The story of how original sin came into the world is literally as old as Adam. It has been interpreted in many ways, and here are my two cents on the subject.
The literal interpretation (and I will avoid that f-word that gets me into so much trouble) is that man sinned and was kicked out of the garden of Eden, forevermore to toil. It has also been the cause of much misogyny, because Adam wouldn't have eaten the apple if it weren't for Eve.
Man (and I use the generic abbreviation for humans) was created with free will. Regardless of what we believe about creation, we know we can choose to do Good or Evil, and this is the concept known as free will. Free will existed before evil entered the world, because Adam and Eve were able to make a choice about whether or not to eat from the Tree.
What is the nature of this original sin that Adam and Eve had committed? It is not a Pandora's box they opened, because they couldn't have chosen to do an evil act if evil did not already exist. If evil existed beforehand, then eating the apple was not the cause of evil existing in the world. What exactly was their fall from grace?
I don't claim to understand the theology of original sin, or even what the definition of sin is. But the negative connotation it has in this case, that Adam and Eve did something quite wrong by their actions is not necessarily accurate, depending on how you look at the situation.
First, of course, God told them not to eat from this tree. If we believe in a God that is loving and wants the best for his creations (which commonly knowing God as the Father figure), then we must believe that he did not want them to do eat from the tree for their own good. What was He trying to protect them from?
The tree is called the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. This means that Good and Evil existed, but that Adam and Eve were unaware of either. What does that mean for them. Would Cain still have killed Abel even in the Garden of Eden? Why not? He would not have lied to God (am I my brother's keeper?) but would have said blatantly "yep, it was me," with the innocence of someone who hasn't done anything out of the ordinary. What is the difference then? Why must people live their lives, toiling to make their livings and having pain in childbirth, when they would act the same way without knowing the difference?
It is our knowledge that makes us responsible. We are now aware, we are conscious of what Evil and what Good are. Therefore, we are responsible to choose Good over Evil, which makes life difficult for us. The distinctions are not always so clear. Thou shalt not kill, but what about self-defense? The list goes on and on and on. Now everyone carries the burden of "original sin." Our lives are difficult as we try to know more to save our souls.
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." -Alexander Pope [Essay on Criticism]
1 comment:
Dear Ms. Wiebe,
I’m not sure how serious you are about this metaphor. You appear to believe that the Garden of Eden was a real place – or perhaps that is merely an artifact of your musings.
In any case, you talk of free will – which I believe to be real - and good and evil, which I also believe to be very real - but not in any religious sense.
As for original sin, theologians argue the sin in question was less that of eating the fruit than that of disobeying god. Be that as it may, I consider attempts to justify scholarly discussion of sin, original or otherwise, in terms established by a god, to be puerile, in part because it requires a belief in the god and in part because it involves conversations with a snake. Surely any organization that nominates a talking snake as spokesreptile for an evil divinity must be suspect.
And the snake is not even unique to Christianity; Sumerian seals depict a tree guarded by a snake. I remember studying in Greek Mythology in High School about Hesperides, a garden protected by a snake. Then there is a tree in Buddhism under which the founder of that religion attained a state of enlightenment. Trees also figure in both Hinduism and in the Norse sagas.
Evidently, when Christian mythology was being written in the centuries following the death of Christ, the authors must have had access to all manner of literature describing religious iconicity for the previous four or five thousand years.
As you might guess, this is leading somewhere and it is this; this metaphor, the idea of the Tree of Knowledge and the dire consequences of sampling its fruit, might have a parallel in modern times.
Adam was warned not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge otherwise he would be denied immortality. (Just how well Adam would have been expected to grasp the twin notions of mortality and immortality without access to knowledge in the first place, is problematic - or perhaps one of the bible's more beguiling sendups.)
However, if we were to take the idea of Knowledge literally, it would mean “knowing” about the real world, i.e. knowing about the universe and everything in it. Thus all we have learned through scientific investigation – medicine, biology, engineering, technology, cosmology – would be that “knowledge”.
Now, as it happens, all this knowledge has been discovered and assembled only because it has been funded by the substantial wealth created in the West on the backs of democracy and the market economy.
A concurrent consequence of this wealth has been its distribution to vast numbers of people who, as a result, live in quite comfortable circumstances. An not unexpected consequence of our comfortable circumstances is our complacency. We have become, metaphorically speaking, fat, lazy and complacent.
Now bear with me for one moment; there is a point to this discourse.
One merely has to examine the West - and I speak primarily of the European part of the West - as it has evolved over the past half century - and one is struck by the utter complacency into which they have settled. They are reluctant to, indeed, refuse to, send their armed forces to assist in the fight against militant Islam. Despite the growing populations of Muslims in their midst who, by the way, are intent on converting Europe into a caliphate, they adamantly insist that their complacency will not be disturbed.
So here is where the metaphor gains credence.
It is highly likely that Europe will be governed in accordance with Sharia law before the middle of the 21st century, and the rest of the West a few decades later (we North Americans are also growing fat, lazy and complacent but more slowly).
By any definition, living under Sharia law would be considerably different than living under present day western laws. It would be, to my mind, equivalent to being expelled from the Garden of Eden and into a world, not to put too fine a point on it, less pleasant.
Thus the consequence of mankind, at least the Western version of mankind, “eating” the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge would be the expulsion of the inhabitants (latter day Adams and Eves), from the Garden of Eden (the West) and into the wilderness (Islam).
Gerry Porter
Ottawa
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