Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Original SI{g}N
The story of the garden, with its climax in the "fall of man," is often read as a story of humanity's disobedience towards God perpetrated in the act of eating from the tree in the center of the garden. This understanding focuses on a conception of God as a law giver and man as a law-breaker. We are "fallen" because we could not and cannot keep God's law(s). Could it be that humanity's sin goes much deeper than this juvenile disobedience? This act of disobedience was based on a promise. A promise that we could know like God and therefore be a god. The deception of the serpent in the garden is the promise of knowledge, a knowledge of good and evil, of right from wrong; "when you eat of [the tree] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:5)." A knowledge that would release humans of their dependence on a relationship with God. The forbidden fruit quenches man will to know. It is the source of our endless systemization of morality. The delusion of the garden may have no greater advocate than the proto-Cartesian philosophizing of the west. Beginning with the thinking self we set out in our delusion, driven mad by the promise of knowledge, to establish 'clear and distinct' ideas about the world with which to return to the cabinet of the mind, storing them until such time as we are ready to construct our understanding of the world using the 'secure foundations' we had retrieved from reality. We are all fallen not because at sometime or another we stole something or told a lie but because we have all succumbed to the great illusion of the serpent: that we can be like God, creating a world out of nothing. We attempt to speak this world into being through language, a language of violence that obscures the other to clarify the self.
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I agree with your analysis. It has reminded me repeatedly of what i read in the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I offer this as complimentary illustration to your point:
ReplyDelete"And you're saying this story was written from a Leaver point of view?"
"That's right. If it had been written from the Taker point of view, the knowledge of good and evil wouldn't have been forbidden to Adam, it would have been thrust upon him. The gods would have hung around saying, 'Come on, Man, can't you see that you're nothing without this knowledge? Stop living off our bounty like a lion or a wombat. Here, have some of this fruit and you'll instantly realize that you're naked--as naked as any lion or wombat: naked to the world, powerless. Come on, have some of this fruit and become one of us. Then, lucky you, you can leave this garden and begin living by the sweat of your brow, the way humans are supposed to live.' And if people of your cultural persuasion had authored it, this event wouldn't be called the Fall, it would be called the Ascent--or as you put it earlier, the Liberation."
"They got to be this way because they've always believed that what they were doing was right--and therefore to be done at any cost whatever. They've always believed that, like the gods, they know what is right to do and what is wrong to do, and what they're doing is right. Do you see how they've demostrated what I'm saying?"
"They've demonstrated it by forcing everyone in the world to do what they do, to live the way they live. Everyone had to be forced to live like the Takers, because the Takers had the one right way."
"But its not going to be this easy for the Takers. Its going to be hard as hell for them to give it up, because what they're doing is right, and they have to go on doing it even if it means destroying the world and mankind with it."
"Giving it up would mean...It would mean that all along they'd been wrong. It would mean that they'd never known how to rule the world. It would mean...relinquishing their pretensions to godhood."
"It would mean spitting out the fruit of that tree and giving the rule of the world back to the gods."
I thought of "Ishmael" when i was reading this, as well. This is a great explanation of the garden of eden story. Thanks for being willing to share. I get a lot out of your blog Nate and hope i can contribute to the conversation at some point.
ReplyDeleteBeen thinking about this so much i decided to write a blog post in response.
ReplyDeletehttp://staffordsgreenhouse.blogspot.com/2009/08/musings-on-original-sin.html
nice work. good provoking thoughts.