God gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden in which to live. They accepted the gift and lived life to the fullest. They disregarded rules—there only was one rule—and did whatever they wanted, and they suffered the consequences for that. They lost their gift and were forced to live in exile for the rest of their lives. The Garden of Eden, which was once real, became only a dream to them.
They really were not so bad. They were the first people. They really did not know the difference between good and bad. They had no concept of responsibility. Indeed they were really like children. Like children they had to learn painful lessons about life and obligation.
The next chapters of the Torah teach us that long learning curve as people de3veloped into what they are today. Adam and Eve were forced from the Garden; the world of Noah was inundated by the flood; later generations suffered the consequences of the Tower of Babel. Even by the generation of Abraham people made grave mistakes. Abraham, for example, tried to sacrifice his son Isaac.
Joseph’s brothers, out of jealousy, sold him into Egypt as a slave (at first they wanted to kill him). And look at the behavior of Jacob while he grew up. There really was (and still is) a sharp learning curve to maturity.
Israel became enslaved in Egypt. They were redeemed by the leadership of Moses, but for the next forty years they had to unlearn the slave mentality that they had. They had to know that what ever they did has consequences. In other words, like Adam and Eve, they had to grow up.
God tells them just that. Before they enter the Promised Land we read that they were warned that with the Land comes the obligation to keep God’s laws, to live moral and ethical lives. Their maturity was far beyond that of the first people, and the number of laws that they had to follow was far beyond the number that Adam and Eve had to follow. And they were not mature enough for the task. The rest of the Bible is the continuation of that learning curve with constant mistake and constant atonement and constant attempts to get life right.
The sad postscript to this story is that we have not learned how to get life right yet. War still exists and people remain hungry and homeless even in the cities of America. We, all people, have not yet learned how to accept the responsibility that just being a person brings.
I guess that is why so many dream of the Days of the Messiah, the days when all people accept the responsibilities that life demands of them.