Choices Have Consequences

Frames in this band: T Timeline · B Biography · S Society · s sources

● Put two paper footprints on the floor, a few steps apart. One says YES. One says NO.

● Read a tiny scene and let them step onto the footprint they would pick. “Somebody left a cookie on the counter and said do not take it.” “Your friend asks you to say their drawing is good and you think it is not.” Do four. Do not praise the right answer or fix the wrong one. Just ask why they stood there.

● Now tell the story. Four beats, and do not add scary parts.

• God said: everything here is yours, except that one tree.
• They took it anyway.
• Then they hid. (Everybody covers their eyes with their hands, right now, with you.)
• God came looking, and asked a question.

● Read the question out of the Bible.

“But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:9)

● Ask why God would ask that when God already knew. Let the wrong answers happen. Somebody usually gets close: God wanted him to come out and say it himself.

● Then the part most tellings leave out. Read it.

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21)

● Say the plain thing: there were consequences, and they were real, and God still made them clothes. Both are in the same chapter. Do not pick one.

○ Hiding round. “Show me hiding.” Everybody hides. Then ask what it feels like inside when you are hiding from somebody who is looking for you. Not scared, exactly. Give them the word: ashamed.

What do you want to do right after you break something?

Is it easier to tell the truth right away, or after a while? Why is that?

● Name the feelings for them: scared, sorry, shy, hot in the face, wanting to run. “Show me hot-in-the-face.”

What does somebody who loves you do after you tell them the truth?

Is there a way to make somebody feel safe enough to tell you what they did?

T — Timeline. Line up four children as the four beats: told, took, hid, asked. The class puts them in order, then walks down the line saying each one out loud. Ask what would be different if the line had stopped after took.

B — Biography. God asked the man. God asked the woman. God did not ask the snake anything. Ask them what a question is for, when the person asking already knows the answer.

S — Society. One person picked it, two people ate, and everything afterwards happens to both of them. Ask: when one person in a family or a class does something, who else feels it? Let them give real examples, and do not use names.

s — sources. Open a Bible to Genesis 3 and look together. The words Satan, sin, and apple are not on the page. The snake has no name and the fruit is never named either. Tell them people added all of that later, in paintings and picture books. A Bible story and a book about the Bible story are not the same thing.

● One sentence, and you write it for anyone who needs it:

“When I do something wrong, I will ______________.”

● Then the part they will remember. Give each child a small piece of paper and have them scrunch it into a fist. That is hiding. Now open the hand flat. That is telling. Do it twice.

● Send the flat paper home with the sentence on it. Close with one line, said together:

“God, we do not want to hide. Amen.”

Frames in this band: T Timeline · B Biography · S Society · s sources

● Two passages, side by side. Read Genesis 2:16–17 first. Then Genesis 3:1–3. Give them one job: find every difference.

There are three, and let them do the finding. The serpent turns one forbidden tree into any tree at all. The woman adds a rule about touching that God never said. And “you will certainly die” comes back as “or you will die.” If they only find two, tell them there is a third and wait.

What does adding an extra rule on top of a rule do to the original rule?

How do you know? Point at the verse for each of the three.

● Then walk verse 6 slowly. It is a chain, not a moment.

• She saw · it was good for food · it was pleasing to the eye · it was desirable for wisdom · she took · she ate · she gave · he ate.

How many steps are there between looking and eating? Why does it matter that there were steps and not one jump?

Verse 6 says her husband was with her. What does that do to the question of who is responsible?

○ Read 3:9–13. God asks two questions and gets two replies, and neither reply is actually an answer. Ask what each one is doing instead.

● Everybody in the room has done a thing and then had to decide what to do next. Start there, not at the wrongdoing. The chapter does the same.

What is the first thing you want to do after you have done something you know was wrong?

What is the difference between being sorry you did it and being sorry you got caught? How would somebody else tell which one you were?

What would have to be true for you to tell somebody before they found out?

○ Push on the other side and then leave it open: is there anything a person does that should not be forgiven right away? Let them wrestle. Do not rescue it with a tidy answer.

T — Timeline. Lay the chapter out as a line: a question, a doubt, a look, a choice, a sharing, a hiding, a question, a blaming, consequences, a covering. Ask them to point at the place where it could still have gone differently. There is more than one right answer, and the arguing is the point.

B — Biography. God asks the man. God asks the woman. God does not ask the serpent anything at all. Ask what that difference tells you about who the chapter thinks was in a position to choose.

S — Society. Consequences spread outward. The ground is named, the animals are named, and the two of them leave together. Ask for a real example from their own life: when one person in a group does something, who else ends up paying for it?

s — sources. The words sin, Satan, fall, and apple do not appear anywhere in Genesis 3. The word sin first shows up in the very next chapter, at Genesis 4:7. Have them check both — actually check, with a finger on the page. Then ask where the other words came from.

● One sentence, written, with a name and a day in it:

“There is one thing I need to tell ____________, and I will do it by ____________.”

● Say before they write that nobody reads these out loud and you will not collect them. Saying it afterwards is too late to help.

○ A second card, which they keep:

“The next time I want to hide, I will ____________ instead.”

Frames in this band: T Timeline · B Biography · S Society · R Reason · s sources

● Read Genesis 3 with a pencil. Mark five things.

• 3:1 — the serpent is introduced as one of the wild animals the LORD God had made, and is called crafty. The chapter gives it no other identity.
• 3:1–5 — the method, in order: a question first, then a flat contradiction, then a motive assigned to God.
• 3:6 — the man is “with her.” The text puts him in the scene and gives him no line.
• 3:12–13 — two replies. He points at her, and behind her at God — the woman you put here with me. She points at the serpent. Neither statement is false.
• 3:14 and 3:17 — the serpent is cursed, and the ground is cursed. The man and the woman are not. Consequences are announced over them; the word curse is not used of them.

Both replies in verses 12 and 13 are technically true. What is wrong with them anyway?

2:17 says that when they eat it they will certainly die. They do not drop dead. What do you do with that?

In 3:7 they cover themselves. In 3:21 God covers them better. What is the difference between the two coverings?

○ In Hebrew, the word for the serpent's craftiness sounds like the word used one verse earlier, at 2:25, for the couple being naked — arum and arummim. Many study Bibles note it. Ask what a wordplay is for, and whether a joke can carry a serious point.

● Draw the distinction and then make them use it all session. Guilt says I did a bad thing. Shame says I am a bad thing. This chapter has both — they cover themselves before anybody has accused them of anything.

Which of the two makes you hide, and which one makes you fix it?

When something goes wrong in a group chat or on a team, how does blame actually get assigned? Does it track who did it?

Who in your world is still paying for something that happened a long time ago? Is that a consequence or a grudge, and how would you know?

○ The screenshot version: somebody gets caught and the group turns on them fast. Ask what a pile-on is actually for. It is rarely justice; more often it is distance — proof that you are not the one who did it. Push on that until somebody admits it.

T — Timeline. The chapter turns on a hinge. Before: naked and not ashamed, at 2:25. After: everything is answered by hiding. Ask what actually changed — the world, or their eyes, or what they now knew. The text does not spell it out and neither should you.

B — Biography. Three characters, three functions. The serpent talks and is never questioned. The woman answers a question and names the act. The man answers by relocating it. Ask which of the three they resemble under pressure, and let the answer be situational — it usually is.

S — Society. Blame is a social technology. It allocates cost. Ask who in their world absorbs blame for things they did not do, and what that person gets in exchange — sometimes belonging, sometimes nothing at all.

R — Reason. A consequence follows from an act. A punishment is imposed on top of it. Have them sort the items in 3:16–19 into those two piles, then argue about the ones that will not sort cleanly. The argument is the exercise.

s — sources. Identifying the serpent with Satan is not something Genesis does. It comes from later texts — Revelation 12:9 calls the devil “that ancient serpent.” Have them read that verse, then state precisely what Genesis 3 does and does not claim. Being able to separate what a text says from what a tradition built on it is worth more than this lesson is.

Choose one.

• There is a conversation you are avoiding because of something you did. Have it this week. Write the person's name where nobody else will see it, and the day you will do it.
• Write, in one paragraph, the last time you blamed somebody for something that was at least partly yours. Show it to nobody. Then write the sentence a true version would have sounded like.
• Watch your group chat for a week and count the pile-ons. Bring the number. Then say, out loud, what you did each time.

Frames in this band: T Timeline · H Historiography · B Biography · S Society · R Reason · s sources

● Close reading of Genesis 3. Five observations, then the difficulties.

• The serpent is introduced as one of the animals the LORD God had made, and described with a single adjective — arum, crafty or shrewd. The chapter never says more about it than that.
• The temptation runs by question, then contradiction, then attributed motive. It never runs by force.
• 3:6 lists three appeals: food, sight, and wisdom. Wanting wisdom is presented as one of the pulls, not as a separate and better desire.
• 3:14 curses the serpent; 3:17 curses the ground because of the man. Neither the man nor the woman is the direct object of a curse.
• 3:21 places divine provision after the sentence and before the expulsion. The sequence is deliberate; ask what a different order would have meant.

● Three genuine difficulties. Present each fully. Resolve none of them.

• “You will certainly die” (2:17), followed by a chapter in which they do not. Readings include mortality beginning, spiritual death, a sentence pronounced and commuted, and a legal formula meaning liable to death. Serious readers hold each. None of them makes the difficulty disappear.
• Whether Genesis 3 describes a fall at all. Much of Jewish interpretation does not read it as the origin of a corrupted human nature. Augustine's account of inherited guilt shaped the Western tradition; Eastern Orthodoxy generally holds an ancestral sin — inherited mortality and corruption, without inherited guilt. Many scholars note that Augustine worked from a Latin rendering of Romans 5:12 that gives “in whom,” where the Greek is usually translated “because.” That translation question is a real hinge in the history of the doctrine.
• 3:16 — “your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” The same construction appears one chapter later, at 4:7, of sin desiring Cain. Readings divide over whether 3:16 describes a broken situation or prescribes an order, and the 4:7 parallel gets used by both sides.

Which of those three are problems for the text, and which are problems only for a particular doctrine built on it?

○ Then genre. If Genesis 3 is etiology — a story that explains why things are the way they are — does that reduce what it claims, and on what grounds would you say yes or no? Do not accept a slogan as an answer from either direction.

● The chapter refuses to be only one thing. A real sentence and a real provision, in the same scene, from the same person. Most of our institutions manage one or the other.

What is your culture's actual mechanism for somebody who did something serious? Describe the process that runs, not the one people say runs.

Is there a way back? For everyone, or only for people with the money and the network to rebuild?

What do you owe a person who has genuinely repented and whom you still do not trust?

Where are you currently managing a consequence by hiding from it rather than by paying it?

○ The counter-pressure, and give it real weight: cheap restoration is its own injustice, and it is usually the person who was harmed who funds it. Ask what restoration would have to include in order not to be cheap. Do not let forgiveness be accepted as a complete answer.

T — Timeline. The chapter sits between a garden and an expulsion, and what follows keeps returning to the same shape: Cain in chapter 4, the flood, Babel. Ask whether Genesis 3 reads as a single origin event or as the first instance of a pattern the book goes on documenting — and what actually hangs on the answer.

B — Biography. Four figures in the scene and only two get questioned. Being interrogated implies standing. Ask what it means that the serpent is sentenced without being asked anything, and whether the shape of the scene alone is making a claim about who could have chosen otherwise.

S — Society. “He will rule over you” has been read as description and as prescription, and the difference has shaped law and households for centuries. Have students argue both sides, then ask the harder question: what evidence inside the text could settle it, and is any of that evidence available?

R — Reason. Agency requires a real alternative. A command that cannot be refused is not a command, and consent that cannot be withheld is not consent. Ask what the presence of the tree implies about what God was willing to risk. Then require each student to state the strongest form of the objection they like least before answering it.

H — Historiography. This chapter has carried enormous weight: Augustine's original sin, Pelagius's denial and condemnation, Reformation arguments about the will, and modern claims about human nature that never cite the text but inherit its shape. The assumption that everyone has always read it the way your church reads it now is simply false. Ask what a doctrine gains, and what it risks, by being anchored in one narrative.

s — sources. Four checkable facts; have them verify each one before discussing it. The word sin does not occur in Genesis 3 — its first occurrence in Genesis is 4:7. The serpent is never named or identified beyond being an animal God made. The fruit is never specified. And the reading of the serpent as Satan comes from later texts, including Revelation 12:9 and, earlier, Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 — a book in the Catholic and Orthodox canons and in the Apocrypha of many Protestant Bibles, and often cited as among the earliest surviving links between the devil and this story.

Choose one.

• A 300-word paper: does Genesis 3 require the doctrine of original sin, or is that doctrine one available reading among several? State the strongest opposing case fairly enough that somebody holding it would sign your summary.
• Take a real case — public, or inside an institution you belong to — where somebody was caught and a community had to decide what to do next. Write what happened, what genuine restoration would have required, and what it would have cost, and to whom.
• Inventory your own blame reflex for one week. Every time you explain rather than admit, write down the sentence you said and the sentence you could have said. Bring back the count, not the contents.