Why The Trees Aren't Reversed

I received a comment containing a question from 2.29.08. Here is the question: "I am not familiar with your theory (although I'd like to be) but I'm curious to know why the trees' representations aren't reversed -- The tree of life being our power and ability to conceive children and the tree of knowledge being the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God."

God put us on this earth, but He made us for heaven. We spend a very short time here on earth; it is but a brief stop on the journey to our true and everlasting homeland. We have eternal life only through our love, trust and obedience of God; we begin our eternal life here on earth by our union with Him; if we don't, then there is no eternal life in heaven for us when we die. Life, in the fullest sense of the word, is only given to us insofar as we are united to God, and our unity with God only happens via a heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart is the channel through which we receive God's life. God's life is the life of our soul, and we have nothing, we are nothing, we have no life if we don't have God dwelling within us.

Having children is a wonderful reality and a marvelous gift from God. Raising children is one of the best God-given ways that He shows us and provides the arena for us to learn how to love, to learn how to be a self-sacrificing lover. One of the best adult educations is raising children; I remember Scott Hahn having a plaque in his office saying: "The best adult education--children." As much a blessing as having children is, it is not what gives us supernatural or everlasting life. The children we do have need to be born again in baptism for they are born spiritually dead without sanctifying grace. What really matters in the end is God's life in our soul, and that life only comes from the tree of life: the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. Marriage and children are a God-given calling to lead us and help us on our way to heaven, but there is no help in them if our heart is separated from God.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is our ability to have children because this is what served as the test of faith that God established for our first parents. Why it is given this name I haven't fully digested yet. I think there are a number of viable possibilities for why it has this name. For now, I am not going to get into this question.

Mary fulfilled the test of faith that the woman (after the Fall named Eve, mother) failed. Mary ate fully of her tree of life and trusted in God when it did not make sense. I have discussed Mary's test in a few other places. Because she ate of her tree of life, God provided her with a Son. He is no ordinary son, and God also gives all humanity to Mary as her children. Mary trusted God to provide her with children virginally, and God made her the greatest mother of all time. So Mary did have children through her tree of life, but only after she passed her crucifixion of her greatest earthly desire. Mary does not rely on her own abilities to provide life; rather, she trusts wholly in God, and He satisfies her greatest desires and infinitely more so. God is such a good God who wants us to be fully alive and our deepest desires abundantly fulfilled to overflowing. If we place ourselves entirely in His hands, we will be blessed beyond measure.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Shall All Know the Lord

The first reading for tomorrow’s mass is from the first Letter of Saint John, and I would like to take a portion of this reading as my jumping off point tonight:
“As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him. And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming” (2:27-28).

John is addressing the “children” or those who are babes in their understanding of the faith. They were anointed certainly at their baptism and perhaps also at their confirmation. The anointing of baptism remains inside us to teach us about the truth, and we, in turn, need to remain in Him. Baptism gives us the heart and mind of Christ; having been made a new creation with Our Savior’s way of seeing reality, we will come to know the truth as long as we remain in Him. The anointing teaches us because it endowed us with Jesus’ dwelling within us and giving us His heart; we will learn from Him if we continue to remain in Him.

This anointing and new heart reminds me of one of the most important passages of the prophet Jeremiah which is also quoted in Hebrews 8:8ff:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 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, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The key ideas here are new covenant, God as our husband, the law within us on our hearts, our sins forgiven, and we shall all know God. When we enter into the new covenant at our baptism, our sins are wiped away, and we receive a new heart of flesh that desires to please God, our divine spouse. The two shall become one flesh, says Genesis 2:24, and so you and I become one flesh with God, our Husband. The biblical sense of to “know” refers to sexual knowledge, and marriage is the symbol God created to reveal what He desires His relationship would be with us. He asks us: “Will you marry me?”

There is nothing sexual in our relationship with God, but it is most intimate. In baptism, God becomes our God, and we become His people. He becomes our Husband, and we become His bride. He becomes one flesh with us and gives us His very heart to replace our old stony one. With His heart beating within us, with Him dwelling within us, with His mind and will becoming our mind and will, we intimately come to know the Lord.

He asks us at our creation, “Will you marry me?” We take a huge step in our relationship with Him at our baptism. Baptism is our saying yes to God’s question and is our marriage to Him. At our baptism, we are married to God. We renew that commitment with every Holy Communion. Every Communion is like every renewal of the marriage covenant when the husband gives his body to his bride. At Communion we receive the body of our Husband so that we can bear good fruit. If we give ourselves fully to Jesus, and that means pleasing Him in all we think, say and do, He will be able to give Himself fully to us so that we may have life to the full and be full with His fruit.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for a Baby Part Two

Abraham receives the patriarchal blessing and so requests a baby from God. After Abraham asks God for a child saying that if he doesn’t get one, the blessing will go to someone from Damascus, God responds to Abraham. “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’ And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6).

Abraham asks for a baby of his own, and God promises to give him one. God goes much further, for He not only promises him a child, He also promises to give Abraham a vast multitude of descendants through the promised baby. His descendants will be innumerable. Abraham, seventy-five years old married to a sixty-five year-old barren woman, believes God; he believes that God will be faithful and give them a child. God is pleased with Abraham’s belief in Him.

So nine months later God sends a son to Abraham and Sarah. Actually, the child came two years later. No, on further thought, God didn’t send the child for five whole years. Can you image that? God promised a baby, but then He did not send the little one for five more years, and these are elderly people already. I hate to say it, but God did not send that promised baby even after five years; ten years later and guess what? They are eighty-five and seventy-five, and still the promised bundle of joy has not been sent.

They might have been wondering, “Does God really know what He is doing?” “Is He really able to give us old and as good-as-dead childless hopefuls a baby?” Sarah may have asked her husband, “Are you sure that God said He would give us a baby? Are you sure that He promised to give you one?” She may have carried on asking, “Did God promise that the baby would be from you or from us?” Whatever questions went on, and we all know well enough how much and often we question what God is doing or not doing, whatever the actual questions were, Sarah talked Abraham into having relations with Sarah’s maid Hagar.

“ Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar; and Sarai said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And wrong with what God had promised since it had already been ten years and no baby had been born. The promised little one had not been given. Sarah thought that God would give them the promised one in some other way. She did not trust the promise as given; Abraham, too, did not trust, after ten long, long years of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. So he listened to the voice and the wisdom of his wife, for she did have some good points you’ll have to admit.

Adam, the first human made, had done basically the same thing. After his fall, God said to him, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife… (Genesis 3:17) the ground will bear thorns and thistles. Both men listened to the voice of their wife; both were seeking the God-promised child; both accomplished God’s promise on their own strength in their own way; both failed in their trust in God when the test became fierce; both bore a child who was a thorn and thistle: Cain and Ishmael; both had a change of heart and bore a righteous second child: Abel and Isaac; both sons were sacrificed, although Isaac was passed over.

For Adam and Eve, we don’t know how long they patiently waited for the promised baby of their own. Abraham and Sarah ended up waiting twenty-five years before God sent the promised little one. Abraham was 100 when God fulfilled the promise He gave a quarter century earlier. God waits and tests us. He is not about immediate gratification; we would have gone directly to heaven, entirely bypassing earth. Love requires testing, and testing requires time, and time tries our patience and trust. It is only by trust, only by living our daily life with a believing and hopeful heart that we pass the test.

That is why God placed us on earth. He wants to make self-sacrificing lovers out of us; He wants to make us into true lovers of Himself; if we daily give Him our entire self, He makes us into His spouse. Earth is the place for this transformation and growth. Earth is a time of testing and waiting; it is a place of sorrows and I-hope-it-happens-tomorrows; it is a valley of tears; it is our training ground to learn how to trust, and hope and love; in a similar manner, infants learn how to sit-up and crawl and walk under the watchful eyes and close to the loving arms of their parents.

“Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it’ ” (Luke 18:15-17). There is nothing but trust in the heart of an infant learning to walk and crawl; they are our example, according to Our Lord, of how we are to walk by faith.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

My Invitation to You

I lost my keys. Have you ever lost yours? There is not much one can do when the keys are lost. You cannot get into your home; you cannot drive your car; you can not get into your office. The key is everything, and…it is nothing. We only think of our keys when we cannot find them. Otherwise, there is really nothing special about keys (no offense all you locksmiths). Don’t worry, I didn’t really lose my keys; I was just saying that for dramatic effect.

The hinge or heart of my theory, as I’ve stated many other places, is that the tree of life is the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sexual relations; the garden of Eden is the garden of delight, and it refers to the man and the woman first and foremost. God made us, His garden of delight, with the ability to bear fruit in two ways: begetting and bearing children (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and by a heart that loves, trusts, and obeys God. He told them to be fruitful and multiply and then told them not to have marital relations. That was their test of faith. Mary had the same test, and she passed.

A main part of the hinge of my theory has to do with sex. Sex, as I’ve said many times before, is the greatest of this world’s goods. It is a symbol of the ultimate supernatural good: the union of Christ and His Church. It seems that a common pitfall for people when considering this theory is that I say God commanded Adam and Eve not to have marital relations. It seems that for a lot of people, when they hear this theory, their gut reaction is to dismiss it or attack it as being against marital relations and the teachings of the Church. I understand that reaction. I don’t think those who have that response understand what I am saying, but I do see that the theory is rather easily misunderstood by some.

My point tonight is that most of what I say has very little to do with sex, per se. I certainly talk about it a fair amount, but there is so much more that I have to say. Mostly, I talk about it insofar as it is discussed in the Bible as I make sense of the Biblical story. The point about sex being the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is part of the key to understanding everything else. That theory is a key: necessary to drive the car, but not all that impressive by itself. Driving the car is the thing. I invite you to give yourself some time pondering this theory I propose, and see if it makes sense, sheds light, and puts the pieces of the puzzle together of the Bible, the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and your life. It did for me and has continued, these past fifteen years, to clarify and make sense of thousands of points about life, love and the gospel.

In other words, my focus is not on sex but on the fact that God created us from the beginning to be His spouse. Even today, He is calling each of us to the most intimate of communion with Himself. He wants all of us and is dying to give us all of Himself; having died for us, He is dying for us to enter into Himself and His death and resurrection and so have life abundantly. He is our spouse, and united to Him we bear much fruit and give glory to God.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

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.