In Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth, and then he rests. Then, as an afterthought, he creates man, and puts him in a garden. In the center of the garden, he puts the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then, the very first thing he says to man is, don’t eat from that tree, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” If you ignore the fact that God didn’t have to put the tree there at all, it sounds almost protective.
But the snake tells Eve, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And guess what? The snake was right. They eat from the tree, and they do not die. Instead they are cursed by God and sent forth from Eden.
Why does God so punish them? It is in part because they broke his commandments, but also because he seems to fear mankind: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.”
Is any of this starting to sound familiar (other than the obvious)? The ruling party establishes policies designed to ensure its own hegemony, at the expense of the governed. To do this, it withholds critical knowledge. When a sinister (from the Latin, meaning “on the left") creature (or, in our case, creatures) reveals the truth, the dominant party curses that “subtil” creature/party “above every beast”, and sets up cherubim ("mysterious composite being[s],” sort of like the USA Patriot Act, or Johnny Ashcroft) to guard the source of its secrets and power .
Praise the Lord.
Read Less...
A Faith-Based Explanation of the Right's Duplicity
