Ricky Gervais the comedian and atheist has a (to me) very funny stand-up routine that pokes fun at the inconsistencies in Genesis and what appears to be the obvious flaws in allegorical tale…but
I also like to think that at its heart Genesis has a ‘key thought’ that seems to be increasingly relevant as humanity plod on it faltering, and often circuitous, way towards ‘enlightenment’… and that is that ‘in the beginning’ the first man and woman had a ‘critical decision’ to make — which was essentially ‘to do as told by the greatest authority’ OR ‘to resist the instruction of the font of all knowledge and wisdom, and follow their own will — for good or ill’… And I think we all know what happened… (i.e. That is to say: ‘We’ could have been a species that lived forever in a heavenly Eden here on Earth from the moment of our ‘Creation’ …OR we could (and did choose to) take however many millennia (or aeons?) necessary to acquire enough knowledge, and (more importantly) sufficient wisdom, to then be able to re-create the Eden we chose to forgo through our original recalcitrance.
As a species we often seem to harbour a resistance towards ‘being told what to do’ …It is ‘kind of’ ironic that we are entering an era where ‘social control’ is the flavour of the month, and we are just emerging from the ‘COVID test-run’ that allowed the ‘global controllers’ to discover what percentage of folks would resist being told to ‘do this that or the other’ …and how many were ‘compliant’… It seems clear that many humans still do not like to be told ‘Do THIS…and whatever you do do NOT do THAT’…
(Yet with respect to the Genesis dilemma, there is arguably an discussion to be had about whether the ‘right’ choice was the one that would have seen humanity living in a state of unquestioning innocence, and yet ignorance, albeit in a heavenly garden that provided for all our wants and needs …OR whether we actually ‘needed’ to go through the prolonged and painful process of learning ‘all there is to know’ so that we could finally accept that our best course of action was to recreate that Paradise Lost? …In other words perhaps, God’s purpose in creating the means — i.e. the Tree/Fruit, The Deceiver — whereby His Word would eventually be challenged and rejected was/is a necessary part of our ongoing ‘evolution’ without which we could not aspire to become more than unquestioning, compliant drones?)
Then again… for me, it is simply another ‘human folly’ to try to describe or assign any intent or other anthropomorphised action to that Entity which some like to refer to as God… who/which, as I understand it, is unknowable, immeasurable, ubiquitous, omnipotent and (perhaps above all) ineffable!
But, that we each have a spark of Divinity within us is, I believe, the thing that we all need to come to know and accept (even if we can never understand its Source)…and our Purpose is simple …to nourish, and nurture that Spark through the course of at least one (and perhaps many more) mortal tenure(s), until such time as we have tended the Seed sufficiently that it can break through the ‘Earthen’ darkness and emerge as a bud that can ultimately flower within the light of the Next, and Higher Kingdom…
On this planet, where our mortal story is told, it seems we (as individuals — and which then should eventually become reflected in Society as a whole) have but two lessons to learn and act upon, in order to encourage the healthy germination of that ‘Seed’: —
The first, drawn from the Genesis story is about learning to make the ‘right decision’…through the employment of knowledge, insight and above all wisdom. That is to say wherever and whenever a choice has to be made (be that a small personal matter or a choice of global consequence), we have to learn to identify that which is likely to be for the greater (and therefore ultimately –even if not immediately– our own) good and only ever make that choice…
The second (being drawn from the later Testament)… yet which will always ‘inform an influence’ the first lesson… derives from Jesus’ Story, is (you’ll have guessed) to live by The Golden Rule!
ALL the rest is superfluous and likely, as has proven be the case over the centuries, to cause endless contention, division and debate!
(The foregoing was the larger part of an off-the-cuff reply to a post on social media that I thought was worth repurposing by adding here! 🙂 )
