How much what we read today in Genesis resembles our own life. After this it is hard to doubt that the Bible is not a book about someone somewhere, but about us. Having violated God's will, Adam and Eve hide, just as we usually do. When asked directly whether he ate the fruit, Adam does not answer "yes." He says: "The woman You gave me talked me into it, and so I ate." Of course, I have nothing to do with it; You Yourself gave me such a wife, so You are to blame for everything, and she is to blame too, while I am actually the injured party...

When asked directly, Eve answers: "The serpent deceived me; I have nothing to do with it either." Someone else is always to blame. We so dislike bearing responsibility for our actions... But one can deceive people, and even oneself, but one cannot deceive the Lord. He sees hearts... So it is better for us too to look at our own heart objectively, without trying to deceive either ourselves or others.

It is interesting that the people listening to Jesus had no supplies left. Usually, when people set out far from home to a deserted place, they take enough food with them. Apparently, those present at the multiplication of the loaves stayed a long time, even recklessly, listening to the Teacher. Here Mary comes to mind, the one who preferred to listen to the Word at Jesus' feet rather than worry about food. Then it can be said of these people as well that they chose the good portion, that they chose the path of following the Teacher in the hope that He could take care of them. And, as always, such hope does not put them to shame. If this understanding is correct, then the narrative of the miracle becomes a story about trust in God and about His faithfulness to those who have decided to follow Him.

So what is a human being: dust or the image of God? Or do the two not contradict each other at all? God directly calls fallen humanity dust, pointing out that its destiny is to return to the dust from which it was made. Is this humiliation, a punishment for the fall? It does not look that way: after all, the human being really was created from dust, just as, according to the sacred writer, the whole universe is made up of "the tiniest specks of dust."

What, then, changed for humanity after the fall? First of all, a certain fatalism in everything that is happening stands out. A person's lot is to return to dust; now nothing else is given. Was it always so? The biblical story, if not directly then indirectly by its context, lets us understand that it was not always so, that returning to dust was not previously inevitable for the human being.

What changed? Dust is merely nature, no more and no less. The cycle of deaths and births is the distinctive feature of natural cycles. And now the human being is simply a part of nature, the same as any other, or almost the same. And before? Before, probably, everything was different: the spiritual principle in the human being prevailed over the natural, and returning "to dust" was not inevitable for him. Now, as we can see, the natural in him prevails over the spiritual.

That is probably why the earth no longer wants to give him its fruits: the subordination of nature to spirit is understandable and natural, but why should nature submit to nature? This is how the human being changes after the fall. Before the fall he was, first and foremost and above all, spirit, and only then an animal. Now, after the fall, he has become first and foremost and above all an animal, and he remains spirit only to the extent that his animal nature allows him to be.