Over the past fifteen years that I have been pondering this theory and meditating upon it, I have shared it with many people, both priests and religious, theologians and lawyers, moms and dads, young and old, single and married, laity and consecrated virgins, writers and publishers, highly educated and not so much, and just about anyone who seemed willing to listen. There has been one main concern mentioned by two of these people, and that was the theory sounds a bit Manichean or that the body and sex is bad.
I understand this concern, but this would be a misunderstanding of the theory. I think that a closer look at the theory will show that my theory would fall apart if sex were bad. On my post of 11/15/07, I talked about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil must be good for good people to have chosen it. In itself, it must have been a good tree; the man and woman had no inclination toward evil and no disordered passions, so choosing an evil would not have been appealing to them. The deception of the serpent was not getting them to think that the tree was good, but it was getting them to distrust God and to think that disobeying His singular command would be good for them. God had given them an extremely difficult trial of faith, and instead of trusting in Him and eating of the tree of life, they trusted in themselves for life and received death.
What I want to highlight today is that sex is good. It is the highest good of the created order. To be more precise, I mean marital relations or sex between spouses. Any sexual activity outside of marital relations open to life is intrinsically disordered and evil, but the marital embrace open to life is a beautiful and holy reality. It is the symbol of God’s relationship to man. God wants the most intimate union with humanity, and He created the marital embrace to symbolize that heavenly reality. Of course sex is not bad; it is holy and is the most awesome activity of this world. Part of its greatness comes because of it symbolism of Christ and His Church. The reality that sex is a symbol of, will only be fully realized in Heaven with God (although in mystical marriage, some of that reality is given).
Now for those partaking of immoral sexual behavior, which is anything outside of marriage that is open to life, of course that behavior is bad. It is not the sex that is bad, but it is the use of that sex that is bad. A knife is not bad; in and of itself it is good; morally, it is neither good nor bad. If the knife is used to make dinner, it is used well. If the knife is used to murder an innocent person, it is used badly and in an evil manner. Sex is far better than an object like a knife, as I said above, but even the best of things can certainly be used for evil or used in an evil manner.
Sex is meant to be used under very precise and exacting circumstances because it is so good and so powerful. To use some more analogies, it is like dynamite or nuclear power; used in the correct manner, time and place, it brings a fuller life; used in the wrong way, time or place, it brings mass destruction. Sex is like that, too. It always has been like that.
Adam and Eve were tested by God as well as were Abraham and Isaac. Each one of us is tested throughout our lives; many tests are small, and a few are large. The test of virginity (which is what I think Adam and Eve’s test was as well as Mary and Joseph’s) is still a common test today. Every priest and sister and nun has passed through that test. Married couples and singles are all called to chastity, and that is a test and a trial, too. In our sex-crazed society, purity in marriage is a challenge; singles are called to live celibate lives until and if ever they get married: that is a struggle. Many voices today say that it is not even possible or healthy to keep sex only for married couples open to life; certainly, then, this is a test. Things haven’t changed much, and it is in our faithful living according to what God wants (summarized in the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments of Jesus), that we please Him and are fully alive.
Mistreating sex as just another appetite to be satiated whenever and with whomever I please, only brings loneliness, separation, sickness, misery, destruction and death. The irony is that those who claim Christianity teaches that sex is evil or bad or dirty, are the ones who treat sex as no big deal; they are the ones who degrade sex and make it like simply blowing one’s nose. It is like using fine china as a Frisbee, or a rose as a hammer, or a Ferrari as a bulldozer. It turns people into objects for use, for pleasure. It degrades humanity. Treating sex as sacred personalizes people and gives them great dignity. The proper use and respect of sex breeds deep and lasting joy, peace and life; without such reverence in the face of such a mystery, there is only discord, divorce, disease and death.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label Ten Commandments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ten Commandments. Show all posts
12.12.2007
12.08.2007
"I am the Immaculate Conception"
Blessed Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception!
A few years after the Church, over 150 years ago, declared that Mary was the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in France telling her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She does not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” No other human person can say this. Jesus is fully human and divine, but He is not a human person; He is one person, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to which He has united two natures: a human one and His divine one. Jesus, in His divinity, was not conceived for He proceeded from the Father; his humanity was immaculately conceived, but His divine personhood has always proceeded from the Father. Properly speaking, Jesus cannot say, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
The night before Saint Maximillian Kolbe was taken away by the Gestapo to his eventual death at Auschwitz where he offered his life in place of another, He received a new insight into Mary and the Holy Spirit; it was the last thing he wrote. He said Mary is the created Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and in that way could be said to be conceived. One of the titles of Mary is Spouse of the Holy Spirit; Maximillian said that as they are both Immaculate Conception, Mary is an image of the Holy Spirit in a way similar to spouses who look like one another.
The grace for Mary to be the created Immaculate Conception came through the Redemption Jesus won on the cross; Jesus saved his mother from the stain of sin when He created her, making her the Immaculate Conception. His Redemption, the center and focal point of human history, opened the treasure chest of graces, so to speak, and He used those gifts to redeem His own mother whom He created. She, then, becomes the New Eve who passes the test and acts as a true rib protecting the heart, protecting the tree of life, encouraging her Son to trust, love and obey God even to the shedding of His blood on a tree.
Jesus, being God, obeys the Ten Commandments perfectly; as such, He would obey the fourth commandment, too. He would obey and honor his parents perfectly, both His Heavenly Father as well as His human parents, Joseph and Mary. Of course, Joseph and Mary were perpetual virgins, and this virginity was the test God gave them to see if they loved and trusted Him to the point of death (for virginity was considered death). There reward for eating of the tree of life in their acceptance of virginity was to become the parents of the Son of God and of the entire human race. They were rewarded with the very thing they gave up. We know that Mary was the true mother of Jesus; I think that Joseph, too, was, in a certain way, the true father of Jesus. We call him the foster father of Jesus so people don’t think that Jesus was conceived in a carnal way, but in the spiritual realm, Joseph is more a father to Jesus than I am to my five kids because Jesus was given Joseph by God when Joseph gave up that which he desired most on this earth: a child.
Since Jesus perfectly obeyed the fourth commandment, Mary had a certain authority over her Divine Son. If she had asked or demanded Jesus to not die on the cross, that might have been a problem for His fulfilling the fourth commandment. To a degree, Mary had to allow Jesus to suffer and die an ignominious death; at any time along the way she could have approached Him and ordered Him to call on legions of angels to deliver Him and instantly annihilate all His enemies. She didn’t do that. She stayed close by His side, encouraging Him along the way to lay down His life for His beloved.
Since Mary had already suffered her own crucifixion when she accepted perpetual virginity which usually means not having children, since she had already not put her trust in the powers of the body, she was able to be the rib and encourage Jesus to give up His entire body on the tree. As the beginning of the betrayal of Adam began with a kiss in a garden after the beloved consulted with the enemy, so the beginning of Jesus’ betrayal began with a kiss in the garden by one of his beloved friends who had consulted with the enemy. The first betrayer was Eve, and the second was Judas. The New Eve, Mary, does what both should have done and trusted in God for life and given up the body of her husband. Eve clung to Adam’s body and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the New Eve ate of the tree of life, clinging to God, and allowed her spiritual husband, Jesus, to offer his body unto death on the tree. Eve ushered in death for all her children, the human race; Mary ushered in life for all her children, the human race.
On this great feast day let us call upon our Mother, the Rib, to protect our heart, to protect our tree of life, so that we may always trust and obey God and be ready to lay down our life for our beloved. Mary always leads us to imitate her Son; she always leads us ever closer to Jesus; she is always ready to help us, when we ask her, to avoid sin; she is our mother, and her primary desire for us is to be there for us to encourage us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus to our very own crucifixion. Fully entrust yourself into her loving, motherly arms in a special way this feast day, and she will make sure you reach your destination—the Promised Land of Heaven.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
A few years after the Church, over 150 years ago, declared that Mary was the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in France telling her: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She does not say, “I was immaculately conceived,” but, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” No other human person can say this. Jesus is fully human and divine, but He is not a human person; He is one person, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to which He has united two natures: a human one and His divine one. Jesus, in His divinity, was not conceived for He proceeded from the Father; his humanity was immaculately conceived, but His divine personhood has always proceeded from the Father. Properly speaking, Jesus cannot say, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
The night before Saint Maximillian Kolbe was taken away by the Gestapo to his eventual death at Auschwitz where he offered his life in place of another, He received a new insight into Mary and the Holy Spirit; it was the last thing he wrote. He said Mary is the created Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and in that way could be said to be conceived. One of the titles of Mary is Spouse of the Holy Spirit; Maximillian said that as they are both Immaculate Conception, Mary is an image of the Holy Spirit in a way similar to spouses who look like one another.
The grace for Mary to be the created Immaculate Conception came through the Redemption Jesus won on the cross; Jesus saved his mother from the stain of sin when He created her, making her the Immaculate Conception. His Redemption, the center and focal point of human history, opened the treasure chest of graces, so to speak, and He used those gifts to redeem His own mother whom He created. She, then, becomes the New Eve who passes the test and acts as a true rib protecting the heart, protecting the tree of life, encouraging her Son to trust, love and obey God even to the shedding of His blood on a tree.
Jesus, being God, obeys the Ten Commandments perfectly; as such, He would obey the fourth commandment, too. He would obey and honor his parents perfectly, both His Heavenly Father as well as His human parents, Joseph and Mary. Of course, Joseph and Mary were perpetual virgins, and this virginity was the test God gave them to see if they loved and trusted Him to the point of death (for virginity was considered death). There reward for eating of the tree of life in their acceptance of virginity was to become the parents of the Son of God and of the entire human race. They were rewarded with the very thing they gave up. We know that Mary was the true mother of Jesus; I think that Joseph, too, was, in a certain way, the true father of Jesus. We call him the foster father of Jesus so people don’t think that Jesus was conceived in a carnal way, but in the spiritual realm, Joseph is more a father to Jesus than I am to my five kids because Jesus was given Joseph by God when Joseph gave up that which he desired most on this earth: a child.
Since Jesus perfectly obeyed the fourth commandment, Mary had a certain authority over her Divine Son. If she had asked or demanded Jesus to not die on the cross, that might have been a problem for His fulfilling the fourth commandment. To a degree, Mary had to allow Jesus to suffer and die an ignominious death; at any time along the way she could have approached Him and ordered Him to call on legions of angels to deliver Him and instantly annihilate all His enemies. She didn’t do that. She stayed close by His side, encouraging Him along the way to lay down His life for His beloved.
Since Mary had already suffered her own crucifixion when she accepted perpetual virginity which usually means not having children, since she had already not put her trust in the powers of the body, she was able to be the rib and encourage Jesus to give up His entire body on the tree. As the beginning of the betrayal of Adam began with a kiss in a garden after the beloved consulted with the enemy, so the beginning of Jesus’ betrayal began with a kiss in the garden by one of his beloved friends who had consulted with the enemy. The first betrayer was Eve, and the second was Judas. The New Eve, Mary, does what both should have done and trusted in God for life and given up the body of her husband. Eve clung to Adam’s body and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the New Eve ate of the tree of life, clinging to God, and allowed her spiritual husband, Jesus, to offer his body unto death on the tree. Eve ushered in death for all her children, the human race; Mary ushered in life for all her children, the human race.
On this great feast day let us call upon our Mother, the Rib, to protect our heart, to protect our tree of life, so that we may always trust and obey God and be ready to lay down our life for our beloved. Mary always leads us to imitate her Son; she always leads us ever closer to Jesus; she is always ready to help us, when we ask her, to avoid sin; she is our mother, and her primary desire for us is to be there for us to encourage us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus to our very own crucifixion. Fully entrust yourself into her loving, motherly arms in a special way this feast day, and she will make sure you reach your destination—the Promised Land of Heaven.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
11.29.2007
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.
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.
11.24.2007
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.
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.
11.14.2007
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.
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.
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