All this recent posting about the Genesis story brought to mind
a lovely variation called "SNAKE" by Anne Herbert, originally
published in the now defunct [CoEvolution Quarterly][1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoEvolution_Quarterly

SNAKE by Anne Herbert

IN THE BEGINNING God didn't just make one or two people,
he made a bunch of us. Because he wanted us to have a lot
of fun and he said you can't really have fun unless there's
a whole gang of you. So he put us all in this sort of
playground park place called Eden and told us to enjoy.

At first we did have fun just like he expected. We played
all the time.  We rolled down the hills, waded in the
streams, climbed the trees, swung on the vines, ran in
the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest,
and acted silly. We laughed a lot.

Then one day this snake told us that we weren't having
real fun because we weren't keeping score. Back then, we
didn't know what score was. When he explained it, we still
couldn't see the fun. But he said that we should give an
apple to the person who was best at playing and we'd never
know who was best unless we kept score. We could all see
the fun of that. We were all sure we were best.

It was different after that. We yelled a lot. We had to
make up new scoring rules for most of the games we played.
Other games, like frolicking, we stopped playing because
they were too hard to score. By the time God found out
about our new fun, we were only spending about forty-five
minutes a day in actual playing and rest of the time
working out the score. God was wroth about that - very,
very wroth. He said we couldn't use the garden any more
because we weren't having any fun. We said we were having
lots of fun and we were. He shouldn't have got upset just
because it wasn't exactly the kind of fun he had in mind.

He wouldn't listen. He kicked us out and said we couldn't
come back until we stopped keeping score. To rub it in (to
get our attention, he said), he told us that we were all
going to die anyway and our scores wouldn't mean anything.

He was wrong. My cumulative all-game score is now 16,548,
and that means a lot to me. If I can raise it to 20,000
before I die I'll know I've accomplished something. Even
if I can't my life has a great deal of meaning because
I've taught my children to score high and they'll all be
able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000 I know.

Really, it was life in Eden that didn't mean anything. Fun
is great in its place, but without scoring there's no
reason for it. God has a very superficial view of life
and I'm glad my children are being raised away from his
influence. We were lucky to get out. We're all very grateful
to the snake.

--
Ian Gregory
http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/