God's Temple Expansion Project

Failing to read the creation chapters in Genesis as temple narratives means that we will probably interpret them with another, less accurate, lens. For example, I thought of Eden as a divine zoo when I was young. It’s where God set up a comfortable habitat to watch his naked human creatures frolic without a care in the world. Like most modern Americans, my understanding of paradise was defined by leisure. In this way, the Garden of Eden seemed more like a hippie commune to me than anything resembling a temple. Viewing Eden as an all-inclusive resort or a human zoo presents God as a puppet master and reduces humanity’s purpose to just divine amusement. This, of course, is a terrible reading of Genesis.