There are two accounts of creation in the Bible, the cosmological and the story of Adam and Eve. These aren’t, however, speaking of the same event.
Rather, these two accounts portray two distinct ways of life: one where everything is good and life multiplies, the other where everything goes wrong and we are cast out of heaven. (Where before we know it our children are killing each other.)
These accounts are reversals of each other. In the first, there is a transition from work to rest, while in the second it is from rest to work. The first account is when everything is good, and the second is where everything goes wrong. But the point I hope to make of it all is: things need not go wrong. We can avoid the events of the second creation narrative if we resolve not to adopt the way of life it evokes. Instead, we can adopt the way of life evinced by the first. (Or at least we can consider if doing so would be worthwhile.)
What is God’s character in Adam and Eve? In a word, restrictive. God does not love in the second story but rather keeps Adam and Eve from His most precious fruit. God holds back from them, which is something a loving God would never do. Adam and Eve only make matters worse with their actions, but God was the one who set the scene.
However this is not the God I follow. Instead I advocate the God of the first creation narrative, whose character is no longer restrictive, but irrepressibly giving. In this account God holds nothing back. God works so hard for creation that, after all God’s labour, God needs to rest.
But God only rests when God sees that everything is good. Thus the way of life that leads to everything being good is the way of life that works until everything is good. It is the life that gives all that it has to creation. This is the life of love, the life of sacrifice, the life of responding to others (or responsibility). This is the way of life God shows us, and shows us again through Jesus Christ.
Does such a life sound worth considering? Would it indeed make everything good and lead to the multiplication of life? Is it the way to Heaven on Earth?