened to what the serpent told them and ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They discovered they were naked and hid from God.

Who did tell Adam and Eve they were naked? Scripture says that they discovered it. I find myself wondering about what they discovered. Was it really just that they were wearing no clothing, or did they discover that they were lacking other things that were far more important? Was the clothing issue a distraction? God seems to suggest that it was because He asks about the tree – the real problem. It is only after he deals with the consequences of the real problem that He kills animals to provide them with clothing. But it’s worth noting that He did deal with that issue, too.

So, from Adam and Eve to me and you. Well, to me anyway. It seems to me I spend half my life whining about what a miserable failure I am in one way or another. Every now and again, this passage comes to mind as I lament. Who told me that I’m a failure? Most of the time, it’s not God. In fact, it tends to be me, and my definition is that things are not exactly the way I want them to be.

So what if, instead of confirming yet again to ourselves that everyone around us must be laughing at what useless failures we are, we ran to God and cried, “I’m a failure!” Would He say, “So what?” or would He ask, “Who told you that you were a failure?” What if we confessed that we had told ourselves?

I doubt God would do exactly the same thing every time, but one thing He would do is deal with the truth of the matter. We might actually be a failure, or we might not. He would probably deal in some way with the failure itself in addition to our feelings about it.

As I thought about this, a story I’ve told before came to mind. A speaker told of her daughter coming home one day upset because someone at school had called her “short.” The mother put an arm around the girl and said, “Well, Honey, you are short.” Then she helped the girl reframe the issue. Being short wasn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it was just a thing.

Being a failure may just be a thing, too.