The Invention of the Individual
Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn; I have done as you told me. Genesis 27:19a NASB
I am – Some time ago (September 28, 2018) I wrote about the shift in the idea of “individual.” I noted that ancient, non-industrial cultures exhibit group consciousness rather than discrete, individual consciousness. I cited works by Gabor Maté and Anthony Storr, noting that even today there are cultures where the idea of an individual identity apart from the social group of culture just doesn’t occur. I suggested that reading the Bible in this ancient way requires a radical revision of what it means to be a person. Verse like Acts 16:30, famous for its evangelical interpretation, might need to be read differently if the jailer thinks like an ancient Roman rather than a modern pagan.
Some readers objected. That is always cause for reconsideration, examination and further development. So I offer this. It is a rather long citation, but one that I think challenges our penchant to read the Bible as if the terms mean what we think they mean today. See what you think.
A brief preface:
Some words which first came into importance in their present meaning “in the last decades of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century: ‘industry’, ‘democracy’, ‘class’, ‘art’, and ‘culture.’ These words make our way of thinking about society. And . . . ‘society’ itself is another such word.”[1]
And now the heart of the matter:
“Historians of European culture are in substantial agreement that, in the last sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, something like a mutation in human nature took place. Frances Yates speaks of ‘the inner deep-seated changes in the psyche during the early seventeenth century’, which she calls ‘the vital period for the emergence of modern European and American man.’”[2]
These changes were partially the result of “the dissolution of the feudal order and the diminished authority of the Church.”[3]
“ . . . a new kind of personality . . . emerges . . . what we call an ‘individual’: at a certain point in history men became individuals.”[4]
“Taken in isolation, the statement is absurd. How was a man different from an individual? A person born before a certain date, a man—had he not eyes? Had he not hands? Organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you pricked him, he bled and if you tickled him, he laughed. But certain things he did not have or do until be became an individual. He did not have an awareness of what one historian, George Gusdorf, calls internal space. He did not, as Delany puts it, imagine himself in more than one role, standing outside or above his own personality; he did not suppose that he might be an object of interest to his fellow man not for the reason that he had achieved something notable or been witness to great events but simply because as an individual he was of consequence. It is when he becomes an individual that a man lives more and more in private rooms; whether the privacy makes the individuality or the individuality requires the privacy the historians do not say. The individual looks into mirrors, larger and much brighter than those that were formerly held up to magistrates. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lucan believes that the development of the ‘Je’ was advanced by the manufacturer of mirrors: again it cannot be decided whether man’s belief that he is a ‘Je’ is the result of the Venetian craftsmen’s having learned how to make plate-glass or whether the demand for looking-glasses stimulated this technological success. If he is an artist the individual is likely to paint self-portraits; if he is Rembrandt, he paints some threescore of them. And he begins to use the word ‘self’ not as a mere reflexive or intensive, but as an autonomous noun referring, the O.E.D.tells us, to ‘that . . . in a person [which] is really and intrinsically he (in contradistinction of what is adventitious)’, as that which he must cherish for its own sake and show to the world for the sake of good faith. The subject of an autobiography is just such a self, bent on revealing himself in all his truth, bent, that is to say, on demonstrating his sincerity. His conception of his private and uniquely interesting individuality, together with his impulse to reveal his self, to demonstrate that in it which is to be admired and trusted, are, we may believe, his responses to the newly available sense of an audience, of that public which society created.”[5]
And then there is this from Christopher Hill:
“All roads in our period have led to individualism. More rooms in better-off houses, use of glass in windows (common for copyholders and ordinary poor only since the Civil War, Aubrey says); use of coal in grates, replacement of benches by chairs—all this made possible greater comfort and privacy for at least the upper half of the population. Privacy contributed to the introspection and soul-searching of radical Puritanism, to the keeping of diaries and spiritual journals.”[6]
Autobiography began when man became an individual. The ability to stand outside oneself and reflect on being a discrete self is a thoroughly modern invention of the psyche, not possible before men created a different kind of public, a society.
So once again we might ask, “Do we read the Bible as if it were written to us, to modern men and women, products of psychological influences from the 16thand 17thCenturies?” “Are our translations true to the psyche of the author and audience?” Or have we converted the text into something quite unimaginable to ancient people? When the Scriptures use ʾānōkî as a designation of “I,” do you think the author means “I” in the same way that we use the term?
Topical Index: ʾānōkî, individual, Genesis 27:19a
[1]Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, p. 19.
[6]Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution: 1603-1741(Norton: New York, 1961), p. 253.
Skip, You say that “The ability to stand outside oneself and reflect on being a discrete self is a thoroughly modern invention of the psyche, not possible before men created a different kind of public, a society.” Yet Adam not only recognized his separateness from Havah in the very act of her creation, but also in the garden when he blamed her for his troubles using her individuality as his defense. Later his son Cain asks, ” Am I my brother’s keeper?” Sounds as if “individual identity apart from the social group of culture” does occur from the beginning. Scriptures are full of individuals and individualism because we are made in the image of Elohim and He is not a corporate or cultural we, but an I. And thus so am I. And so are we all an I first and then a we and an us…or so it seems to me.
Michael, I think a better question would be to ask, “what would the Israelites who initially received this information have understood?”
Now I’m wondering if Skip will have to go back and re-examine his earlier interpretation of these verses since it may have been influenced by 16th and 17th century psychology
One could say that Yeshua was the first individualist. He spent a lot of time alone in the wilderness, and he made claims of exclusivity.
The corporate versus individualistic understanding of societal dynamics plays a pivotal role in the interpretation of Romans and the rest of the New testament letters.
Facebook demonstrates that revealing self to a newly available audience has little to do with sincere truth. YHVH instructed Israel, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Wasn’t that instruction given because at least in part because they wanted a name for themselves? Yeshua elevated individual worth, accountability, responsibility and reward/ punishment. We live in a culture of individualism taken to an unhealthy extreme but maybe the people of the Scriptures lived in a world of collectivism taken to an unhealthy extreme. The book of Ephesians seems to me to present a good balance between the two which I believe gets us closer to the wholeness that YHVH seeks for His audience.
Thanks for planting some seeds!
Isn’t the issue, really, what happens to the
individual whose self-absorption tends to cut off
his/her awareness of the world around them?
Seems like it started in the garden and continues
significantly to this day . . .
Yeshua came to “lighten” the atmosphere and bring
glory to Himself, the Father and the promised divine
nature (2 Pet 1:4) that every believing individual has
hidden within them.
It just took the life, death and resurrection of one unique
individual.
We have a small community, anywhere from 5 to ten,with five being faithful. I being the oldest makes the next one almost 30 years younger and the youngest makes a 45 year gap.what I find is they love community which is good and I try hard to spend time all through the week staying in touch,so when we come together once a week we will not be strangers.The problem is not corporate it’s getting them beyond the spectator sport mentality in community and realizing they need to be individuals that pursue scripture on their own and they need to bring something to the table, and not be dependent on the few. I applaud Theresa T. You need balance you can’t have extreme on either side. Individual is as important as community . Judges 2:10 When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers ,another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done for Israel. We do not have large families anymore, “it’s making for slim pickings” and we sure are in desperate need for even one individual to stand and pass it on. Our problem has always been huge gaps in generations. So I am as much for the individual,as I am for community.
Good insights Pam and Theresa. Permit me to think out loud. The challenge for us seems to be how to apply the Torah, as understood and written by those in a different culture, to modern audiences. For those of us who have watched Downtown Abbey, maybe we can get a little glimpse of how different culture and social strata operated 100-150 years ago. Now go back 2000 years to imagine how the “servants” would have had almost no ability to move up the social ladder. Go back 3500 years and imagine the lack of existence of any society. One belonged to one tribe or another. I doubt we can even begin to image how that might look. Gods were territorial. Tribal leaders determined the codes of conduct. Individual rights? Did they even exist prior to the statutes of Torah? Maybe Torah was what made Israel unique among the nations. But even phrases such as “love your neighbor as yourself” may have been understood corporately–“Your family is to take care of another family.”
One of the problems we have in America is extreme individualism, i.e., narcissism. We have psychological disorders to identify those who just cannot act in the interest or well-being of another (NPD, BPD, etc.) These types of people have no capacity for community. We often sabotage our communities by adopting the evangelical Christian mission that every individual is redeemable. We shy away from real leadership because we might offend someone who is controlling or emotionally needy. Furthermore, many of us are laden with debt, emotional baggage, anxiety, and family dysfunction. Society is a mess. Individuals are a mess. But is it a mess because of individualism? I don’t think so. The mess is due to our human condition, individualism notwithstanding. It is going to take the King to sort it all out and separate the wheat from the tares. What we desperately need is a vision of authentic kingdom community! If the death s of Ananias and Saphira tell us anything, it tells us that God is protective of and passionate about his community, his Kahal, his Ekklasia! I think our individualistic frame of reference keeps us from fully committing to community. We have something to learn from Hassidic Jews. I have a hard time believing that the demonstrations of power by the apostles in the first century are not available to us today. We should be seeing real, tangible miracles taking place in our communities, if we are really serving, not just paying lip service, to the King of kings. Looking at Hebrews 11 does give me cause for believing that individuals can make a difference. But Moses certainly wouldn’t have been written about if he wasn’t recognized as the shepherd of the community. If there were no community, there would be no Moses on record.
Certainly, our communities are to be centers of healing and restoration, ultimately restoring people to God. That was Yeshua’s mission. Just knowing when the community or when the individual becomes the priority requires a great deal of wisdom. I don’t know that I have the answer.
One more thing, Deut. 7:9: “Know therefore that the YHVH your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.” If our communities or individuals are not about keeping his commands, we are all wasting our time!
I don’t have the answers either.I have two young people just fresh out of the marine Corp and they are people who have felt stripped of being an individual and all there discipline they thought they had seems so untransferable to a Community that loves God ,Yeshua and his word. They are not interested in pithy insights,or philisophical or preachy people.Truly real people boots on the ground I sure could use a Michael Stanley in my community or people with useable insights.
The motto “once a marine, always a marine” is more than a motto, it is a reprograming of the persona from civilian “me” to marine corps “we” but what happens when the marine is demobbed? Who knows? He is now a marine without a uniform and the result is ……………. What? Could be anything.
I think we have severe cracks in the foundation. If the foundation is destroyed, what can the righteous do? Our creature comforts have turned many of us into beasts with burdens too heavy to carry. I personally don’t have community where I live. I hope one day that will change. I try to saturate my mind with Scripture, pray and treat anyone I come in contact with as I believe Yeshua would have treated them. But, you are right to suggest I can’t really say with certainty how He would have treated them. I’m trying to learn to be still and know that He is God. I try to spend as much time as I can outside. That’s not easy in a Michigan winter. If I want to have community, then I need to be someone that would be an asset to that community. I guess I need to be restored to God myself before I can be part of a restoring community. I think many of us are still in Egypt or Egypt is still in us. Sometimes I get stuck at I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
The show Game of Thrones gives me an idea of what it might have been like in biblical times even though the show has two ruling queens. It is a show full of violence, sexual immorality, slavery and definitely deception, jealousy and a fight for control.. The whole tribal thing. But…really just going back fifty years we see how much the world has changed. The Brent Cavenaugh story…the words he used in the 80s’ and the definitions people were giving those words. today…I questioned that.
I see the Torah differently now ….as in I see it as revolutionary…but you still see man’s misuse. There are things in some of the stories that are hard to understand…like the daughters being offered in the Sodom and Gomorah story.
Daniel, BPD is a legitimate illness although imo it gets diagnosed incorrectly a lot. People think if they have a mood swing they are BPD. As for NPD I guess it is a legitimate diagnosis …most people have experienced some form of severe abuse. We should not disparage these illnesses. Would you do that to someone with heart disease. But for me it goes back to holistic health…skip says the total person..in Hebrew…not separate parts. We see Yeshua’s compassion in places where most people wouldn’t go…as in maybe he would have had dinner with the BPD person…if you have a “mental” illness today you are an outcast with lots of stigma…Thank you, Yeshua!
Fascinating idea’s. I’m teaching a world architecture course this semester. Pre-history through the Gothic 1250 CE. In studding architecture as the mirror of the times one can see built expressions of social ideals. The transitions of sacred structures from the Greek or Indian Temples that housed an idol into the Byzantine or Gothic Cathedrals that housed whole communities of believers who participated willingly in elaborate rituals, ceremonies and trainings should be obvious. I hesitate to offer that at least one of the major streams of architectural expression as a mirror of our times today is titled “Deconstructionism”…
Adam and Eve were created in a context: a Garden on a planet with apparently liberal access to heaven: they walked and talked with their Creator. That was their identity: the original design. That identity: that SELF DESCRIPTION changed abruptly, and it was in a changed context with their RELATIONSHIPS. Identity: individuality, if you will, is bound up in relationships. I am not I because I confirm to the ‘ideal form’, if you will, of ‘ME’: I am only myself – as an individual – in some sort of larger context. Without a context, I do not even exist.
It may be more useful to look at the relative contexts of the ancient, tribal or empirical world vs. our modern one, like Daniel Mook has done, to ask this question. In other words, context may actually determine individuality instead of ‘individual(s)’ (such as this reader) determining the ‘context’ of, say, what ‘they’ are happening to read. I am more a product of my relationships than my relationships are a product of ‘me’.
The text, also, only has meaning to not only the original audience but to me in relation to what we, respectively, have to bring to it. The question then becomes is there a ‘truth’ that is being RELATIVELY determined by a particular audience, or is truth in the text coming through the text from another place, or, origin. All facts (such as the facts of the tribal origins of the original audience) are relative to other facts, but if the text was only true for them BECAUSE they were them then us non-tribal folks will, because of our differing relationships, never be able to have access to the truth for those tribal folks. The question then becomes is truth determined by a set of facts, such as an “original audience” (in other words truth is only the truth FOR YOU if you have the ‘correct’ relationship to it) or can everybody access it equally? I am a HUGE fan of original intent, Skip, as I hope you know, but I am talking about HOW people access truth. Facts – all facts – are relative to other facts, but my question is, is truth just another relative fact, or do we access the truth another way other than just relationally, such as whether or not we are tribal, say?
If we can relate to truth as coming from BEYOND our relative relations in creation (such as being a part of an ancient tribe) then perhaps that Good Word may have something to say to me, too.
Sister, You might enjoy Art Katz and Paul Volks book “The Spirit of Truth”. They presuppose Truth is a spirit that is revealed through a submitted relationship with it.”Whatever God’s Spirit does; comfort, empower,counsel,and encourage, He can only do as the Spirit of Truth. If we are indifferent or resistant toward truth, it is not only truth that we will lack but everything that the Spirit of Truth was intended to convey. It is vain to expect Him to come to us as comfort when He is being rejected as truth.God can not give false comfort. God can not fain love. Everything He does is an expression of who He is and He must be true to himself. The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth because God is the God of truth” pg .38 This interpretation of truth suggests that we either have a relationship with absolute truth or not and that implies my whole world view and interpretive grid is in alignment with what is absolutely true or not. Would you agree with this paridgm ?
Thank you for sharing the reference Mark.
Laurita got me thinking… The narration of creation reveals that Eve was never part of God’s creation plan but she is part of His faithfulness to His creation. He filled the emptiness of Adam through the creation of Eve.
What we may never forget is that God’s truth can never be defined by our perception of truth.
As for the Spirit of Truth or comforter I have come to accept that it is in admitting and living our personal perceived truth that God directs and guides us. When we tend to live or promote lies or less truths we only find short term temporary solutions and soon end up needing to redeem ourselves from inconsistent lifestyles before we can find truth in ourselves.
I doubt if God is guided or does anything by a stronger controlling Spirit than is implied by the excerpt provided. I believe He is solely guided by His commitment to His purpose which includes His covenants with those He calls and empowers. Other than this there is no truth we may ever know of YHVH…
Thanks Seeker. I agree and likewise doubt ” God is guided or does anything by a strong. controlling spirit” We always are left to our choices. Our responsibility yet remains to ferret out and discern the real truth. God’s truth, Art suggests, is more cut and dry and often cuts right across our preconceptions and per-dispositions and requires time at our personal cross’s to actuate. I think relative truth is not necessarily absolute or real TRUTH; rather prercived, interpretive truths…Paul Volk suggests “We seek truths, God seeks to make us true, The difference is vast, and the kinds of men produced by each pursuit is vastly different”. To add some balance to the idealism, I remain mindful of Paul who suggests, “let every man be firmly conceived in his own mind”, regard to religious observances; might it apply to perceptions of truth? I fear I muddy the waters.
convinced not conceived..
Mark, I could agree with that because it is consistent with my experience, too. I learned at some point that we will not be judged on what we were ignorant of but instead on what we COULD HAVE KNOWN (truth) but resisted.
Socrates may have thought you could arrive at truth by argument (proofs) but we can only do that with facts (that are relative to other facts within creation) that we were given our five senses ( “flesh”) to perceive. I think only the spirit can be used to perceive truth, but the spirit is not oriented to facts: in fact, can operate in direct defiance of all perceived facts (pure faith).
There are no ‘proofs’ for truth because truth is only relational to itself. All facts require truth as a foundation but you can’t use a fact as a foundation (proof) for truth. The only ‘proof’ we have for truth is conviction – and I know Skip is uncomfortable with this because it is so subjective and ‘fuzzy’ – but it’s the best we have. Truth will always convict. Even the most hardened hearts will continue to be convicted by it because conviction has two sides to it. Pharoah continued to be convicted even to the end because he continued to choose his REACTION to the truth. We can choose HOW our hearts respond to that conviction: either to soften or to harden them. (You could ‘blame’ truth for softening OR hardening a person’s heart!) Either way people will position THEMSELVES in relation to the truth. Truth is never relative; we, as part of creation, will always find ourselves relative to it.
I believe truth is the only stuff that is itself: in fact (sic), is the very definition of itself. (Wait; Someone already used that description for Himself!)
Mark and Laurita thank you for the further insightful comments mmay His truth guide and set us free.
Amen to that, Seeker, and may we humbly set ourselves to follow wherever we are led.
So Sister, within your understanding Paul’s admonition that everyone” be firmly convinced in their own mind” (even if at odds with another) is a path forward in truth or at least toward it ? Even if the one walking is not fully aware?. As I understand your thinking our relationship with truth can only be qualified in our walking firmly and confidently in the truth we have now albeit perhaps partial or dimly perceived. This then supports Art Katz’s pithy statment, “The truth is in us and we in it only to the degree we actually walk in it”. And also Paul’s words “I have no greater Joy than this, to see my children walking in truth” May we each about this table, walk firmly and boldly in the truth we have today, that tommarow we might find ourselves closer to He that is absolute truth in complete grace incarnate
Also sister Laurita Lee Strobel in his book “the case for Christ” shares his investigation into the facts of Yeshua’s death and resurection (Lee is a Chicago Tribune reporter who came to faith investigating the facts recorded of Christ) He started his investigation after proving the innocennce of a convicted gunman on another case he had followed. The man had even ple-bargined for a lighter sentance and confessed shooting a cop.. Yet He was truly inocent. A cop actually accidentally shot himself and pinned it on an inocent man. Strobel suggests in his introduction “one of the most obvious lessons was that evidence can be aligned to point in more than one direction…..One of the reasons the evidence originally looked so convincing to me was because it fit my preconceptions at the time.”
When truth convicts it always leaves the front door open for further truth; it resonates with itself. Therefore when more light comes, it should be welcomed. If we are standing on error, however, truth that conflicts with that error is going to hurt. What we do with that hurt (which is how conviction feels when it goes against our current paradigm) determines whether or not we are going to get any more light or not. People who are walking around in the dark so many times have switched off the light by refusing to let in the last light they were exposed to.
Some of our most cherished errors have never been out of their box on the shelf: they have never been put to work, like you say, in our lives. I have been learning to say, if you think you are walking in truth then you should have no problem demonstrating how it is working in your life. Error is the stuff that is only good for ‘proving’ other error: it does not actually function. If something IS functioning, on the other hand, chances are it is true.
To me, it seems that we can tell whether or not something has “firmly convinced us in our minds” if we trust it enough to use it in our daily lives. We can give lip service to the most wonderful truth but i am suspicious that if we are not living it, we are not actually “firmly convinced” yet!
P.S. Mark, thanks for the great references!
Laurita, You said “People who are walking around in the dark so many times have switched off the light by refusing to let in the last light they were exposed to.” I’m glad you added the qualifer “so many times” because I have found whenever I chose to leave a room and switched off the light He turns on a light in another room so I wouldn’t stumble in the darkness, fall and hurt myself. By following the light I could find my way. If I choose to turn off all the lights and leave the house He turns on the porch light. If I walk away onto the dark, empty streets. He turns on the street lights. If I travel far from the city into the dark, desolate, desert places He brightens my way with His stars. He will never leave us, nor forsake us, nor leave us in the dark even if we, for a season and reason, seek to hide from “the last light we were exposed to”. I know this to be true… yesterday, today and tomorrow.
amain
Hallelujah to that, Michael! I found that He also carries me in that darkness, too. I have become quite suspicious, however, that the darkness is mostly caused by me squeezing my eyes tightly shut because I am afraid that the light is going to ‘hurt’ some cherished error…
Laurita, The reason that we can be blinded by the bright light of our own brilliance is because spiritual truth is not primarly communicated by logic, learning or leveraging knowledge (though deception, error and fraud almost aways are). Truth, Light, Life are communicated by the Ruach ha’Kodesh to the spirit of man. I realize some are opposed to the so called “Greek” view of the division of body, soul and spirit, but I know of no other way to understand or explain this phenomenon. It also may be because I am well versed in my own inability, ineptitude and impotence that I know it to be so. It is possible to have our “eyes squeezed tightly shut” and our hearts wholly hardened and still be set free “in spite of ourselves”. The Spirit whispers the truth into our spirit and only then can we will to Shema His voice. So in one sense it is not up to me; He must act then I must re-act. Laurita I know you know these things, but there may be those who have not because their head gets in the way of their heart and their intellect overpowers their spirit rendering it weak, powerless and ineffective. In truth, that still happens to me… every time I forget how things operate in His realm (reality) and I pretend to understand things by the power of my intellect and reasoning.
I am no scholar. I am a High School dropout and a failure by almost every standard and informed opinion. And then there is the TBI. Therefore it may be easier for me to not trust in my intellectual prowess or research skills to find the truth, but rather to be found by it. To many Watchman Nee is The authority and best communicator regarding this topic. His books “The Normal Christian Life” and “The Spiritual Man” are available free in pdf format on the web and they deal with this topic for those who are open to “heresy”.
I think it is noteworthy that the Scriptures indicate that God has spoken of Himself in the Torah in both the collective and the individual sense. Also, “man” is referred to in the Torah in both the collective and individual sense, as well.
God’s first reference to Himself in the Torah, however, was in the collective sense, using the words “Us” and “Our”, before He spoke of Himself in the individual sense, using the word, “I”.
Also, in the very same statement, He spoke in reference to “man” (which, I think, may be interpreted in the individual and/or the collective sense), whom He said would be created “in Our (collective) image”. Furthermore, He also explicitly referenced “man” in this statement in the collective sense, using the word, “them”.
Here is that statement:
Gen 1:26 – “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness! Let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the flying creatures of the sky, over the livestock, over the whole earth, and over every crawling creature that crawls on the land.’”
Now, a few verses later, God spoke of Himself in the individual sense, using the word, “I”, this also being the first use of this word in the Torah and it also being first spoken by God, Himself.
Here is that statement:
Gen. 1:29 – “Then God said, ‘I have just given you every green plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the whole land, and every tree, which has the fruit of a tree yielding seed. They are to be food for you.'”
Now, mankind’s first self-reference in the Torah was in the collective sense and it was spoken by Eve, using the word, “we”, and it was, in a positive sense, in reference to God’s instructions for eating and as a defense against the lie of the adversary, the deceiver, the tempter, and the one who would eventually become the accuser.
Here is that statement:
Gen. 3:2 – “The woman said to the serpent, ‘Of the fruit of the trees, we may eat.’”
Mankind’s first self-reference in the Torah in the individual sense was later spoken by Adam, using the word, “I”, and it was, in a negative sense, about him drawing away from God in shame and fear after he and Eve had sinned.
Here is that statement:
Gen. 3:10 – “Then he said, ‘Your sound—I heard it in the garden and I was afraid. Because I am naked, I hid myself.’” [Gen_3:10]
Man’s first self-reference in the Torah in the collective sense, after Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the garden, using the words, “us” and “our”, was spoken in a positive sense by Lamech, referencing for whom the collective, restorative work of Noah, his son, would be done, regarding Adonai’s curse.
Here is that statement:
Gen. 5:29 – “And he named him Noah saying, ‘This one will comfort us from our work and from the pain of our hands because of the ground which Adonai cursed.’”
Man’s first self-reference in the Torah in the collective sense, after Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the garden, using the word, “we”, was spoken by all mankind, in a negative sense, when planning to build a city with a tower that would reach into the heaven, in hopes of making a name for themselves and in hopes of not being scattered over the face of the whole land.
Here is that statement:
Gen. 11:4 – “Then they said, ‘Come! Let’s build ourselves a city, with a tower whose top reaches into heaven. So let’s make a name for ourselves, or else we will be scattered over the face of the whole land.’”
So, we may make various conclusions from all this, and maybe some of the most significant to me are that, collective and individual mindsets are integrated and cannot be distinguishably separated, they function on a polarized continuum with a blended mix of the two, and our concern ought not be so much whether we should have a collective or an individual mindset, but whether our motives are in keeping with the nature and will of God in whose image we have been created and are to live.
While we are always to be conscious of and love God with all our being, we are also to be conscious of and love our neighbor as ourselves, and that necessitates a mindset that is God-instructed, led and empowered in being mindful of and loving the collective “neighbor”, “us” and “we”, even as we maintain being mindful of and loving of the individual “self”, “I” and “me”.
As long as we keep the love of God the FIRST great commandment, and the love of others as (and) ourselves the SECOND great commandment, in that order of priority, we will do well. To rightly love in the collective sense, we must FIRST receive the love of God for OURSELVES in the individual sense, and we must first love GOD above loving OTHERS as OURSELVES. HE is to be our FIRST love, both in terms of WHERE we first GET love and WHO we love FIRST.
I hope this will not distract and/or detract from “The Invention of the Individual” blog article, but I would like to share one final, though as yet unfinished, thought from this related verse below, alluding to the collective identity of God.
Here is that statement:
Gen 3:22 – “Then Adonai Elohim said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. So now, in case he stretches out his hand and takes also from the Tree of Life and eats and lives forever,’ Adonai Elohim sent him away from the Garden of Eden, to work the ground from which he had been taken.”
Do we see some clues that the “Us” to whom God makes reference may include the adversary, himself? The statement of God is that man had “become like ONE of Us, knowing good and evil”. Does it not say, like “one” of Us and not “like (all of) US”? Who is it that knows good and evil? Is it Adonai Elohim? Is it the Word made flesh who has dwelt among us? Is it the Ruach HaKodesh? Is it all the heavenly hosts who display his esteem? Did man, the individual or the collective, become like the Most High, like the Father, like the Word, like the Ruach HaKodesh, when the forbidden fruit was taken and eaten? Or, did man, the individual and the collective, become like the adversary, the one who knows good AND evil, and not like God, for in Him there is no darkness at all, and He, Himself, tempts no man to do evil.
Again, I say, it is not so much a matter of whether we function as an individual or as a collective. The issue is in whose image are we going to live? Our heavenly Father, or the father of lies?