Let’s begin with a thought experiment about Reading Genesis Without The Pre-Programming. What happens when you read the first chapter of Genesis, but you replace the names ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ with completely neutral names like ‘Bob’ and ‘Joe’? Approaching the text this way, without any preconceived notions, can lead to a radically different understanding of the story and its characters.
Prefer to watch? I’ve put my video below or if you’re a reader simply continue reading the post.
Challenging Preconceived Notions of Good and Evil
Before almost anyone reads the Bible, they are told a simple narrative, God is the good guy and Satan is the bad guy. This is the lens through which the story is almost always presented. It’s just how it is. However, if you read the story from an entirely different perspective, without a predisposition of who is good and who is bad, you might get a very interesting notion of the characters’ true nature.
When you remove the loaded names and the cultural programming attached to them, you are left with only the actions and words of the characters themselves. This allows for a more objective analysis of the story as it unfolds in the first few chapters. It’s a powerful way to see what the text actually says versus what we’ve been told it says. The results of this simple change can be quite surprising and challenge long-held beliefs.
A Fresh Perspective from Reading Genesis Without The Pre-Programming
Imagine sitting down in a Bible study and walking someone through the first three chapters of Genesis, step by step and verse by verse. If you guide them through the creation story and the story of the fall using the names ‘Bob’ and ‘Joe’, a very, very different story emerges. You are no longer colored by centuries of religious interpretation. Instead, you are simply a reader evaluating a story based on its own merits and the behavior of the figures within it.
You get a very interesting notion of who’s actually the good guy and who’s actually the bad guy, because one of those characters is an asshole and it’s not the one we were taught was good, just saying.
The Unbiased Lens of a Child
This thought experiment becomes even clearer when you consider how a child might interpret the story. If you gave the book of Genesis to a child, but with the characters renamed to Bob and Joe, they would approach it without any baggage. They haven’t been told who to root for or who to condemn. Their understanding would be based purely on the narrative presented in those first few chapters.
A child, reading this neutralized version, would innately come out of that story with an obvious conclusion. They would clearly identify that one of the characters is an evil asshole and one is a good guy. And fascinatingly, their conclusion is not the way the church has been told. This highlights the profound impact that our initial programming has on our ability to interpret foundational stories and question the narratives we have been given.
