Robert Merrill

“I am told there are readers of Genesis who argue the following: If evolution is true, there was no Adam and Eve. If there was no Adam and Eve, there was no fall. If there was no fall, we didn’t need Jesus to save us. But this argument has reversed things. In reality, we know we needed Jesus to save us, and we recognize the way Genesis describes our predicament as human beings. We know we have not realized our vocation to take the world to its destiny and serve the earth; we know there is something wrong with the world in its violence; we know there is something wrong with our relationships with one another, especially relationships between men and women and between parents and children; and we know there is something wrong with our relationship with God. We also know we die, so we know we need Jesus to save us. The question Genesis handles is, Was all that a series of problems built into humanity when it came intoexistence? The answer is no. God did not create us that way. There was a point when humanity had to choose whether it wanted to go God’s way, and it chose not to. The Adam-and-Eve story gives us a parabolic account of that. They ignored the red light and crashed the train. God brought the first human beings into existence with their vocation, and they turned away from it. That is true whether or not you believe that the theory of evolution helps us understand how God brought them into existence.”
― John E. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone: Part 1 Chapters 1-16

“One question such events provoke is “What kind of God allows this to happen?” Another question we might ask is, “What kind of creatures are human beings that we should cause and allow this to happen?”
― John E. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone: Part 1 Chapters 1-16

“God is a different league of person from us, but God is a person like us, not an abstract force or a principle. So despite the huge difference, Genesis says we are made in God’s image. Human beings are the kind of entity God would be if God were earthly. God could hardly have become a horse; horses were not made in God’s image. Human beings were made God-like, so it was not so unnatural for God to become a human being. It is this fact that makes it possible for God sometimes to appear in human form in the Old Testament, and it eventually makes possible, even makes natural, God’s incarnation in Christ. In this sense it was not logically difficult for God to become a human being although it involved some sacrifice.”
― John E. Goldingay, Genesis for Everyone: Part 1 Chapters 1-16

“Here are the two best prayers I know: "Help me help me, help me," and "Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith