***
It was Saint Augustine's spiritual revelation that prelapsarian sex, for Adam and Eve, was no fun, that it was just a job, an assigned task. But after the Fall of Man, that was no longer true. Adam and Eve now felt unruly sensations down there, feelings that would lead to all sorts of morality problems, throughout history, for the entire human race. But Adam and Eve saw no reason to complain of the new sensation, they simply ran with it.
After sinning, your parents snuggled up to one another and took a nap. When they awoke, they remembered what they had done.
So they sinned again.
"Then their eyes were opened, and they realised that they were naked! So they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons" (Gen. 3:7).
You may be thinking that Adam and Eve made those leafy aprons for themselves because they were ashamed of their own sinful bodies, and embarrassed by their own disobedient behavior. According to Scripture, that should have been the reason, but that was not their reason:
"I can't keep looking at that thing," said Adam, looking at Eve's thing. "It makes me crazy, and I've got work to do."
"How about these two things," said Eve.
"My darling, those, too, are quite nice," said Adam. "In fact–"
Then they sinned again.
So they made the aprons – from Eve's own intelligent design – and wore them, confident that a leafy covering would be a big help in their spiritual struggle against sinful thoughts.
Now it had been the holy Trinity's habit, on those warm Edenic days, to take casual strolls through the Garden. But that same afternoon, when Adam and Eve heard Yahveh, the Son, and the Ghost coming down the primrose path, the guilty sinners hid themselves in the bushes.
Yahveh called out, saying, "Adam! Where are you?" (Gen. 3:8-9).
The Trinity fanned out, but they were not fooled. Yahveh knew almost exactly where Adam and Eve were hiding. And He was so busy looking around that He paid scant notice to the path before His feet, which was strewn over with banana peels.
I think you think you already know what I am about to tell you – that the Lord slipped and fell on a banana peel! But I will not say that, because that is not what happened. Which is really too bad! – because if Almighty God had slipped on one, and had fallen on His bum, that would have been a pretty funny thing to see, and to write about! Also, quite metaphysical: the fall of Man, followed so soon after by the fall of God! Philosophers to this day would still be discussing the implications of it.
But when Yahveh came to the banana peels, he just stepped over them, Swiftly, saying, "Yahoo! Adam!"
(By the way: Yahoo, or yahu, in Old Testament Hebrew, does not mean "Yoo-hoo" or "Hooray." Yahoo, in ancient Hebrew, means a "disciple of Yahveh." I don't what that tells you, but it tells me that it's le mot juste! Those ancient Hebrews had exactly the right word for everything!)
On His third or fourth loop around the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Yahveh suddenly stretched forth his hands into the greenery, and yanked Adam and Eve from the bushes, each one by an earlobe. The two naughty humans were dripping with sweat, and grinning and blushing like a couple of kids caught smoking cigarettes under the school staircase. Only they had not been smoking tobacco, they had been tasting more of that succulent forbidden fruit.
Adam sheepishly explained his little game, saying, "O LORD, I was afraid when I heard Your voice in the Garden – for look, I am naked! So I hid myself" (Gen. 3:10).
By this time, the Son and the holy Ghost had come running, and all Three saw it was true: Adam stood before God as bare as a shorn lamb. While hiding in the bushes with Eve, Adam had already misplaced his fig-leaf apron.
"Who told you that you were naked?" asked the Lord (Gen. 3.11).
"I just happened to, like, notice," said Adam. "And it's not just me! Look -- she's naked, too!"
The Trinity could not help but notice that Adam was telling the truth: Eve's modest fig-leaf apron was nowhere to be seen.
"Adam," said Yahveh, "have you eaten of the Tree whereof I commanded you not to eat?" (Gen. 3.12).
Take a tip from Lucifer: whenever the Lord starts acting like He doesn't know the answer to His own dumb questions, be on guard. When Dad plays ignorant, He has a trick up His sleeve, almost always. As it happens, the Trinity that day had watched from Heaven as the whole crime went down, from the moment I entered the Garden to the moment that Adam and Eve, with their busy, groping, little hands, frantically ripped off one another's fig-leaf aprons whole rolling in the underbrush.
"Anyway," mumbled Adam sheepishly, "you Three are the one who designed a female helpmate to sucker me" (Gen. 3:13).
"Not sucker," said the Lord, in clearly enunciated Hebrew. "Succor. I'm sure I said succor."
– L.
