Hello to anyone out there.
My name is Michael, and I created this blog not so much that I could so narcissisticly subject the world to my opinion, but because I believe that in seeking The Way, one must be as Jesus instructed: like a child. A child does not know, but seeks desperately to learn and understand things. My idea is that I plan to post things here, and if you have thoughts regarding what I'm saying please share them with me. It is in this discourse I hope to come to a greater understanding.
Let me begin with Genesis. This seems appropriate, I think, since that's pretty much where it begins anyway. Every time the subject is raised as to whether or not God even exists, I'm sure you are all aware, this little chapter inevitably comes up. As anyone who has eyes out there in the world could probably attest, there are basically two camps in this whole argument. There are the religious right who insist that everything that happened in the Bible (Genesis especially included) happened exactly according to the English translation of the biblical account, right down to the whole earth created in six days bit. Opposite this is the camp of those who, for lack of a better explanation assume that since the other side insists that this must be the case and the whole body of geological, archaeological and paleontological evidence refutes that argument, the whole Bible must therefore be dismissed as false, and therefore God doesn't really exist.
This is perhaps an oversimplification of the situation. In the right corner there are those who try to fit certain elements of the aforementioned evidence into the mold of Biblical Truth, even going so far as to justify it with statements such as "six ages, or eras" represents the proverbial "day," and an entire host of others at various points in-between.
What I see in reality though is human nature. For those who believe in God there is an intense desire to continue doing so... and thusly a drive to reconcile the cornerstone of their belief (the Bible, for which Genesis IS the base foundation) by going down a laundry list of psychologically demonstrated coping mechanisms and picking one that works for them. This includes distortion, denial, and pretty much anything else in order to keep believing. I was once one of these people. Perhaps this post is one such attempt.
For those who do not believe in God, it's easy. All you have to do is point to Genesis and say "this is impossible, there is no evidence of this, etc etc etc." It really is easy. If you're a believer, I challenge you to do this: pretend you're an atheist and close your eyes, flip through Genesis and point to a passage. Chances are you'd land on something that doesn't make any sense, logically... if taken literally, that is. Further logic dictates that if God truly does exist and if the Bible truly is the word of God, then it should stand on its own without so much twisting of the facts and silly justification from apologists.
For the believer, life just pretty much sucks in this way. On one hand you get pounded from biblical literalists who try to brainwash you into accepting the idea that every little word in the English translation of the Bible is the literal word of God, taken literally, and is not subject to any interpretation (except their own, of course). Modern church doesn't exactly help matters either. When I talk with other believers, I find myself surrounded by the same kind of people who Galileo likely found himself surrounded by. We must reject the evidence before us and embrace a nonsensical point of view imposed upon us by the status quo, claim to believe in something that flies in the face of simple logic because, to be frank, failure to do so is a lack of faith. You do have faith, don't you?
I reject that, sorry. And I don't believe this makes me an atheist. To me, faith is believing in something you don't understand though you have evidence that you should believe in it... not, as some would have you believe, belief in something for which there is an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary.
That being said, it occurred to me one day that maybe Genesis is more than it seems.
Try this on... and here's where I'd like to hear your feedback. What if Genesis, taken as a whole, is a parable? First of all, why not? Jesus spoke in parables, taught in parables... so what if Genesis and the creation thereof is a parable in that regard? Adam & Eve is a parable... Eden is a parable... Noah's flood is a parable... Abraham, his family, all of it. If so, then what is the lesson behind the parable?
Starting with Adam & Eve, that's pretty simple I think: Eve was made from a piece of Adam. In a way, they are one. So that anything Adam does to his wife, he does to himself, and vice versa. There is a lesson here, I think, about sex crimes and violent sexual oppression (which if my understanding of the culture in the middle east four thousand years ago is correct, was pretty much the norm).
I have often thought that Eden was a weird place. In the garden, God placed the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and commanded the humans not to eat it. BUT God, being all-knowing, must have known that we would have disobeyed this command. As they say, everything happens according to God's plan. So it stands to reason, logically, that if God fully intended that Adam & Eve NOT gain knowledge of good and evil, he would have changed things up a little. In short, eating from that particular tree was part of the plan! And given that this is part of the plan, WTF is the plan?
And this is where it came to me. Adam is a parable for humanity. More to the point, Adam is a baby. Eden is not and never was a physical place one could go to, but rather a state of mind and understanding. I began to see this 20 months ago when my son was born. If you think about a baby, they can't dress themselves, feed themselves, go to sleep by themselves, or pretty much anything. In Eden, the innocence thereof, Adam was a baby. God proverbially changed his diapers, fed him at the breast, rocked him to sleep, all those things that one does with a baby. Adam was totally dependent upon God for these most basic needs. Expulsion from Eden seems to me to be the point when my son started protesting at dinner time. He refused to eat anything, until one day after much heartache, arguments, suffering and misery we finally figured out that he still wanted dinner, he just wanted his own spoon. So in a way, expulsion from Eden is Adam's coming into understanding for the first time. The lesson, I think, is the expectation that we must learn and grow. Just as a baby is expected to learn how to do things for itself, so must Adam.
I want to be understood here. In the 20 months since my son was born, I have seen that his needs change. Now that he can feed himself, he needs me to play letters and numbers with him. He didn't need that 10 months ago. In this way too I think that Adam has needed God differently as he has learned and grown.
I like to think that in this modern age, Adam is a teenager. He's old enough to comprehend the more complex details of how the world works. In fact, he knows everything (he is a teenager, after all). He's old enough to do pretty much all the basic stuff for himself, by himself, and therefore doesn't need anything from "Father" any more. Truly, we are beyond the years when God fed us, changed our diaper, picked us up when we ran out into the street, taught us letters and numbers, all of that. So in these ways we don't need God any more. But Adam still needs God, only differently.
BTW scripture, I think, was Adam in Kindergarten. On one hand, learning doesn't stop there... but then as they say 'All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten...'
