According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were the first man and the first woman. God created them already grown up and put them in a place called the Garden of Eden, where they could find everything they needed to live and where they could enjoy life.

The problem I have with this story the way it's written in the Bible is that it leaves out a lot of the stuff about how Adam and Eve learned how to live in the garden and how to treat each other and how to take care of things around them. In other words, Adam and Eve may have had grown-up bodies, but surely they were like babies when they were first made and they must have had a lot to learn.

This is the way I think things might have happened: Since Adam and Eve didn't have a mother or a father to take care of them, God had to spend a lot of time with them at first. God had to teach them to speak and God listened while they babbled and made baby talk. Then, God had to show them how to walk, and watched while they crawled, and then stumbled and fell when they took their first steps.

When they could get around better, God stopped bringing them food so often and started to show them the things in the garden they could eat and the things they had better leave alone. God especially warned them about a tree that stood right in the middle of the garden. Whatever you do, God told them, don't eat the fruit of that tree. It's the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and if you eat its fruit, or if you even touch it, you are going to have some problems you aren't ready to deal with.

God had to watch them pretty closely for a while to keep them from hurting themselves, so they didn't fall into a stream and drown or fall out of a tree and break their necks. God also introduced them to all the animals in the garden and showed them which ones they could play with, like the cats and the dogs, and which ones they had better leave alone, like the lions and the tigers.

When Adam and Eve got so they could take care of themselves a little better, God started letting them go off by themselves for a while. Adam and Eve learned so quickly about living in the garden that God decided to just let them stay by themselves all day, with God just stopping by in the evenings.

This went on for a long time. God would stop by and Adam and Eve would tell God what they had been learning. Sometimes they would just laugh and dance and sing, but sometimes they had problems to ask God about. For instance there was the time Eve got scratched by a cat and the time Adam got sprayed by a skunk and God had to help them figure out how to keep stuff like that from happening. Adam and Eve were getting smarter and smarter. In fact, they got so smart that they started thinking about things they had never thought about before.

One day, while they were sitting in the shade of a tree next to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam said, "I wonder why God wants us to stay away from that tree. I can't see that it's really different from any other tree in the garden."

"Look," said Eve, "there's a snake in the tree. The tree's not bothering that snake." Then Adam said, "Yeah, and I see birds and animals in that tree all the time. The tree doesn’t seem to hurt them."

"You know what I think?" Eve said, "I think God just wants us to stay dumb and not know anything about good and evil like God does. I think I'll just climb up there and pick some of the fruit."

"Pick some for me, too," said Adam. "I don't want you to be smarter than me. Besides, I'm tired of God always telling us what to do."

Eve climbed the tree, picked some of the fruit, and tossed it down to Adam. "You sure we should eat this?" Adam asked as they sat on the ground with the fruit in their hands. "Well," said Eve, "if we don't, I guess we'll never know. We might be missing something really great." Adam nodded his head and they both took a bite.

As they sat and ate, Eve said, "Well, it tastes okay, but I don't feel any different."

"Me neither," said Adam, "but let's not tell God. God will be mad at us for doing something God told us not to do."

They were so worried about God being angry that when God came looking for them that evening, they hid themselves. But God soon found them behind a bush. He took one look and said, "Well, I see you've been into that tree I told you to stay away from."

"Who, us? What makes you say that, God?" said Adam.

"Well, you were hiding from me. I think you're hiding something else, too."

Adam hung his head and said, "Well, it's Eve's fault. She climbed the tree and picked the fruit."

Eve spoke up and said, "It's the snake's fault. I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't seen the snake in the tree."

"You're mad at us, aren't you, God?" said Adam.

"No," said God, "I'm not mad, so you might as well stop trying to pass the blame. I always knew you were going to eat the fruit of that tree someday. That's why I planted it right in the middle of the garden, so you'd see it every day and never forget about it."

Adam was puzzled. "Why did you want us to eat it when you'd told us not to?" he asked.

"And what's so special about that tree, anyway?" said Eve.

"Well," said God, "you've been growing in your minds and you've been changing. Up until now, you've always done whatever I told you unless you forgot. But you picked and ate that fruit on purpose. You did it because you wanted to change and grow some more, so you ate the fruit even though you were afraid to.

"As far as the tree is concerned," God went on, "there's nothing special about it at all. It's just a tree. I put it there and told you not to eat from it so that I'd know when you wanted to know about good and evil bad enough that you'd take a big risk to find out." Then God paused. "Do you understand?" God asked.

Adam shook his head. "Not really," he said.

"Me either," said Eve. "Are you going to teach us about good and evil now?"

"No," said God. "It doesn't work that way. You've already learned about as much as you can about good and evil here in the garden. You're going to have to go out into the world to learn more. Life in the garden is too easy for you now."

Then God said, "Come walk with me," and they walked toward the edge of the garden. "You see," said God, "you've started to question why things are the way they are and what's right and what's wrong. When you start doing that, you don't stop. I know that because I made you the way you are. And there's something else. There's something in you called imagination. Imagination lets you create things in your minds that never existed before and then makes them real. That's how I made the world.

"You haven't needed much imagination in the garden," God went on, "because things here have been just about perfect. But out in the world, you're going to have to imagine the way you want things to be and then make them that way. Also you're going to have to decide what things to change and what things to leave alone. It's not going to be easy making the world right for you. I should know. You wouldn't believe how long it took me just to make it the way it is. Sometimes you're going to make things better and sometimes you're going to make them worse.

"And one last thing," said God. "When you do things wrong, just imagine how they could be better. Don't try to cover it up and don't blame somebody else, like you tried to do about eating the fruit from that tree. That can get to be a very bad habit. When you really get stuck, just get really quiet and think of me, and I'll be there to help. But I'm going to speak to you very quietly and I'm not going to make you do anything." Then, as they reached the edge of the garden, God asked, "Can you remember what I've told you?"

"Well," said Adam, "we'll try."

"But you know we forget sometimes," said Eve.

"Yes," God said, "I know, I know."

And Adam and Eve stepped out into the world.