"Empty promises" and paradise lost

Today for the first time since the pandemic started, our congregation baptized a new member. As is traditional at one point the pastor asked (paraphrasing), "Do you reject the devil and all his works and empty promises?" While the history behind that question would probably fascinate me, I found myself thinking about how many empty promises I have heard in my life. Car salesmen and politicians have a reputation for them. And I still remember an old joke about Satan not attacking lawyers out of professional courtesy, though lawyers have more of a reputation for simple dishonesty than for promising anything.

The first time that the devil makes an appearance in Scripture, it's in the Genesis account as the serpent. Again, regardless of your own personal approach to Genesis' "page one" problem, it's interesting to watch the action unfold: the serpent tells a half-truth that is fully misleading. As a result of being misled, in a very short time the people are living with shame and fear and enmity and suspicion. Those bad things happened before God imposed any consequences; the fallout to that point was all from natural consequences. The man hid, and was afraid, and was ashamed all before he saw God. And when asked to explain, the blame-fest began. It's traditional to chalk up "paradise lost" to God's actions, but they had already lost paradise. It had stopped being paradise -- a garden planted by God himself where all was in harmony with God -- and had started being a piece of territory. Honestly, they had been destined to leave the garden anyway ("Be fruitful and multiply; Fill the earth and rule over it"). They hadn't been destined to fear and shame and suspicion and enmity. They were no longer in harmony with God. That was the paradise lost.

Paradise to the ends of the earth

God's grace and goodwill towards the earth were established in the act of creation. If the path he has laid out for us is to follow him and to be like God, then what do we make of paradise?

And God blessed them, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it: have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant that bears seed upon the face of all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit, for food.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, having the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food" and it was so. (Genesis 1:28-30)

God set up humanity to understand other creatures and care for them. We call the animals by name, just as the Lord calls us by name. (As per the quote above, the book of Genesis says that in paradise, humans may have "ruled over" the animals but were not to eat them.)

Seen in this way, Eden is a template for how we should fill the earth and subdue it. God's establishment of paradise is an action that he calls us to continue, where he intends for us to walk in his footsteps. Later models of "subduing" things were corrupted by sin. But the right kind of rule makes things flourish and prosper, being better than before. The right way to "fill the earth and subdue it" would turn the whole earth into a paradise, keeping to the pattern that God showed.

Utopia vs Eden

I think it's hardwired into who we are, as people, to try to create a paradise. It's the ultimate imitation of God: as he creates a paradise, so we try to create a paradise. Our own efforts may be small: maybe it's a home or a classroom or a garden. Maybe it's a holiday dinner, a summer vacation, a Sabbath -- or some other temporary paradise. Maybe it's a work of art or music.

The ambitious try to create paradise on grand political scales: cities, states, nations -- even the whole world. A big, ambitious paradise can only work if everyone works together. So it quickly seeks legal authority to make people cooperate. If we agreed on what was good and right, there would be no need to force other people to conform. And so the big, ambitious schemes usually come to that point sooner or later, where they go into the business of identifying opponents to be oppressed, discredited, and neutralized. We find that the "paradise" has come with its own ruler, a kind of god (or idol), and a system of values that must not be questioned, along with the laws to promote those values. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao, Pol Pot ... are there more? They were all, in their own minds, the heroes leading in the glorious new age, though history is tending to remember them as butchers. How many times did that pattern play out in the 20th century alone? In previous centuries there were other figures, both religious and anti-religious, who tried to create paradise on earth at any price, and likewise became tyrants in a reign of terror. If we can't agree on what is good, then attaining that "good" requires oppressing those with different ideas; whatever else you may call it, it will never be a paradise; there will never even be justice.

They say that "Utopia" is the ancient Greek word for "Nowhere". It has never lasted; in many cases it has never worked at all. In stories, there are so many tales of a utopia gone wrong. In history, there are so many accounts of good intentions, good beginnings, and bad endings.

In Eden, we see some of the same themes: a paradise lost. We see how different ways of deciding "What makes something good or evil?" made the whole thing fall apart -- and involved the question of who was really in charge. But in Eden, that is told without the oppression, and without the reign of terror. There was just a sad ending: as long as there were disagreements about what is right, and what is wrong, and who is in charge -- it can't last. That wisdom has escaped us. That "tree of life" that would make it last forever remains out of reach.

A familiar verse, a different way to interpret it

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." -- Genesis 1:28

Reading the Talmud and overhearing the ancient sages interpret Scripture is fascinating to me. It is completely common to see a single verse discussed at length from one angle after another. What would happen if we interpreted this familiar Scripture above in that way?

I could picture a conversation on this verse much like the following. I hope I can be forgiven my poor attempts at dialog and imitating the general flavor of the conversations in the Talmud. Here is how I would picture a conversation on this verse, in the general style of the conversations in the Talmud:

First Student: "Did God bless them, or did God command them?"
Older student: "It is a command. He said two things, for it is written, 'God blessed them and said to them, etc".
Other student: "It is a blessing, for it is written, 'God blessed them.'"
First Teacher: "If you say the blessing and the command are two different things, if you say 'Be fruitful' is the command, then what is the blessing?"
Second Teacher: "The ancients have taught that this is a command for us. If you say 'be fruitful' is the blessing, then what is the command?"
First Teacher: "The blessing is fulfilled in living the command."

Third Teacher: "The ancients taught, 'God's Word here is part of the Words of Creation.' As God said 'Let there be light' and 'Let the earth produce life,' so the Holy One also said, 'Be fruitful.'"
Student: "But -- 'be fruitful' -- is it not the first command of the Torah?"
Third Teacher: "The first command of the Torah is part of the Words of Creation."
Second Teacher: "Are all the commands of the Torah part of the Words of Creation?"

First teacher: "He spoke from paradise. What blessing was needed in paradise?"
Third teacher: "The whole world was not paradise, as it says, 'And God planted a garden in the East.' Therefore the Holy One says, 'Fill the earth.'"

And so ends my flawed attempts to give you all an idea of the way a verse might look when it is discussed in the Talmud.

I mostly wanted to give you all an idea how "context" comes up in ways we might not expect. When a blessing and command are mentioned in the same verse, it raises the question whether there is a difference between a blessing and a command. When a saying of God occurs in the context of creation, it may be part of creation. And if the very first command of the Bible could be viewed as a blessing and as part of creation, it raises the same questions of all later commands.

What did we lose in the fall?

Have you ever really thought about what the fall has done to our sense of right and wrong? I'm not talking about any punishment or curse. I'm talking about the story of Eden, about the act of stretching out our hand to eat from that tree. The tree was knowledge, wasn't it? Knowledge is good, isn't it? If we had loved knowledge for its own sake, I wonder very much what would have happened; there are those who say that God would have given us that knowledge at the right time.

But we didn't want knowledge for its own sake. We had no interest in knowledge as knowledge. We wanted it for power and status, so we could be like God. As long as we want knowledge for power or status, we will never use it rightly. We already made it plain why we wanted it, what we planned to gain from it, how we will use it.

Look very carefully at exactly what kind of knowledge was supposed to be given: the knowledge of good and evil. That is to say, knowledge of morality, knowledge of ethics. We set out to gain "moral knowledge" in order to gain power and status. It was an intrinsically perverse action, taking up morality because we thought we could use it to gain something. The morality we gained was tainted. Our knowledge of good and evil was imprinted with our decision: the ultimate good in our eyes was not quite what it should have been. And time after time when the call for "morality" goes out, we see that we are still using morality to gain status and power.

There truly is good, and knowledge of good and evil. But so long as we take the "knowledge of good and evil" in order to use it for our own gain, we will never be able to see it. Right and wrong have to be re-thought from the foundation.

The reason for Eve

Adam already had paradise. God had already created a good world. What was the point of Eve?

In Genesis, the point of Eve is that even paradise is better when there's someone to love -- and even a perfect world would be lacking something without them.

In memory of my aunt, d. 11/07/2010. I'll be in Kentucky for the next couple of days for the memorial and funeral, & won't be checking comments again until Friday.

Halloween Special: The First Faust ...

I've always loved the legend of Faust: the man who sells his soul to the devil for some sort of worldly gain. I read a couple of different short variations of Faust in school, my favorite of these being The Devil and Daniel Webster. Years later I saw that version of Faust reprised in an episode of the Simpsons; it has definitely made its way into the popular psyche. I think the story resonates because we have all been faced with the temptation for worldly gain at a price that would forever change who we are. We've even seen people take that road. How many people have traded innocence for acceptance, or decency for popularity? It is a choice that everyone is faced with, and (being sinners) on some level we all take the bait.

But what was the origin of the Faust legend? We can trace Faust-like characters, even under the name "Faust", back to medieval Germany. But I suggest that there is a much older Faust story in Judeo-Christian literature. The first story about selling our souls for worldly gain: Adam and Eve.

Happy Halloween!

If Wisdom is a Tree of Life ...

She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her. (Proverbs 3:18)

In reading older interpretations of Scripture, I have seen some different methods of interpretation than are currently in use. One method is to take something revealed in one setting and apply it back to another setting to see if it is fitting. The "Tree of Life" makes several appearances in the book of Proverbs, the only place besides Genesis where it appears in the Old Testament. In its first appearance in Proverbs, the Tree of Life is wisdom.

If we understand the Tree of Life as wisdom, it sheds a whole new light on the account of the Fall in Genesis. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, of course, brings death; but what about the Tree of Life? What if the choice was not between Knowledge and Ignorance, but between Knowledge and Wisdom? What if our problem was not that we valued Knowledge while God sought to keep us in the dark, but that we valued Knowledge more than Wisdom? We reached for Knowledge when God wanted to give us Wisdom. The history of humanity has been filled with times when our knowledge has been to our downfall because we valued knowledge over wisdom. Many technological and medical breakthroughs have been followed quickly by a wish that we had learned to understand better before we plunged forward. World literature from Oedipus Rex to Frankenstein has been filled with people who, lacking wisdom, were betrayed by their own knowledge.

It has always seemed odd to me that the pair of trees were "Knowledge of Good and Evil" and "Life"; those are hardly a natural pair. And we knew it worked out to "Death" and "Life", which are a more natural pair. It also seemed odd that God would create man and woman in his image but ask them not to go after Knowledge (even if it was Knowledge of Good and Evil), and all the while the culture that passed down this story is renowned for scholarship. And many have questioned why God would create this Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil at all.

I've heard the suggestion that, if Adam and Eve had not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that the day would have come when God had given them of that tree as a gift. They may have a point.

Christmas: On taking human form

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
But emptied himself,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness,
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death
even death on a cross
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above all names
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the earth
And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.

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God's opening salvo in our redemption was the biggest surprise of all: the Word of God, God's self-revelation, took human form.

I know the whole "Garden of Eden" thing is a source of argument among Christians, whether it should be understood as historically true or symbolically true. I hope you'll pardon me for not getting embroiled in that particular argument today, but just mentioning this: regardless of how you view the historical angle, there is still much common ground on the theological angle. What brought about the fall was grasping at equality with God. That was the core temptation in eating the forbidden fruit: not knowledge but status.

Paul's writing (some think he was quoting an early hymn) focuses exactly on this angle. We thought equality with God was something to be grasped even though we did not by nature have it; Christ by nature had it but did not claim it. We sought to exalt ourselves to gain our own status; Christ rejected his status in order to be with us. We let ourselves imagine that God exalted himself to keep himself above us. In our redemption, God showed us that the reality of the matter was the opposite: God humbled himself in order to reach us.

God is not too proud to be born into a poor family, not too proud to be put into a trough instead of a crib, not too proud to become human. Our original distrust of God is built on the fact that he is something we are not: that he is above us. The first action in redemption was to take away our cause for distrust: now God lays aside his glory and comes among us as one of us.

This turns our original temptation on its head. If we want to be like God, we reject status and exaltation; we choose humility and service. We accept being human. Christ, in taking our humanity upon himself, gave us back our own humanity as a gift.

A Thoroughly Christian Mysticism: A Holy View Of Creation

A Holy View of Creation

The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament proclaims the work of his hands ... -- King David (Psalm 19)

One line of reasoning that shows the rightful place of Christian mysticism is based on creation. When creation is viewed as holy, mysticism is simply allowing ourselves to see this, to know it by experience and by appreciation, not merely by analysis. Beauty, awe, and wonder are a fitting part of our experience in this world; when we ignore these things we lose something valuable.

Creation and God's Character

Beyond seeing the world as good, we also see traces of God's character displayed in the things he has made. His creation shows forth his attributes. Creation, in some measure, reveals God's mind.

Why do we dream in metaphors? We're trying to hold onto something that we couldn't understand ... couldn't understand ... couldn't understand. -- Seal

Everything that God made is a partial revelation of God. Everything in creation is a metaphor of sorts, and has meaning beyond itself about the One who made it. Rocks, hills, trees, stars ... each thing stirs a memory of God in its own way. In every park or seashore you can hear the "echoes of Eden" as the mystically-inclined might say.

Sometimes I have looked at writing that was penned in a foreign script and have just admired its beauty and incomprehensibility. We see the beauty, we perceive it must have meaning, but we haven't grasped it. It's tantalizing, it's mesmerizing. If everything that God made is a partial revelation of God, then creation itself is like writing in a foreign script. Every tree or rock is a glyph, a symbol pointing us to God.

David understood when he saw the night sky. "The heavens declare the glory of God ... they pour forth speech, they display knowledge ... there is no language where their voice is not heard."

Everyone's spiritual quest is trying to decipher this language. We're all code-breakers, all mystery-solvers, all beauty-lovers. We all see the words of God -- words-made-creation in nature, or words of the prophets. Awe is a rational response of the soul that sees the wonders of creation. Rejection of mysticism is a rejection of steeping ourselves in the awe and wonder of the world, which are a proper part of our worship of God.

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This is the second part of a series of posts here on thoroughly Christian mysticism. The previous part contrasted mysticism and scholasticism. The next part will address the basis of mysticism in Christ's incarnation; the part after that, the "apophatic" branch of mysticism. I may continue the series to explore mysticism in relation to the recent cessationist/non-cessationist debate on gifts of the Spirit.

Darrel Pursiful is also posting his thoughts on mysticism over at Disert Paths. I'd encourage you to pop over to his blog and give him a read. He takes the approach of building the scholarly framework for mysticism, a much-needed endeavor for the renewal of Christian mysticism.