Something To Believe In

As In Jazz

Before we begin, for any free discourse, there must be a common chord with an agreed upon back beat. Each note, while freely expressed, must still harmonize with an agreed upon key structure. This, however, still allows for infinite variety within the jam session. Therefore, in order to interweave the varied points of meaning into a comprehensive debate, we must conduct our chops, as would any good jazz ensemble.

As a common chord, let us agree upon the basic concept of God as creator and sustainer of life. The backbeat by which we maintain our rhythm is the omnipotence of the all-knowing One I will agree to call God for lack of a better metaphor. All future discourse will presume that God is in full charge of all He has created.

Now, therefore, should there occur some dichotomy in our perceptions of what, why or how God goes about the business of His creation, we will presume some error in our perceptions and attempt to correct the baggage of our presumptions.

Since we have presumed God in total control, the problem of Sin comes into play. Why would God allow weeds in His garden of perfection? Why permit the pain and suffering often experienced by the innocent? This is where most fundamentalists jump up in naked defense of free will: "Well, it’s about free choice. God doesn’t force us to obey Him. He’s left it all up to us to decide." But, then, God would no longer be in absolute control, would He? AND, if that were the case, He couldn’t be considered omniscient either because it would be us determining the future by our choices. However, He is said to "know the end from the beginning." That presents real problems.

Would you just sit back and let your child learn like that? How often do we warn our children about dangers such as running blindly out into the street? But, we all know that, left to their own devices, they will do so anyway. So, do we just let them learn the lesson on their own? No, not if we can help it. We do everything possible to protect them from their own ignorance till they are able to make the correct choices on their own. Even then, we never really trust them and have a hard time holding our tongues. To our dying day we worry and fret about how much they still don’t know about life. S

However, in the Garden of Eden account, God is portrayed as a parent who’s left His children alone in the house without putting away the matches. Keep in mind God is said to "know the end from the beginning – that omniscient quality. It’s like knowing your child is about to run in front of a truck and be killed by it, then doing nothing about it because you believe in free will. Like the condemned character in the song "Tom Dooley" saying, just before he’s hanged, "This sure has been a lesson to me."

Sorry, but that just doesn’t work here. Every parent knows children will make improper choices. It’s our responsibility to prevent them from hurting themselves even if we have to drag them, kicking and screaming, away from danger. That’s the basic problem between predestination and free will. Religion has never been able to figure out this dichotomy, choosing instead to camp on one side of the issue or the other. They both can’t be right. Maybe neither is.

One side feels that God blesses the righteous while cursing sinners; but, more often than not, we see the "righteous" suffering while the "wicked" count their profits. It seems the "sins of the fathers" are inflicted upon children too innocent to know the difference. Calvinist Theology has tried to explain this by assuming God has predetermined who will be acceptable. According to John Calvin, we can tell who each might be by studying who is blessed and who is cursed in life. Obviously, it is those for whom life works that evince His Grace and those who suffer that do not. What a conveniently Victorian way of looking at things – how much better to justify materialism. What rubbish? What a sick and diabolical theology it is that heaps further emotional anguish upon those already suffering physical trauma -- how very contradictory to the plain teachings of Jesus Christ. The first are more likely to be last and the last, first in God’s scheme of things.

With that in mind, we find more and more evidence for genetic predisposition to behavioral anomalies. The very things misguided Christians attack as evil behavior may be beyond the scope of free choice. Life may be very much similar to a computer simulation where roles are assigned to the various characters. Otherwise, why would God have allowed the "snake" access to His highest creation in His garden of perfection? Why would He stand back and allow His apparent purpose to be thwarted like a cuckolded husband? Why indeed?

Someone recently told me, "To arrive at the truth, identify the biggest lie told to obscure it. Then, correct the error and rebuild the scenario." So let’s go back to the Garden of Eden and see exactly what it was that God allowed.

Certain religious disciplines believe that sexuality was the original sin. That man and woman had discovered something they could do with their bodies that God hadn’t considered, or some such nonsense. This, once again, flies in the face of omniscience. Others modify the argument by suggesting that seeking pleasure in sex was the original sin; but what of the clitoris?

God has given woman an organ devoted to nothing more than sexual pleasure. Why would God incorporate such a thing, into the sex who has the power of yes or no, if He didn’t approve? No, I don’t think God saw anything at all wrong with sexual congress. It was, after all, not God but Satan who pointed out to the man and woman that they were naked. So just what was this forbidden fruit they desired?

From the literal account, God permits Adam and Eve to take of anything in the garden except the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil -- that to do so would result in certain death for them. Just to make sure, God stuck it right in their faces in the midst of the garden. Excuse me?

No ugly fruit this, so Eve looked upon it and found it desirable. She made an independent decision and took a bite. Then, she gave to Adam who was not deceived, but was certainly manipulated by a desire to keep peace with the problem at hand. His woman had just committed herself. How could he have refused to go along without rejecting his new and special companion (a common enough problem today)? Immediately they recognized their state of undress and sought to cover their embarrassment with fig leaves, so to speak. Here we had the first fruit of the tree: shame.

Next the account has God searching through the Garden, like any other concerned parent, for His children – the Omniscient calling out to them as if He doesn’t already know. He, of course, finds them hiding like little children who have broken a prize lamp, and we have the second fruit of the Tree: Guilt.

God asks them, "Why were you hiding?" How many times have you played this game with your own children? You know the answer, but you want to see how they try to squirm out of it. Maybe that was how God was feeling at the moment. Or, maybe that’s just how the writer imagined it. Either way, the image holds.

"We were hiding because we were naked."

God’s answer cut through like any loving parent to child discourse, "Who told you that?"

Their response is enlightening to all we who have been indoctrinated by the "blue pencil moralists, "The Serpent told us." Well now, just who was it that was really bothered by guiltless nakedness and sought to point the finger of shame? Why, it was the Devil of course. God didn’t see anything wrong with a naked man and woman together. To God, this was a thing of beauty. But, by covering the natural with the unnatural, Satan was able to pervert the gift of sexuality by hiding it away in back alley strip joints, placing an iron curtain between man and woman.

This sudden barrier led to a third fruit: Denial of responsibility by transference of guilt: The Devil made me do it. The man now fingered the one in whom he had so delighted as the one to blame. She, of course, blamed the Serpent (circumstance). Neither of them acknowledged their culpability or expressed contrition. But, of course, they were now doomed, weren’t they? Satan had snaked in, right under the watch of God, and spoiled everything. They would now have to leave Paradise; nothing would ever again be as God had planned. Damned kids! Always screwing things up!

Satan had thwarted God and it was all the fault of those two spoiled brats. Some one was going to have to pay, by God! What to do, what to do? Well, until some plan of redemption could be devised, everyone had to get out of the pool! The worst of the fruits of the Tree had come into play: Separation – Exile.

OK, maybe you recognize a bit of facetiousness in this, but that is the traditional literalist rendition of what happened, and it served fairly well in the days before Copernicus and Galileo when the Earth was still flat and God dwelt just above the clouds in Heaven. People lacked an understanding of the awesome immensity of creation. With all our powerful tools of observation, we still have not found the edge of creation or the ultimate building block of matter. God no longer seems to be a parochial ruler subject to challenge by the powers below.

To take a simplistic approach to such things is to fall into the error of Job. When he questioned God’s motivation, El Shadai didn’t argue with him; merely drew attention to the creation and the mystery of it all. Is that any less effective of an answer today?

OK, then, back to the basic beat: God is Omniscient. Satan did not snake into the Garden unnoticed. God is Omnipotent: Satan was incapable of screwing with God’s plan. In fact, we find at the beginning of the Book of Job that Satan was able to do only what God allowed – no more. In fact, Satan and his demons tremble at the throne of El Shadai – there is no contest what so ever.

So, then, why? Why allow such a thing? Was it some sick test of their blind obedience? Religion would have us to think so, but that would be like lacing a cookie with poison, placing it within reach of a toddler, and expecting him to resist the irresistible. No loving parent would do such a thing, even while hanging close by to halt the procedure. No, there’s something we’re missing here -- something huge.

Let’s go back to that tree which so many of us simply think of as an apple tree. With a nod to the power of advertising, there was so much more to it than such a predictable simplification. This isn’t, after all, about gardening. It’s about a much deeper issue. The whole tree thing may just be metaphorical – a poetic image created to simplify a more complex issue.

It’s very much like my question, why would God allow weeds into His garden of perfection – a simile upon a metaphor. Despite what advertising might have us to believe, weeds fulfill a deep-seated purpose. They’re part of the cycle of nature, pulling nutrients from deep in the subsoil, making them available to shallower rotted flowers and vegetables one they die and rot at the surface. Of course this, like anything else, is a matter of balance. Too much at one time would stunt and/or kill off the final product. The trick is to control the weeds, not by use of chemical means, but through hands on horticulture – pulling and composting the weeds while thinning and pruning the desirable plants until they mature and bring forth fruit on their own.

So, then, how perfect to use a tree in a garden for an example. The tree, keep in mind, was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To eat of this fruit was to have your eyes opened to see and understand such. Do you really think God was surprised at what happened -- do you really? Or was this just part of the ultimate plan of an all-knowing and all-powerful creator to develop in His children the ability and desire to, not just resist evil, but be repulsed by its very concept?

So, God stuck this thing right in the middle of the Garden – right where it could not be missed. By taking of such, Eve showed a desire to know it all – aren’t women still like that – desiring to know every detail? Adam just wanted peace and quiet along with the impulse of the moment; "Whatever you say, Dear." Need I say more?

But, how does one learn of both Good and Evil? Not in God’s Garden of Perfection (though, they were hardly protected from that snake, where they?). God chooses to know only the Good. In order to develop God’s perspective, however, Mankind would have to have to experience both.

So, whether Adam and Eve were two actual people or representative of Mankind as a whole, they had to leave the womb and do a header out into the world. To get what they asked for requires suffering, pain, sin. To become "like gods, knowing good from evil, requires being burned by the stove to identify "hot," going hungry to identify "want," having children to learn about "pain." "In pain shall you bring forth children," does not refer to the trauma of childbirth, but the agony of watching how our babies suffer in the world of Good and Evil: "War is good business; invest a son." Through all this, we learn the difference – the cause – the solution: Jesus, and all He represented in a return to desiring only the Good and rejecting the Evil.

So, could it be Humanity was set up? That God stuck temptation right where it could hardly be resisted? A chorus of resistance will now rise up against such a proposition, but the "facts" are pretty compelling unless you want to dispute the scriptural account. Whether taken literally or poetically, only one conclusion is logical; God has an ulterior plan and when we question His motives, or the fairness of the pain of being He just asks if we have considered the heavens and the depths of the seas. In other words, the answers are both too complex for literalist explanations yet as simple to a poet as a hug.

Here’s what this heretic thinks, Whether the creation story is literal or an allegory, the same issues hold forth. God orchestrated a situation in which He allowed mankind to seek understanding; but good cannot be understood in a vacuum. First evil must be permitted as a counterpoint. The need to forgive cannot be individualized without the experience of personal need. The value of a hug cannot be identified without experiencing the pain of exclusion. And, none of this could be learned academically within the womb of the Garden of Eden.

With all this in mind, what occurred in the Garden account cannot really be considered as Mankind’s "fall from grace." This was more of a birth with Mankind being convulsed from the protection of the womb into the cold reality of life, complete with the breath inducing slap to the rump. And, since God appears to have authored the whole thing, we can hardly condemned for what has been written in advance?

Since I was the designated heretic in my old congregation, the minister had special way of challenging me to address any subject that would get him in big time trouble. He’d simply mention something in passing, smile, and move on. Some time ago, he asked me if I knew how many books had been written on the subject of Grace. When I admitted ignorance, he told me of the volumes stuck up on library shelves. "You know why there are so many? Because nobody understands it." Then he smiled and walked away to deal with pastoral issues.

Nobody really understands Grace. Do you? It’s been called the most dangerous subject in Christendom. Is it as simple as believing on the name of Jesus and receiving it; or is it a gift earned through obedience to a standard set by God’s agents? Well, here’s the fly in the ointment of simplicity: What about all those who have lived prior to the time of Jesus? Are they lost? Are they in limbo? Are they a special case exception to the rule? And, what of the multitudes since then who never had the chance to hear the Word? What of those turned off by the excesses of Christians, falsely so called? Then there’s all those contradictory doctrines relating to the subject.

Once again, to arrive at the Truth, we need to go back to the beginning. If God intended for us to live this life in order to arrive at some sort of understanding, then He had to build in a "get out of Hell card" for us to play. It wasn’t a matter of damage control to salvage whatever was left after Satan’s terrorist attack. Remember Omniscient and Omnipotent. What were the fruits of the Tree of Good and Evil?

Shame, guilt, blame, exile. What is it most often expressed by Christians? Is it forgiveness, mercy, and acceptance? Or is it the pointing fingers of blame, shame, and guilt? Are we of the New Covenant or the old? Are we really any different from the Taliban? Picture Pat Robertson, James Merritt (President of the Southern Baptist Convention), or Billy Graham’s son, Franklin as King of America. What would happen to the Bill of Rights? Would women end up any better off than in Afghanistan? What about those of us who’d DARE to challenge orthodox religious interpretations. Would we return to the days when Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting that our planet orbits the Sun instead of the other way around? Could I still enjoy a beer or mow my lawn on Sunday?

Those of you who don’t understand what I’m worried about need not read any further. Those of you feeling conflicted over this issue can go on to the next chapter.

A Do-it-Yourself Guide to the Antichrist... and Beyond

Chapter Outlines

Introduction:

Chapter One: What in the World is God doing?