The Eucharist: Our New Heart

As I was saying yesterday, one of the primary underlying points of the Old Testament is that man needs a new heart; in many respects, the Old Testament reads like a soap opera or like Desperate Housewives or some other pathetic reality show. The human condition is in need of a make-over. We need help; apart from God, there is precious little evil that man will not do.

Did you ever wonder why God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone? Of course, writing in stone is great for a permanent and lasting reminder of what is written; however, there is more to it than that. The two tablets with the law engraved on the outside is a symbol of our hearts. We have hearts of stone; our hearts are cold and dead; our tree of life is barren because we only obey when we have to or because we don't want to be punished; whenever we can, we disobey. We love our sin and are slow to give it up.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 states: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." A new heart of flesh is one that seeks to please God out of love for Him. It is not a servile, slavish heart; it is the heart of a child with his father or of a bride for her husband. The beating heart seeks to please the beloved.

Jeremiah 31:31ff states: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband....I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God.... for they shall all know me...." This is the only time "new covenant" is mentioned in the Old Testament, and it is connected to God our husband who will write His law upon our hearts, and we shall all know Him.

Connecting both of these passages we have this: when God gives the new covenant, He will give us a new heart of flesh which contains God's law and which will be careful to obey Him and will come to know Him. When Jesus uses the phrase "the new covenant," He is celebrating the first Mass as He fulfills and completes the Passover. He is the Passover Lamb who lays down His life and is lifted up on the cross where He gives His whole self, ending in the piercing of His Sacred Heart and the blood and water flowing forth from it.

From Eucharistic miracles, we know that the flesh of the Eucharist, when the reality is not hiding, is cardiac tissue. The Eucharist is Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart that loves, trusts, obeys; His heart loves to the point of giving Himself completely; His heart lays down His life for the beloved; His heart only seeks to please the Father. Every Holy Communion Jesus gives us His heart anew. He gives us the grace and courage and desire to love God above all things and our neighbor as our self. The problem of our hard, unbelieving heart is solved when we worthily receive Jesus' heart each Eucharist. He is our tree of life; when we are in communion with Him, we have life abundantly.

Tomorrow I would like to explain how the Eucharist is the precise antidote to the condition we find ourselves in due to the Fall.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Bear Fruit For God

Paul says in his letter to the Romans: "Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God" (7:4). The context for this quote is marriage and how one is bound to one's spouse as long as the spouse is alive. If one's spouse dies, he is free to marry. In a similar manner, we have died to our old spouse so we may now belong to another, Christ.

How did we die? In baptism as it says a chapter earlier in Romans: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life" (6:3-4).

The situation is this: we were married and it wasn't to God. God made us to be married to Him, but with sin we ended up in bondage to sin and satan and the law which was added due to sin. The only way to escape that bondage is for either one of us to die, but that seems impossible. There is no way out with our adversary ready to devour us. A symbol of this in the Old Testament is when the Israelites were up against the Red Sea unarmed and loaded down with goods and little ones while Pharaoh's highly trained and highly agitated army readied itself to revenge the death of all their first-born. All hope was lost. Yet God broke in and saved Israel through the water while at the same time destroying their enemy. This is a symbol of baptism.

We are married to a tyrannical murderer who hates us with a complete hatred and only wants to destroy us; he is not going to die, and if we die, well then we are dead. So God becomes one of us, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. In a spiritual and real way, we are united to Jesus in both His death and resurrection through baptism. Jesus provides us a way to die so that we are no longer bound to sin and satan as spouse, and then we are free to marry another and have Him as our spouse.

We walk in newness of life because we have become a new creation in baptism and have been married to a new spouse. United to our new husband, Jesus, we are now able to bear fruit for God. "Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart ... having been set free from sin..." (Romans 6:17-18). The place we bear good fruit is in our tree of life which is our heart. Our old stony heart has died, and with our new creation we have been given a new, living, loving, obedient heart of flesh with God's law written upon it; now we desire and seek to please God, our spouse, since we love Him and want to make Him happy.

One of the main points of the entire Old Testament is that man was entrapped by sin and that his heart was hard and unbelieving; the point is that we needed a new heart. Jesus responds to that problem by giving us a new heart, His very heart, so that we can eat of the tree of life once again and love and trust God no matter what test we have to undergo. Now we are given the heart, the courage, to lay down our life for another and be faithful to God to the point of shedding our blood in love of Him. With Him and His heart beating within us, we may bear fruit for God.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Mystical Marriage

Today is the the day eight years ago that my wife and I married. Out of nowhere, freezing temperatures came to town and are holding all of us in Minneapolis hostage. My dear parents came over after work to watch our four little ones while my wife, six-month old and I ventured out into the biting, dark cold to partake of a nice, nearby restaurant. My wife and I had a very nice, quiet chat while our littlest one was content to sit in our laps most of the meal and smile at everyone within sight.

One of our points of conversation was about this blog. I love writing it. I haven't gotten any sleep the past two and a half weeks, but I love writing, and I have so much more I want to say. I need to reorganize my very busy schedule a bit so that sleep is not on the bottom of the list of importance all of the time. We also turned our conversation to marriage, of all things, on this night eight years ago when we began ours. Marriage is all I have been thinking about these past fifteen plus years.

One of the reasons I took the theory that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was sexual relations with some seriousness when I first began looking into it was because I knew from my reading of the spiritual classics from Saint John of the Cross and Saint Theresa of Avila in the Great Books Honors program at Franciscan University of Steubenville that the endpoint of the spiritual life is known as mystical marriage. The fullness of the prayer life is to be married to God. If our final goal in this life and for all eternity is to be married to God, then it would make sense that that is why God created us from the beginning.

Saint John of the Cross, who reached the heights of mystical union with God before he met Saint Theresa of Avila and led her there when he was only twenty-five and she fifty-two, wrote much about the dark night of the soul. Before one reaches mystical marriage with God, he has to undergo a purgation. Any immaturity in one's relationship with God needs to be washed away, so all sense perceptible feelings are entirely bypassed: one does not in any way feel like they love God and all feelings that God even exists are taken away so that one may have a pure and mighty faith, hope and love of God that is unshakable and in no way selfish. When one has successfully climbed past this test, one is truly prepared to receive God in all His fullness (insofar that that is possible on earth).

The reason why God puts a person serious about loving God above all things through all this is that it is the only way to arrive at the fullness of love. Everyone has to go through a test like Adam and Eve or Abraham and Isaac or Mary and Joseph and pass it with an unshakable faith and love if they fully want to bear abundant fruit for God. For it is only on the other side of such a test successfully endured that complete union with God is found. God asks: "Will you marry me?" Saying yes is the easy part; giving ourselves entirely to Him come what may, especially to our crucifixion, is the part that makes most of us shy away and be content with a something less that full relationship.

Earthly marriage has many similarities to our marriage with God; God created the first as a symbol of our union with Him, after all. The point I want to highlight here is that marriage in the mature and full sense of the word, in both cases, has precious little to do with feelings. Feelings are like the wind and come and go and change day by day. Marriage is for life and is unchanging, especially when it comes to God.

One of the greatest roots of the dysfunction and misery in our world today is that we live our life based on our feelings. Sure, feelings are there like the wind is sometimes blowing and is sometimes warm and other times cold, sometimes from the north and occasionally from the south, sometimes with great wrath and other times with a soft caress, but we don't live by the wind. We live in a home that stands strong and is not moved by the wind, no matter how strong or fierce, that isn't bothered by the scorching sun or the whipping rain or the driving, slicing snow. Love is not a feeling. It is a decision. Feelings are present from time to time, but the decision to love remains and endures and does not alter in times of trouble or change.

There comes a time when the pure love of commitment and self-sacrifice grow deep and strong, and it is at this time when all the feelings which supported and propped up that love are stripped away. Only when the crutches and braces and fiberglass casts are removed from our weak legs can we begin to run. The dark night of the soul is a wonderful blessing, and it brings forth the beautiful, pure fruit of love that is never blown with the wind but shines with the light and warmth of the sun.

P.S. Recently, it was revealed that Mother Theresa toward the end of her life had no feeling that God existed. That shouldn't surprise you or shake your faith. That is a wonderful sign that Jesus was bringing her very close to the consuming fire of his bridegroom's heart.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Children of God

Yesterday I discussed how we need to be born again since our first birth didn't work, so to speak. This point is a major theme in the Gospel of John where he introduces it in the middle of the prologue or introduction to his gospel: "He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:11-13).

By receiving Jesus into our hearts and making it a fit home for Him, we become children of God. This process of receiving Jesus is formally begun when we enter into His death and then rise with Him in our baptism, and we deepen that union with Him at every worthy reception of Him in the eucharist. Each reception of Jesus in holy communion is made more fruitful the more we open our hearts to Him through a life of daily, continual prayer and deeds of charity to our neighbor. And the more we receive Him well in that most powerful event of this life, the better we pray and life out our faith. True children of God live the life of God, live a life in union with and imitation of our crucified Savior.

Before being reborn as God's children, we were originally born as children of men. John says we were born by the bloods of man, the will of the flesh of man, and the will of man; what do each of these mean? Our translations say "blood," but the Greek is the plural "bloods" which refers to the bodily fluids that result in conception. Jesus the Son of God was not born by any sexual union and exchange of bodily fluids, nor are we born again by any sexual union or by bloods. The will of the flesh refers to the sexual desire for union; again, being born of God involves no such sexual union. The will of man refers to the desire to have a baby, and so the couple comes together to accomplish that goal; when we are born from above, however, it is God who wills that we are made a new creation, and He is the one who gives us new life.

We are born, the first time, because of the abilities and desires of a man and woman. This birth makes us a "son of man" (to use the biblical phrase). A son of man has lost his inheritance as Esau sold and despised his inheritance to his younger brother, Jacob. Our ultimate inheritance is heaven; thus, the gates of heaven are closed until Jesus opens them through his death and resurrection. As a son of man, we have no hope for full union with God.

God's solution for his wayward, adulterous bride is to send His Son, who called Himself the Son of Man, to save us sons of men. As Saint Athanasius said, "The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God."

The next question I would like to venture into is to discuss exactly how Jesus makes us God's children; it is related to why Jesus dies as He does and what baptism actually does for us; it is also related to what exactly our problem was to begin with and how Jesus' acts and works are the precise antidote to our ailments. Tomorrow I will venture further down this path.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Cain--Not a Good Start to the Human Race: Why We Need To Be Born Again

It is remarkable, in a negative sense, that the very first person born of a woman, born of human parents, turned out to be the murderer of his own brother. I never really thought about that until rather recently. That, Cain's evil action, is a horrible way to begin this new species which God created to be His temple and His very spouse. I don't think we usually give this fact much thought; but I find it shocking. I think there is much to understand and learn from the fact that he, the very first one down the shoot of this great, new model, turned out so badly.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Saint John refers to Cain as the son of the devil. I think he is speaking in more than a metaphorical sense. According to my understanding of the first chapters of Genesis, both the idea and the person of Cain was conceived based on what the serpent gave to the woman: both the information of how to have children together with his attitude of distrust in God. In a true, non-physical, way, the serpent is the father of Cain. All that the evil one seeks to do is destroy what God holds dear; he has nothing but disdain and total and complete hatred for all things human for we were made to be God's spouse. The serpent is the perfect archetypical murderer who Jesus called the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning. It is no wonder he assisted in the conception of a murderer.

Cain's physical father doesn't get off all that well either. Since, as the head of the family, he allowed it to follow a path God commanded them not to go down, since he allowed it to seek after life in distrust of God who made them, since he turned his back on his Creator and Lord and turned and trusted in the wisdom of the serpent, since he led his family to a deep spiritual adultery with his true spouse, God, the man, Adam, was a murderer for he spiritually and in many ways physically murdered himself and his family, the entire human race with his fall from grace. Both of Cain's fathers were murderers. I don't believe that that reality forced him to become a murderer; it simply makes it more understandable.

God did not give up on Cain either before he murdered his brother or after he did so. God reached out to him and tried to bring him back; Cain chose another way, his own way of self-glorification. He refused to be a temple of God and instead chose to build monuments to himself. He and his family sought to make a name for themselves; they sought to make their own truth; they sought to make their own life; they sought to make their own rules and their own morality; they sought to make their own fulfillment and heaven; they sought anything except God and put everything else in His place; they cut themselves off from the tree of life, from trusting in God the source of life, and so they built a culture of death...and died.

Saint John reduces the world down to a decision each of us makes between joining the children of God or the children of the devil: "Little children, let no one deceive you. He who does right is righteous, as he is righteous. He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" 1 John 3:7-8.

The work of the devil was to steal the spouse of God; he did that and held humanity under his cruel bondage with seemingly no hope for survival. Children were supposed to come to us virginally having God as the father of the child (not in any sexual way, but as a gift from above). Because of the Fall, all children come from man and are not children of God. The way grace works is that it comes from God; by generation on our own, humans are incapable of handing on grace. What is called Original Sin is not some added on punishment God thought up but a natural consequence of how reality works: humans have no natural power to pass on grace, which is God's life. God has to pass on God's life; He does have us share in the passing on of grace to others, but grace comes from Him. The work of God, then, is to restore humanity back to grace and make us His children and spouse once more.

So the Fall created the condition we call Original Sin for due to the Fall, everyone is born a son of man. No one is born a son of God. Because of the Fall, all children come about through sexual relations and are children of men and in some sense children of the devil. This is why Jesus teaches that we need to be born from above, born again, born of God. Our first birth was a birth into the bondage of sin and satan, and our inheritance is only what our hating father, satan, wants to give us. God provides us a way to be born again so that we can actually become His children. That Way is His Son Jesus who allows us to die with Him in His crucifixion and so rise with Him in His resurrection to become a new creation.

Without God we are self-consumed seekers of our own life and glory, and the fruit of such soil and of such a tree is what we are in ourselves, lifeless dust and death. With God we are self-sacrificing lovers who seek to please our True Spouse, The Living God, and bear abundant and life-giving fruit for the healing of the nations. Without God we make ourselves a worthless object, and we make everyone else around us merely an object for our use and pleasure to be disposed of when we are through. With God we lose ourselves, become His spouse, re-personalize everyone around us and inspire them to live life abundantly as the companion of the Living God; we inspire them to realize the true dignity that he and every human person has as a precious vessel made to be the abode of God, the God who lays down His life for love of His beloved. God makes us imitators of Himself, a self-sacrificing lover who gives life to the world. How awesome is our calling.

Thanks for reading and for your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Wife Stealing

I ended yesterday saying I would say a word about wife stealing. Wife stealing is a particular form of adultery, there being other forms of adultery. The theme of wife stealing comes up rather often, especially in the first half of the book of Genesis. I think this rather common theme has its origin in the Fall, and, as I see it, whatever happened at the Fall is repeated throughout history. The die was cast at the Fall, and all the problems we have today and all the problems people have had throughout history, have their source and origin in the Fall. If we clearly understand the Fall, we can more clearly understand ourselves, others and history, not to mention all that Jesus did and how He heals us today. Jesus is the precise antidote to our precise problems.

When the man and the woman disobey the singular prohibition from God and trust in the wisdom of the serpent and have sexual relations in order to have a child, they forsake God and cling to the evil one. It is a form of spiritual adultery. This theme is repeated many times throughout Scripture with the image of Israel playing the harlot after other gods. From the man and the woman's perspective, they were unfaithful to their true spouse, God, and are adulterers. From the serpent's perspective, he is a wife stealer. Man was made to be the spouse of God, but satan enters the picture and entices him away from God. The serpent deceives the man and woman into trusting him and his wisdom, and so he captures the heart of the spouse of God and takes her away with himself.

The primal spouse-stealer is satan. The end result of the Fall is that God has lost His bride. The rest of salvation history is God's work to get her back, to redeem her from her oppressive, murderous master. God goes so far as to die for us in order to win us back to Himself. Satan's goal is to keep us united to himself, cut off from God, and without hope of eternal life with God in heaven; he simply wants to destroy us. God wants us to be fully alive and happy with Him and all the angels and saints without end.

I will save giving examples of spouse-stealing for now; the point I want to make about it beyond what I have already written is that spouse-stealing as adultery is tantamount to murder. I believe that much of the Bible is written in a parallel format known as chiasm; the most important points of a chiasm are located in the middle or heart. The format is something like: A, B, C, D, E, E', D', C', B', A', with E and E' being the heart of the argument. What is at the heart of the Ten Commandments, position five and six? They are not to murder and not to commit adultery. They are the heart of the Ten Commandments, and represent exactly what was most wrong with the Fall: our first parents committed adultery in relation to God, and they, in a real sense, murdered the human race.

In many respects, murder and adultery were basically the same thing in the mind of the Jews, and rightly so. The laws of the Old Testament consider the two sins as being very similar receiving the same sort of punishment. To a certain extent, they are two sides of the same coin. And this mentality toward these two deadly sins is precisely the same as the Ten Commandments themselves since they are in the fifth and sixth position. Adultery and murder go hand in hand (a good example from the Bible is, of course, the story of David and Bathsheba), and so today these two sins have been running rampant and virtually unchecked. This is remarkably so when considering fornication as a form of adultery and abortion as the murder of the unborn. We are a society of fornicators, adulterers, and murderers (even if we ourselves have not had an abortion, so many have participated in this grave sin by supporting and defending it as a so-called right).

I'll continue these thoughts another time.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Now Her Name is Eve

After the Fall, the man realizes he is naked, hides, and is found by God; then God questions him and reveals to him the consequences of his disobedience; the very next thing the man does is rename his now pregant wife the mother of all the living! She sought after a baby, and now she has conceived. Since she is now a mother and the first mother of the human race, the man names her as mother of all. From now on she is Eve.

Yesterday I gave some possible re-translations of Genesis 3:22-24. I don't know enough to properly re-translate, but by looking at my Hebrew resources, I hope these are possible ways to re-configure the text. I have no desire to just make up what I want the Bible to say; on the contrary, I want God's Holy Word to be translated and understood as correctly as possible. Translators have to make countless choices when they translate, especially when the words used have a multitude of meanings. The context of words and phrases plays an enormous role in obscure and chameleon-like words. Depending how the translator understands the sentence's surrounding context will determine how difficult passages are translated. Since most translators have never given much if any credance to my theory (which of course I see as correct), they will not arrive at a correct translation.

It makes no sense to me that God would guard the way to the tree of life to keep man from eating it and living forever. God wants nothing more of us but to eat of the tree of life and to live forever (with Him in heaven). Understanding the tree of life as the heart, God obviously still wants Adam and Eve to trust, obey and love Him and to be with Him forever in Heaven. Nothing would make Him happier.

One of the main points of the rest of the Old Testament is that we have hard hearts. Over and over again it becomes painfully clear that we don't trust, love, and obey God and that the problem the Fall caused was that we need new hearts. Ezekiel prophesies in 36:26: "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

One way to keep the Genesis text as it is is to see the expelling from the garden as a symbol which shows how Adam and Eve were cast out of themselves and no longer knew or were true to themselves. It indicates how they were cut off from the tree of life, and that would be so because with their sin caused by lack of trust in God, they have lost their true heart and only have a dead, stoney heart remaining. The primary reason Jesus came to this earth and suffered, died, and rose again is to provide you and me with a new heart, a heart that believes, loves and obeys God. At every Eucharist, we receive that heart anew.

A final thought tonight is that Eve names her firstborn, Cain. "Cain" means "gotten." Since the woman was striving to get a child and that was what the whole Fall was about, when that child is born it would be normal to call his name "gotten," for now she has "got" him. As Planned Parenthood says, "Every child a wanted child," this was the first wanted child. It did not take long for this first person ever to be born to end up on "America's Most Wanted." This beginning of the human race's effort to bear children turned out horribly, for he was a murderer. The very first person born was a murderer, and of his own brother at that! The proper attitude toward children is openness and is expressed as this: "Every child a welcomed child."

I don't know if I mentioned an extremely important point. It is not that God did not want Adam and Eve to be like Him and to have children. Nothing could make God happier than for them to be like God and to have a child. After all, that is the reason why He created us. The problem is that they did not trust God to provide the child, nor did they trust His prohibition not to have relations. At some point in the future I will talk about how Abraham has a very similar test which he temporarily fails when he has Ishmael with Hagar and finally passes when he offers up Isaac, the one through whom descendants as many as the stars of the sky were promised.

Tomorrow I want to talk about, among other things, the element of wife stealing present here in the Fall.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Genesis 3 Part 3: After the Punishments

As I said yesterday, the very first thing Adam does after the punishment is declared is he renames his now pregnant wife; he names her Eve, which is mother of all the living. The very first thing God does after this is he provides clothing for Adam and Eve. The God-provided clothing is a great improvement to the fig leaves they had hastily made for themselves. God has not abandoned them or rejected them; He still cares very much for them. Why do they need clothing anyway? Before the Fall they had a child-like innocence so they could walk around naked and think little of it just like two-year-olds can do. Now that they have had sexual relations and have fallen from grace, they need clothes for a healthy sense of modesty and so they can get some work done.

"Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and life for ever'--therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken." This translation does not fit well with my theory and understanding of what is happening in the first three chapters of Genesis. Of course, the first part of sentence does fit. The part that does not make sense to me is, "Now, lest he put..." I don't know Hebrew (although I wish I did), but I do have a number of scholarly Hebrew resources that I consult. I would change it to, "And now, lest both his will to do good be abandoned and his will to eat of the tree of life, and [lest] this situation be the case for now and forever."

God is not casting the man and the woman out of the garden and protecting the tree of life with an angel so they will not eat it and live forever. God wants us to eat of the tree of life, and He wants us to live forever. Adam and Eve have become like God for they have made a man. What God doesn't want to happen is that Adam and Eve, God's bride, give up entirely and stop trying to be good and draw close to God. God just lost His bride, and He is not giving up; He just promised a redeemer in the woman's seed; He just decided to send His Only Son to save man; He just clothed the couple; He just finished making all creation so that man would have a home; He just made man so that He could dwell in him and share His life with him; by no means is God giving up. His only concern is that man will give up and go over totally to the dark side. God wants man back. The next sentence would be, "God commissioned the man from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken, and sent him forth."

Chapter three ends: "At the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life." Since God does not want to lose man entirely and hopes for His turning back to Him, God wants to give the man another helper. At the front of the man, God's delight, He commissions an angel, powerful and equipped, to protect the tree of life so that the man may eat of it and have life in God. The rib lost her role in helping man to heaven, so God provides another helper who is commissioned for each of us to guide our hearts to the way of peace.

I think chapter three really ends with the first verse of chapter four; this one verse summary of the Fall states: "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, 'I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord'."(Gen4.1). This relatively short entry tonight took me much longer than all my previous entries to date; I spent a long time consulting my Hebrew lexicons, etc.

One final note before I head off to bed (it is 1:30 A.M. right now): I think that the "punishments" given to the man and the woman were merely the natural consequence of what they did. God simply enlightened them about what damage they had just caused by their disobedience. God had planned a higher and better route for them to be fruitful and multiply, but since they had chosen the lower road, God simply told them what troubles they would find along that path.

I hope I made some sense tonight as I tackled this very difficult passage (the turkey is still keeping me going). If anyone who knows Hebrew reads this, let me know what you think. Are my "translations" possible?

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Genesis 3: The Fall, Part 2

Yesterday I had begun explaining how the God-given consequences fit exactly with my understading of the Fall. I had started with the serpent's punishment of crawling around on his belly eating dust which is just what he had tricked the man and the woman into doing with each other. The serpent will continue to attack man, his mortal enemy, and he will focus his attack on man's weak spot--his sexuality. Eventually, the seed of the woman will come to crush the head of the serpent; this is what Jesus does with His passion, death and resurrection (I'll explain that in future entries).

Next in line for a consequence is the woman. My theory is that God told the man and woman to be fruitful and multiply but not to have relations. This is the same test that Mary passed because she lost her life for love of God and so was rewarded with the Son of God. The woman sought her own life and acted in a way forbidden by God to her, and so she received death. She tried to gain her life and so lost it. Since she sought a child contrary to how God wanted to give it (virginally like Mary), now she will have a child, but God says, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing." If she had had faith like Mary, she would have conceived a son of God and given birth painlessly, but she conceived a son of man, and that is a painful enterprise.

As I said about Genesis 1:26, we are made to be the spouse or bride of God; that is the full sense of what being made in the image and likeness of God is. The woman is a spouse to the man, but more importantly, she is made to be the bride of God. She is made to have children with God as the Father (not sexually, but virginally like Mary). When she chooses to have her earthly husband as the father in a physical manner, and when she disobeys the one prohibition of God, she forsakes her primary husband for the secondary. Thus, God explains: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Instead of having God as husband who rules over her, she has chosen the man as her husband who will rule over her. She has rejected God.

This scenario closely parallels Israel's seeking a King during the time of the judges. It is recorded in 1 Samuel 8:7ff: "Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them." Samuel had been very upset that the people were asking to be like all the other nations and have a king rule over them. God responds that they have rejected Him as their king, but He is going to give them what they desire. He goes on to warn them how the king will take advantage of them and rule them as a cruel taskmaster; God was an infinitely better king, but they wanted to be like everybody else. The woman has done the same sort of thing, rejecting God as her husband and putting in His place the man. Not every king was bad nor every husband, but both tend toward a selfish domination that abuses and uses.

Fianally, we come to the longest and last punishment which applies to the man. This implies that God holds the man most responsible. My understanding of this is that he was the one primarily in charge and placed in authority for he is the one who names the woman and all the animals. Man and woman have a unity and equality, but the man has a unique authority and responsibility in his relationship with the woman.

God starts off with him saying, "Because you have listened to the voice of you wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you , 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field." God is man's spouse, too. Instead of obeying God, the man chose to listen to and obey his human spouse. He placed the voice of his wife above the voice of God and His explicit and singular prohibition, and he had relations with his wife.

The man and woman are not cursed, only the serpent and the ground. Why is the ground cursed bringing forth thorns and thistles? There are two things to keep in mind: first, a man's semen was considered his seed (the word semen even comes from the word for seed); and second, both the man and the woman are living dirt or ground. In the Fall, the man just finished planting his seed into the woman, and the result is Cain. Acting contrary to God's command and trusting in his own generative powers, the man's planting in the ground will bring forth a weed, a son of man. Trusting in himself and his wife, who are mere creatures, they produce the best that creatures can do--a son of man, not a son of God. Now because of the Fall, whenever man plants, either in the woman or in the earth, thorns and thistles will result or at least be mixed in with the good.

God concludes his words to the man saying: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return." God took the worthless dust of the earth and made in into an invaluable home for Himself; the man has rejected being God's home and has instead taken up his abode in the woman. The man has thereby chosen to be worthless dust once more. Man has chosen death, and God gives us what we want. Before the Fall, man worked/worshipped and God provided the fruit, but now man has chosen to work for himself and get his own food. In heaven, our work will be worship once more and God will again provide us our "food."

It is extremely important that the very first thing the man does after the punishments are meted out is that he renames the woman Eve. Throughout the Bible, people are given new names when they have become a new reality. Abram is renamed Abraham when he becomes the father of a multitude of nations, Jacob is renamed Israel when he wrestles with an angel and is blessed by him, and Simon is renamed Peter or Rock when Jesus decides to build His Church upon Peter. A new reality calls forth a new name. The Fall was the act by which Cain was conceived, so the woman is no longer just a woman. She is a mother. Now that she is a new reality as mother, Adam renames her mother of all the living.

Again, the time is past eleven at night, and tomorrow we are having Thanksgiving at our home. I'll have to finish up chapter three later.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Genesis 3: The Fall

Now it is time to go through chapter three. At the end of chapter two, the very last sentence says that the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. There is a word play on the word for naked and the the description of the serpent who is subtle. The wisdom and shrewdness of the serpent is what is going to attack and deceive the innocence of the couple.

The serpent starts his misleading conversation with the woman: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" His seemingly innocent question is designed to kill. It is a question full of attitude and mistrust of God. What kind of God would create this couple as a garden and then tell them not to eat of any of their trees (abilities and gifts)? There is a cruelness and tyrannical attitude in God if that is what He had done.

The woman corrects the serpent saying that they may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, i.e. they may utilize all the gifts God has given them. She continues: "But God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'." There are several items of interest in her response. She does not call the tree the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but the tree which is in the midst of the garden. What is more centrally located in a woman's body than her child-bearing womb? Her reproductive system is in the middle of her body/garden. She also adds the point which is not mentioned by anyone in the story up to now that they shall not touch that middle tree either. The word "touch" is a word filled with meaning about as much as the word "to know." They both are very common idioms referring to sexual experience.

The serpent comes back at the woman saying: "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." This is the end of the recorded conversation of the serpent in our story. He starts with a half truth; they do die, as God had said they would, but that death is only immediate in a spiritual manner. It takes over 900 years for their physical death; as long as that sounds, it is still a very short time for someone made immortal.

The entrapment centers around the ability to see, to know good and evil, and to be like God. It is very important to recall the context of the narrative at this point. Every time God has seen has been after He finished creating during one of the days, and He sees what He has created is good. All that we or the man and woman have known of God to this point is that He is the creator. Our first parents' desire to see and be like God is, contextually, all about being creative. They want to create like God; the last creature He created was themselves, and they want fulfill His command to be fruitful and multiply. They want a child. All the serpent has revealed to the woman is that it is via "touching" the tree in the middle of the garden/eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they can be like God and make a man.

The serpent has revealed to the woman that the way they can fulfill God's command to be fruitful and multiply and be like God is to disobey God and eat of the middle tree. By implication the serpent has also discredited God and made Him out to be an untrustworthy and selfish master who doesn't want the man and woman to be like Him (even though He made them like Him). Now the full weight of the temptation has hit home, and there remain no good reasons for the woman to obey God other than that she trusts Him. The two commands don't seem to fit together, and they seem to imply that God is not good.

In her heart, the woman turns away from God and turns toward the wisdom of the serpent. She resolves to get the man God made her to have: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate." It only takes one sentence to describe the Fall and how the woman becomes like God. One, the woman becomes like God seeing what is good. Two, the man was a delight/Eden to God, and now the man is a delight to the woman. Three, God had taken the man and made the woman out of him, and now she has taken the man and will make a new man out of him, i.e. Cain. Of course, she cannot eat of the tree in the full sense without the man, so he is immediately mentioned as eating it, too. As they say, it takes two to tango.

The first thing they realize is that they are naked, and the first thing they do is cover themselves. Before they had sexual relations, they were like young children and had no knowledge or desire for it in and of itself. They only desired it as a means to the end of having a child. The nakedness they had before the Fall was one of purity and innocence; now the nakedness they experience is one of emptiness and death like a desert.

They hide from God who seeks them out. When God asks the man if he has eaten of the forbidden tree, he responds: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Most see this verse as man's blaming his wife for the trouble he is in. That element is probably present, but it could be simply or mostly his honest admission of what just happened. One minute before he had been sinless and endowed with a multitude of virtues and complete integrity of person; I would think his virtues would be not so completely and immediately vacated in his fall. If the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sexual knowledge, then he cannot have eaten of it apart from the woman; that is why he mentions her. I am not saying that it is a perfectly wholesome confession, but I think it is more of a confession than is commonly attributed to the man. Another way of saying it is: the woman you gave to me as a wife gave herself to me, and I knew her. In that sense, it is a simple admission of his sin.

When God asks the woman what she had done, she admits: "The serpent beguiled me, and I ate."
Is she blaming the serpent? Maybe. But again, she is giving a brief account of what just happened. The serpent did trick her and get her to trust him, and then she ate. Neither of them are saying that they were forced to eat or that it wasn't their fault that they ate; they both admit they ate after saying what events led up to their eating. The man says God gave him a wife, the wife gave herself to the man, and he ate of the tree. The woman says the serpent tricked her, and then she ate.

God seems to accept their confessions; He makes no comment at all about them. As soon as they confess who it was who led them into sin, He moves on to talk to the next indicted person. The man mentions the woman, so God moves on to talk to her. The woman mentions the serpent, and God goes to talk to him. Now He knows everyone involved in the catastrophe.

The next step is to explain the consequences for those involved. The exciting thing is that the punishments fit the crimes perfectly. God curses the serpent and says, "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life." That is just what the serpent had tricked the man and woman into doing. They are made out of the ground and of the dust, so when they ate of each other, it was as though they were eating dirt. They got down on the ground (contrary to popular opinion, Sleep Number beds were not in paradise) and wriggled upon their bellies. In addition to all of that symbolism of a snake slithering upon the ground, the serpent is the best creature to be a phallic symbol.

God puts enmity between the serpent and the woman and between his seed and her seed. Now the serpent and the woman are mortal enemies and no longer trusted friends. Here we also have the first mention of seed. The man had just finished planting his seed in the ground (the woman), and the fruit of the fall we will find out is Cain. In John's first letter he says: "By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother....we should love one another, and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother." Because Cain was conceived through the wisdom of the serpent, he became and is called by John a child of the devil (1John3:10-12). So those who do evil are children of the devil, and they will be fighting those who do good and are children of God. We see this acted out right away with Cain and Abel.

The last line is worthy of attention: "he [the seed of the woman] shall bruise your head, and you [serpent] shall bruise his heel." The word bruise could also means crush or desire in the sense of control and master. Paul tells us that Jesus is the seed, and it is He who crushes the head of Satan. The more interesting part for me is the serpents striking at mans' heel. The foot and heel are idioms referring to ones genitalia. If it is true that the Fall was the serpent encouraging the man and the woman to have sexual relations, it would make sense that he would continue to attack man in that area. Because the Fall concerned the sexual domain, that is man's weak spot and the most common place for Satan to strike. That is consistent with the Fatima seers' vision of hell; it was revealed to them that most people go to hell for sins of the flesh.

I was hoping to finish an overview of chapter three tonight. Now I realize that I am getting pretty tired, and I still have a good bit yet to say. I'll have to have a part two of this chapter, and hopefully I will write it tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

The Rib Protects the Heart

Others have mentioned the significance of how woman was made from the rib of the man, and it is worth repeating. She is not taken from his head so as to rule over him, and she is not taken from his foot as being beneath him. She is taken from his side and near his heart indicating their equality and that she is to be loved as Christ loves His Church.

According to the biblical account, woman is also created after the man and is the final creature created. The endpoint of creation is mankind, and the very endpoint is woman. There are many jokes about the creation of Adam and Eve, and one goes something such as: after God made Adam, He looked at him and said, "I can do better than that." That is when he made the woman. In a certain way, woman seems to have a greater dignity than man. The greatest human of all time is in fact a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

There is more to understanding the woman's genesis from the rib of man. One of the primary roles of our ribs is to protect our vital organs, especially the heart. From my previous writings I have stated how the tree of life is the heart, i.e. the heart that worships, loves, believes and obeys God. It is in loving, praising, believing and obeying God that we have life and life to the full. The fruit of such a faithful heart is a full life in God, and that is why it is the tree of life: "out of his heart shall flow rivers of living waters." God made the man together with his tree of life so that he would be able to be in union with God and pass any trial of faith God sent him.

The test resides in the seemingly contradictory commands: be fruitful and multiply and don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only a pure faith in the goodness and beneficence of God will overcome the test. God gives the man the woman so that she can be an extra help to overcome the trial. She is given to encourage the man to stay strong in his faith, obedience and love of God. She, in a particular way, is a protector of his tree of life so that he can make his way to heaven.

At the same time, she is the other half of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She is both his best friend and part of the test he is to overcome. They are the best thing for one another to draw the other closer to God, and they are the very thing which may cause their downfall and separation from Him. It is quite likely that, because of their interdependence, where one of them goes, the other will follow.

The woman's role as protector of the tree of life is fulfilled and perfected by the New Eve, Our Lady. If we entrust our heart to her, she will always lead us closer to her divine Son. Of course the woman of Genesis failed to protect the man's heart in trusting and obeying God. She did the exact opposite and turned the man's heart to the wisdom of the serpent who encouraged them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The entire episode of this betrayal in the garden began with a kiss and ended with the conception of Cain. Jesus was likewise betrayed in a garden by one who was supposed to protect and encourage him, and that betrayal too began with a kiss from Judas and ended, from Jesus' perspective, with the conception of the Church on the Cross.

One last thought: why is the way to the tree of life guarded by a cherubim? The woman abrogated her role as protector and encourager of the tree of life in the fall, so God gave every person a new protector and defender of our tree of life to lead us to heaven: our guardian angel. I understand that passage not as God trying to keep us from eating of the tree of life, but as His giving us a new helper to bolster our faith in Him "Behold, I send an angel before you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have prepared. Give heed to him and hearken to his voice, do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him" Exodus 23:20-21. We don't have to ever worry of being led astray by our angel; he will always lead us closer to God.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2007.

Adam and Eve Trust in the Serpent

In the attempt to write at least a little each day, I will give you one thought tonight. Chapter three begins with the serpent trying to break the trust and faith the woman had in God. He really doesn't say much: "Did God say, "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" After the woman responds, he says, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." That's it. He starts by overstating God's singular command to prohibit any tree, implying that God is overbearing and not really interested in what is good for the man and woman. He concludes by directly contradicting God's warning of death and says that they will increase in wisdom by eating of the tree.

After seeing the desireableness of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and forgetting about God's command not to eat because He is not all that trustworthy, the woman eats of the tree. It does not take much to get the woman to turn away from God. The primary reason that the serpent did not have to do all that much is that she was under an incredible test: she was told to be fruitful and multiply and yet remain a virgin. She wanted a child very badly; she wanted to make a man as God had made a man; she wanted to be like God.

God wanted her to eat of the tree of life so that she could pass this test; to pass this test she would have to believe that remaining a virgin was the best thing for her and the way to life. But virginity means no children, and no children means death. She looked death in the face, and through fear of death, she forsook the command of God and betrayed her husband all of which began with a kiss in the garden. (The new Adam, Jesus, is also betrayed in a garden with a kiss by one dear to Him.) She wanted to get a child, so when that child was born she named him "gotten;" we know him as Cain. In trying to save her life, in trying to fulfill the command of God to be fruitful and multiply on her own terms, she made a covenant with death.

Understanding all of this is an immense help to more clearly and perfectly understand all that Jesus did; ultimately, I want to understand better why Jesus died on the cross and gives us Himself in Holy Communion, etc., and that is what much of this blog will be about. Both Testaments are needed to understand the other, and if when we read the Old Testament our hearts are not burning within us, then we do not understand what it is saying. I hope to help set that blaze upon the earth.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2007.

MY MAIN THEORY--THE HEART OF WHAT I AM SAYING

Immediately following the first mention of the tree of life in Genesis Two, God tells us about the four rivers. This is a symbolic geographical representation of our physical heart. After discussing the heart, the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is given for the first time. The very next thing God does is seek a suitable partner/helper; none of the beasts of the field or birds of the air would do. Then God takes one of the man's ribs, makes it into the woman, and presents her to the man as the sought-after helper for the man who responds "At last." The pattern I see here is: mention the tree of life followed by a presentation of the four rivers and worshipping and obeying; mention of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil followed by the presentation of the woman. There seems to be a connection between this second tree and the woman.

If man is God's Eden/delight, with a garden planted in the east/front of the man, the first tree in our fronts is the heart/tree of life. By worshipping, obeying, trusting, and loving God with our hearts, we bear good fruit in the good things we do. How else do humans bear fruit? What else could be a tree planted in our front in the middle that would be a source of production? What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is it possible to know? If we don't know yet after thousands of years, why would we find out now?

I think it is possible to know; not with an absolute, certitude and with a perfect logical syllogism, but there are many clues that point to what it is, and many realities make sense and fit together once it is understood. It is as I think Cardinal Newman said something such as: it is so based on 10,000 convergences; nothing directly spells it out, but almost everything points to the reality being thus.

So what do I think the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, and what does the woman have to do with it? I think it is an idiom referring to sexual knowledge, i.e. intercourse. Marital relations, it could be argued, is the greatest natural good of this world; it is so good and great that Paul says it is a great mystery referring to the relationship between Christ and His Church (Eph). The test God is giving the man and the woman is two seemingly contradictory commands: be fruitful and multiply and do not have marital relations. This does not seem to make sense: presto, we have our grand trial of faith and the bypassing of the intellect. All that is left is to see if they will eat of the tree of life and believe that what God has commanded them is good for them. Of course, they did not trust.

I will explain my thoughts on this much much more, but for now I want to draw your attention to Mary, the New Eve. I think she underwent the very same test. After explaining her test as I see it, I will call it a night and give you more to ponder soon.

Mary's Test
I'll try to make this brief. The first principle to understand is that when God makes us to be something, that is what we will be good at and that is what we will desire. Among other things, God made me to be a husband, a father and a teacher, and it is those things which I desire. God made her to be the mother of His Son and the mother of the Church; as such, she was created as the most exalted mother of all human history. Being created to be the most exalted mother means that she would have desired to be a mother more than any person who has ever or will ever exist.

The second principle of my understanding of Mary is that she consecrated herself as a perpetual virgin and arranged with Joseph that they would remain virgins perpetually in their marriage. The reason I think this together with the Chuch Fathers is that her response to the Angel Gabriel does not make sense unless this were the case. In the first chapter of Luke, Gabriel says to Mary that she will conceive and he uses five other future tenses when telling her what will happen in the future. He does not say or imply that this will happen right now.

Mary replies, "How shall this be, since I have no husband." She says this when she was already betrothed to Joseph; in many respects what they understood as betrothal, we would understand as marriage. In fact, if they wanted to end the betrothal, a certificate of divorce was required. It was perfectly normal to get pregnant during this time; that is why Mary does not get into any trouble being only betrothed and pregnant. The only significant difference between betrothal and marriage was that the bride had not permanently moved in with her husband yet. Even if she just had to wait until they were officially married, then she could conceive just fine and would expect to do so. It makes no sense for her to say she will not be able to conceive a son since she will not have a husband. She already has a husband! She has just made a life-long commitment never to have sexual relations.

This was the test then: she who longed to be a mother more than anyone ever to exist, knew that God was asking her to commit herself to Him as a perpetual virgin. In her heart she was told to be fruitful and multiply while at the same time not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For the people of the Old Testament, not having children was tantamount to death. One was considered cursed if barren. There was little worse in this life than to not pass life on to ones offspring. In Mary's acceptance of virginity, she would have thought that she had given up her greatest desire (other than union with God):children. Her acceptance of virginity was her crucifixion.

The Annunciation is Mary's Reward, Not Her Test
As soon as Mary and Joseph agreed and permanently decided to never have relations, then the angel Gabriel payed his visit. In offering Mary to be the Mother of God, there was nothing more pleasing to her in all creation. Her hesitation was that she did not understand how it was going to happen because she knew God wanted her to remain a virgin. As soon as she knew that God would provide the Son, she said yes. Never in the history of man was there ever such a joyous and receptive yes as that amen at the Annunciation. Her greatest desire had just been granted.

Mary's test was sacrificing that which was most dear to her on this earth, and her reward was getting that very thing but multiplied infinitely. The first Eve tried to gain her life by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and received death and a son named Cain. The New Eve lost her life for love of God and gave up that which she held most dear and was given the very Son of God as a reward for passing the most difficult test in man's history.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Must Have Been Good

The only point I am going to make tonight is that the tree must have been good. God told them not to eat of a good tree. If it were in any way bad, the man and woman would not have been attracted to it. They were only attracted to the good; they only wanted the good. The crux of the test was believing that abstaining from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was good for them, for why would God command them not to eat of a good tree? If God truly was looking out for the man and woman's best interest, why would He forbid them to eat of a good tree?

I would suggest that it wasn't just a good tree but the best tree. It was the greatest of all natural goods on this earth. Now the case is stronger: why would God forbid us to eat of the best tree? That is something that does not make sense; all they are left with is the decision to trust in God or not to trust. Faced with that scenario, they turned their hearts from God and trusted in the wisdom of the serpent. They did not eat of the tree of life, i.e. they did not have faith in God and so obey Him. Instead, they hardened their hearts and ate the good tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

What is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Tonight, I have time for a few questions I want you to think about. If God is setting the stage to give the man and woman a test of faith where the test goes beyond the abilities of human intellect, what textual clues do we have that could help predict what the content of the test will concern. The first and most obvious element of the test is the command in Gen. 2:17: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

On the surface of it, that does not seem like that momentous of a trial of faith. Big deal, only one tree among all the trees that we cannot eat. They had no other laws to worry about at all, only one. One insignificant law, one "Thou shalt not" to keep in mind. On top of that, they had not suffered the results of original sin yet so their minds were stronger and clearer and their wills were naturally inclined to the good; they were endowed with sanctifying grace, and their minds and wills worked in a perfect harmony; they suffered not from sickness or death.

In many respects, it is a wonder that they could even sin at all. Today we have the Ten Commandments together with a seemingly endless list of things we are not supposed to do and another long list of things we are supposed to do. Not only that, we suffer under the burden of original sin with our darkened intellects, our weakened wills and our inclination to do evil. It should be no surpise at all when I or you sin. And many of us are able to eke out a humble, ordinary, holy life. Considering all of this, it is a wonder that our first parents sinned, at least when we only look at the surface and not understand their test. My point here is that the test had to be one doozie of a trial to get these beautiful and grace-filled people to fall.

The other textual clue that I want to look at for a minute is that they actually have one other command: "Be fruitful and multiply" (1:28) From my reading of Genesis one and two, there are no other commands. We have one negative one and one positive command in our narrative. Since this is a test that bypasses their intellects, I would think it would make sense that God would give the man and woman (she does not receive the name Eve, mother of the living, until after the Fall) two commands which seem to contradict the other. God gives them two commands, and the first one flies in the face of the second so that, from the point of view of the humans, what God is asking does not make sense. They are left with the choice: do we believe in God and what He has commanded or do we choose for ourselves what we see to be the good?

I don't think I will do much more preperatory work before revealing what the tree of knowledge of good and evil is, but you never know. You'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

More thoughts on the Tree of Life

Yesterday I talked about how chapter two is a close-up view of mankind, particularly as a home for God. There are two important trees in the midst or middle of the garden of man. The first one, which they should eat from, is the tree of life. This is a symbol of the heart of man, the place where he loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart is then symbolically physically represented by the four rivers of water in Eden.

There is a very interesting passage about the heart in the Gospel of John 7:38, "He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water'." No where does scripture mention this. It could be an indirect reference to Ezekiel 47; I am inclined to think that Jesus is referring back to Genesis 2. He who believes in God has a heart out of which flows living water, i.e. his faith gives life to those around him, and he bears the fruit of good works. Those who eat of the tree of life believe in God and so have the obedience of faith (see Romans) that trusts God especially when life is hard and does not seem to make sense.

A living faith is a believing heart that endures in time of trouble. The presentation of the tree of life implicitly signifies that a time of trial is at hand. The tree of life is needed when a battle with death is about to ensue. Immediately after the tree of life is presented in Gen. 2: 10-15, flowing with a perfect logic, God announces His singular command: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." God has arranged a test to see and know if the man will eat of the tree of life, if he will believe with his heart even when it does not seem to make sense.

Why does God test us? He has a problem. To put it mildly, He is so awesome and perfect and beautiful and powerful and alive and wise. Even among mortals, the extremely beautiful, wealthy and powerful have a similar problem: they do not always knows who is their true friend and who just wants what they have. God has this problem infinitely more. He also wants to preserve our freedom so that we are not just a bunch of robots who have to love Him. He wants us to freely choose to give Him our love. So He hides, and He gives those who want to draw near to Him tests to strengthen our trust in Him. Sometimes He gives incredibly difficult tests that supersede our intellect so that all we can use to pass the test is our loving trust of His command. He wants us to eat of the tree of life.

The question remains: so then what is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...? Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Genesis 2

I am skipping many important items, but in the interest of getting to the main point, I will pass over them for the time being.

Man is the Garden of Eden
Immediately after the man is created, God's breath is breathed into him, and he becomes a living being, it is then that the Garden of Eden is introduced. The word "Eden" simply means "delight." The word "east" also means "in front of." From many places in scripture, we know that God delights in man; also considering Genesis1:26, we know that God made man to be His spouse.
What all this means is that the man is the garden of eden, for he is God's garden of delight. God planted a garden in the front of His delight; hence, man is oriented in a frontal manner. Many trees (abilities) were planted in the front of man, together with two extremely important trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are the two primary ways we bear fruit as humans.

The Tree of Life
Immediately after introducing these two trees we have this obscure and seemingly nonsensical explanation of a river which splits into four rivers. The problem with this scenario is that rivers do the exact opposite; many rivers flow into one, not vice versa. This is no river, commonly understood. It symbolizes something else. It symbolizes the heart. The four chambers of the heart are physically represented by the four rivers. The tree of life is the heart.
What does it mean to eat of the tree of life? The very next verse tells us that God has done all this so that man could "till and keep" the garden. The word for till is also the word for work and for the work of worship; the word for keep may also be understood in the sense of keeping the commandments or obedience. Thus, the tree of life is for worshipping (in the full sense of the word which includes sacrifice) and obeying God. That is precisely what our hearts are for; we love God and we have the obedience of faith in Him by means of our trusting and loving hearts.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil will have to wait, at least until tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Image and Likeness

Each According to its Kind

The main focal point in chapter one is the dry land together with what lives on it, and it is the reason that everything else has been created and put in its proper position in relation to the land. The plants and fruit trees were created on the third day to be food for man, and now on the sixth day the inhabitants of the land are put into place. First God creates all the living creatures, the cattle, the beasts, and all that creeps on the ground. Each of these is created according to its kind; here the word is used five times. It was used five times when talking about the plants, trees, fish and birds, and now it is used five more times for the creatures of the land. It is used ten times altogether. There are many patterns and repetitions in this section of Genesis 1-2:3; the only other phrase repeated ten times is “And God said.” “Each according to its kind” is a significant phrase, and its real meaning becomes clear in a verse or two when we expect it and it is not there. “According to its kind” is replaced with “image and likeness.”

A Personal Matter: the Creation of Man

We have come to the final work done on the second half of the last day of the work God did when He created. The second half of the very important day six says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….” First of all, up until now, every time that it stated, “And God said,” God said for this to be or that to happen; He speaks using the third person in His acting. Here, however, God uses the first person, “Let us make.” Everything else that has been created up until now was made because God said it should happen, and it was. With man, we are led to expect the same wording of how everything else was made, but we are pleasantly slapped awake with a different way of God working. The wording, “let us make,” makes the creation of man something special to God; the creation of man is a personal matter for God.

Man Created to be Bride of God

The other much harder and more fruitful slap across the face is that with man there is no more mention of being made “each according to its kind.” We expect it, but it is not there because man is being created on a completely different sphere and for a completely different purpose. All the living beings created before man where created according to their own likeness and kind for the purpose of reproduction. So here, man is not made according to his own kind; how, then, is he to bear fruit and multiply and fulfill the blessing? Man is to be fruitful, but we were not made to be fruitful just according to our own kind since we were created in the image of God. We are made according to the kind of God, and united to Him we bear good fruit (see John 15).

Since man is made in the image of God, as He said: according to “our image and after our likeness,” He is made according to God’s kind. Putting two and two together, God created man as the highpoint of His creation and a home for Himself. He Himself will be the source of man’s fruitfulness; God will make man fruitful because God made man to be His spouse. Our husband is God so from Him will come our fruit (see Hosea 14:8: "I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit").

Image and likeness means a similitude to God, but it means so much more. It means that, from the beginning, God made us to be His. He made us to be so closely united to Him, that we are married to Him. Saint Paul talks of marriage as the great mystery related to Christ (the bridegroom) and His Church (the bride) (see Ephesians 5:32: "This [marriage] is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church"). We are God's home, His temple, His bride. United to Him, we bear fruit every month.

This has set the stage for Genesis two. Simply put, Genesis two zeros in on how man is a home for God. Chapter one was how earth was made for man; the next chapter is how man is made for God. I will tell you soon what the tree of life is and what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Overview of Genesis 1

Genesis 1 is a bird's-eye view of creation during the seven days wherein God is making and organizing the earth as a home for man. God creates and separates to make a hospitable environment in which man can live. Although Genesis 1 is written flying high above the scene, there is an extremely strong foreshadowing of chapter two wherein God creates and separates to make man a home for God.
Arguably the most important verse in all of the bible, Genesis 1:26 sets the tone and makes sense of all of chapter two. I am not aware of anyone else who interprets this verse as I see it, but as I see it, it is a much more powerful verse than is commonly realized. In fact, it makes sense of the rest of the bible. It makes sense of life. It is the source of the name of this blog.
Tomorrow I will explain more. Thanks for reading.


Copyright 2007.

Creation of the blog

I have wanted to write a book on this topic for about fifteen years now. I had heard of people writing books on these things known as blogs. I have rarely read blogs and know very little about them. A friend of mine won some blog award yesterday or the day before. This inspired me and got me to thinking about writing the book I've always wanted to write on a blog. My wife and I discussed it for a few hours last night, and I mentioned it to my blogging friend this afternoon. My wife is away for the weekend, my children are in bed, so what better thing to do before the crack of midnight than to create a blog and the space to share my discoveries.
Thanks for reading.