The Confession of the First

"You look like him," the woman with the quiet voice spoke through the mesh of the confessional window. “All men do."

Father Giardino was twenty-five. He was new to this life spent in service to the Lord. This was his first time hearing a confession as an ordained priest, and she was his first penitent. The curse of inexperience weighed heavily on him, and, well...he wished the woman would speak up.

“Whom did you say I resemble? You're speaking a bit too softly. I didn’t hear you.”

She was silent for such a long moment that the priest thought she might have left. 

Finally, she replied, louder this time, “Adam.”

“Forgive me,” he winced at the irony in his choice of words, given their current location, “I’m not sure of whom you speak.”

“You are a priest, are you not?”

A rueful smile graced his lips. “Yes, though I’m quite new to the profession. I haven't yet met anyone by the name of Adam.” 

“Not even in your heart?”

Father Giardino was now well and truly confused. “Beg pardon?”

“I’m referring to the first man, Father. The very first.”

Her clarification did nothing to ease his sense of confusion. “Ah, well, yes, in that case. I suppose all men do resemble the first, in a way. What does my similarity with Adam have to do with the sins you’re seeking to confess?”

The priest heard the woman sigh. “My sin is against humanity itself, and seeing Adam’s likeness in all of creation has been an eons-long reminder of my failure. I’m ready to at last atone; although, perhaps not in the way common of one who’d typically kneel in a confessional. I would like to have a discussion before you decide whether I’m worthy of forgiveness.”

Father Giardino glanced discreetly at his watch. It was six o’clock in the evening, and he was hungry from a long day spent fasting. This old church was located in the middle of absolutely nowhere, though, and this woman with a cryptic tongue had been the only person to have visited today. Aside from his growling stomach, there was no real cause to rush through the sacrament. Not that he believed there ever was, of course, but that was beside the point. “Of course—we are all worthy of forgiveness. Where would you like to begin?”

“At the very beginning, I suppose. Forgive me, Father, for I bear the shame of all sin.”

The priest’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“I can list my wrongdoings, if that would help. The first was desire, though most people—God Himself, even—consider my sin to be that of disobedience.”

He cocked his head, puzzling at the blasphemy, the pride in her declaration. “Desire itself is not a sin. Disobedience to God, certainly—but not desire. I desire to eat supper, for instance,” he quipped, “but I am not in a state of sin for it.”

"And yet...I, too, desired to eat. There was a ripe and fat piece of fruit, you see, hanging from a Tree good for food, one that had been a delight to my naïve eyes. My desire for it cursed all of humanity; separated us all from the Creator.”

Father Giardino blinked as it all clicked in his mind. Adam. Fruit. Eons. 

He turned to peer at the woman through the window, his shock overriding his sense of propriety. The penitent’s flawless skin radiated a preternatural light, glinting like sparks of a fire in her long, coiling black hair. The mesh distorted the fine details of her facial features, but he could see that she was beautiful—perfect, even—in her image. 

Made in the image of God Himself. 

He faced forward again in a rush, his awe at the miraculous nature of his present situation rendering him speechless. 

“Father?”

He swallowed the lump in his throat, his voice a coarse whisper. “Lady, what is your name?”

Her tone was sorrowful as she replied, “Eve. Yes, Father, that Eve.”

It was impossible, preposterous, but in his soul he knew her to be speaking the truth. “Eve,” he breathed. “How—”

“Never mind how,” she interrupted. “Will you still hear my confession, knowing my identity? Will you listen to my story?”

Hope—there was such hope in her voice.

He ran a trembling hand through his hair, choking on rage, on loathing for this woman's misdeeds. “Our parish’s pastor, Father Carzonne, might be more—”

“I want to talk to you.”

He sank further into his chair. Sweat dripped down his neck, the summer evening heat as oppressive as the knowledge of whom, exactly, was sitting behind a thin wall to his left. “All right.”

"As I was saying, desire—"

He didn't wish to hear her repeat the blasphemous statement. “Your biggest, perhaps only, recorded sin was disobedience. You were in no uncertain terms told that you must not eat from that Tree. Why are you not seeking absolution for this? For breaking the Creator's trust that you would make the right decision when presented with an option contrary to His will?”

“You’re asking all the wrong questions, Father.” He opened his mouth to argue with the wretched woman, but she continued, “You know the story of creation, yes? And of the Fall?”

“I’ve read it countless times, yes.”

“So you consider yourself well-acquainted with His perspective?”

“As much as a human is able, I suppose, yes.”

“Have you ever considered the story from my perspective?”

“Certainly, arriving at the same conclusion each time—you chose to disobey a direct order from God, and thus doomed humanity to a fate of cruelty, of earthly suffering. We were eventually granted the gift of salvation, praise Him, but your actions cursed mankind.” The priest cringed at the ire in his voice, but her insinuation that God Himself was somehow wrong added fuel to his internal fire.

“Then you have not really considered my perspective.”

He set aside his anger, as all good priests are wont to do, though not without immense difficulty. “Enlighten me, then.”

“Adam and I existed in a paradise unmarred by such simple conceptualizations of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ We were instinctual creatures back then, with our only other knowledge being the one command God gave Adam: Do not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Does my account align with His, so far?”

“Yes…go on.”

“And then I was made, and Adam informed me of God’s command. It’s important to me that you think deeply on what I am about to tell you: Since I myself had not heard the voice of God, instead receiving His command secondhand from Adam, I thought my husband’s will, his desires, identical to the Creator’s. How could I assume anything different? God didn’t speak to me. As such, I believed my own desires must be God’s, since I was created to submit to Adam’s authority—again, whose will I equated to God’s.”

Anger renewed, his hands shook with its fire. He clenched them to stop their trembling. “Such arrogance. Such pride, to assume the will of God was your own.”

“Hubris among humans did not exist. I hadn’t yet eaten the fruit. I simply was.”

His thoughts were turbulent as he considered her words.

She continued, “Then that snake questioned me. I believed God was questioning me: I had no evidence to the contrary; no knowledge that a contrarian force existed. I repeated God’s command—or, rather, Adam's command, which, for all I knew, was also the snake's command—and then it confused me. It told me that I wouldn't die, that God knew I would become more like Him after I tasted the fruit. 

“Why wouldn’t I want that? Why wouldn’t I want to be closer to my Creator? I thought that’s what He desired, because it was what I desired. Who was I to question the will of God, my own will, conflicting though it had now become? For all I knew, He changed His mind, and therefore I should change my mind.”

The priest was floored. Utterly obliterated at her confession, her perspective. He slid to his knees, feeling overcome with the need to beg forgiveness himself for the doubt creeping into his heart. “Surely you had a sense of…moral intuition?”

“Morality hadn’t been explained yet, Father—keep up, now. It couldn’t have been, otherwise, what was the point of the Tree?”

He bristled at her tone and ground his teeth, but, he conceded, she had a good reason for her condescension.

Eve exhaled a long, miserable breath. “Which brings me to my next sin, and, perhaps, now, your own, given your kneeling: doubt. I doubt His judgment, His decision to exile us from paradise over a simple misunderstanding. God existed with us in Eden, knowing good and evil, and now we knew it, too. So why cast us out? I’m just such a mess about it. Do you have a Bible with you, Father?”

He glanced at the book in the small alcove before him. “Yes. Though I feel the need to interject that it is not my place to question the will of God—nor is it yours.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw her wave a dismissive hand. “Of course, but I didn’t know that then, which is my whole point. Could you please read Genesis, chapter one, verse twenty-six aloud? Stop at the semicolon.”

He leafed through the book, and with a thick voice read, “Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.'” 

She groaned in frustration. “The Creator is utterly impossible. I want to wring His neck—or sob at His feet, or maybe both.”

He shocked himself by granting a sympathetic smile to the woman who’d cursed him. “Most of us desire the same. But please, tell me why you feel this way.”

“Nowadays, I readily admit to my sin. I understand the argument. I disobeyed; I desired that which was not meant for me, and I took it anyway. I have no qualms in acknowledging that the accursed snake ripped desire from my heart and poured it through my limbs, bringing forth a lust for that which I had been forbidden from wanting, urging me to touch the fruit with my fingertips and pluck it from the Tree. I recognize it for what it was, now.” The weight of her voice held eons of suffering as she interjected, “The sound of a stem breaking loose from a branch makes my body flinch to this very day. A cursed little noise.”

The priest heard her sniff, and his heart at last softened at the sound of Eve herself shedding tears in his confessional box.

She continued, her voice aching and watery, “But I do not understand why, why, if the Almighty Himself created humankind in His likeness, I was then scorned throughout eons for desiring to simply be more like Him. How was I—was Adam—to know that disobedience was evil prior to eating the fruit that gave me knowledge of evil?”

Giardino’s very career was built on the premise that he was to defend God until his dying breath, but never in his life did he think he’d be defending Him in this manner. “Well, He did warn you.”

“Adam did! Are you not hearing me? And just as I had never heard God’s voice, Adam had never heard the snake’s. Our entire species was doomed from the moment Adam first inhaled, simply because the pair of us did not know whom to trust—and neither of us doubted the other, because doubt didn’t exist. We knew only the birds chirping in the meadow and the languorous sunlight as it warmed our skin…and God. We knew God. We thought everything was God—because it was. I didn’t even understand my error when I graciously, lovingly, offered the most flavorful bits of the fruit to Adam, but then we both understood, after he ate. We understood everything.” She whispered the last sentence, sobs wracking her body.

“For what sin, exactly,” he asked her gently, “are you therefore requesting absolution?”

Eve huffed, the sound so broken and without humor that he felt his own eyes well with tears. “Finally, Father, you’re asking the right questions.”

They both sat in silence for a time, absorbed in their own thoughts. “Perhaps your sin wasn't disobedience, but that you were not, as you said earlier, simply being who He created you to be. Although that in itself raises the question of what, exactly, the nature of free will really is…one not I—nor anyone—can answer. I must admit, in light of your story, the quote ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do’ takes on an entirely new meaning. How can one be free while unknowing; while created to be unknowing? It’s philosophically paradoxical."

“To me, this paradox is anything but philosophical. This is an intensely personal conundrum. I feel…wronged. But how can I be, when morality itself is a product of the Creator? When He is goodness itself? What is the point of salvation, if there was no First Sin? Why is humanity not still in the Garden? Sure, someone else might’ve come along and messed it all up, but why did it have to be me? Why did He choose me?”

The priest breathed a laugh and dropped his head, shaking it a bit.

“Father?” Her tone was desperate, sharp.

“I find it darkly humorous that you sit here, Eve, the first woman, the first sinner, asking ‘what’s the point of it all’ like the rest of us sorry apes.”

A beat passed, then Eve laughed, and the knowledge that he possessed the ability to make such a tragic, damaged figure do so rattled the priest to his core. Would he be able to make God laugh, as well, when he met Him? Was God laughing at him now?

He leaned his head back to study the dark wood of the confessional’s ceiling. “Your problem, as I see it, is twofold: One, you are curious as to whether you deserve to have been scorned by all, including God, given your circumstances and lack of insight in the Garden; and two, you desire forgiveness irrespective of the conclusions of the first.”

“Yes, that’s an adequate summary.”

He chose his words carefully. “For the first, I can only say that the Creator’s motives, His true moral framework—the point of it all—is fundamentally unknowable. Your perspective is compelling and tragic, and humanity owes you an apology for our contempt. And, regretfully, I believe you will simply have to ask the Creator these questions yourself, despite it being far from a human’s place to ask Him anything. However—considering we are all deemed unworthy in such a way due to your actions, your pure, blind naïvety, your innocence—I truly think you qualify as a special case.

"For the second, I believe I can provide more help. Through my power as an intercessor, I can absolve you of your sins, grant His forgiveness so that you may one day stand in His presence to ask Him those questions, if you’d like.”

“I never once said it's God's forgiveness that I seek, Father.”

His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Whose, then?”

“Your own. Humanity’s own. I cursed this planet eons ago—set about a wretched butterfly effect that has led to the death of millions through violence…my own son’s death through violence. In spite of the salvation that created your religion, I still feel burdened by guilt for a mistake I didn’t know I’d made, that I didn’t even understand—and I’ve watched as generation after generation has cursed my name for it in kind.”

He contemplated her confession, his own feelings regarding his authority to absolve her guilt on humanity's behalf. Was it prideful, if he did feel he possessed that authority? Did he, like her, desire to be like God in that aspect?

Although...if anyone deserved compassion, it was this woman.

At last he said softly, “Eve, it was the snake who tricked you, in the same way it tricks the rest of us daily. You are blameless for its evil nature. You simply are, and you decided to do something more than just be.”

“But can you forgive me for it?”

"For existing?" His heart broke at her words, at the shame he knew suffocated and flogged her soul. The true reason she knelt beside him.

"For desiring. For acting. For making the wrong choice, innocent as the action might have been, and thereby damning you to know pain."

Desire—her first sin, she had said. Not against God, but humanity, the priest now understood. "I don't believe you need forgiveness for this."

"It would bring me peace to receive it all the same."

Father Giardino smiled, his decision solidified. "Then, yes, wholeheartedly, you are forgiven."

She loosed a shuddering breath. “And will you ask God to forgive me as well, in spite of all my blasphemous doubt, my questions...or, perhaps, for it?”

His voice was hoarse as he said, “Yes. But, first, can I ask…” he turned at last to remove the mesh on the window and look at her, at all the parts of her he saw within himself. “Why did you select me as the clergyman with whom to have this conversation, to share in this puzzle? Why me?” 

Her face was soft as she replied. “Because you are cursed with inexperience, as I once was—we share that affliction. I desired connection with a kindred spirit. Why me, too?”