Living in the Moment
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.Genesis 2:25 NASB
Not ashamed– We like to think that before the Fall the world was perfect. There was no sin. Human beings (only two of them) lived in the Garden of delight. Everything was wonderful. In fact, we think if we could just get back to that state of purity, we would experience the same Garden bliss and our lives would be transformed (so we listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash playing “Woodstock”). We project the same emotional and psychological euphoria onto Heaven. Since God is perfect, everything around Him must also be perfect, and eventually, when we are finally conformed to the image of the son, we too will be perfect and ready once more to occupy our rightful place in the delightful Garden, now called Heaven.
I hate to break the bad news, but this just isn’t what the Genesis 2 story tells us. The idea of “perfect” is nowhere to be found, in this story or anywhere else in Scripture. Perfection is Parmenidean. It comes from ancient Greek philosophy—and it has powerfully influenced everything about our Western view of Scripture. In particular, the idea of perfection has corrupted our view of shame.
“The issue of shame first comes up in Genesis 2:23: ‘And the two of them, the man and his wife [Adam and Eve], were naked and unashamed.’ This is the last moment of primal shamelessness: all is about to change. Soon, shame will become constitutive of human consciousness. As Ha’amek Davar points out in his provocative discussion, the word yit-bashashu bears two meanings: to be ashamed and to be delayed. . . . Adam and Eve are not yet subject to the delays that will later complicate both spiritual and sexual life. They are naked, in a double sense: physically without clothes; also, metaphorically, without barriers, inhibitions . . .”
“What begins after they have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge is a new kind of self-consciousness, which Ha’amek Davar calls da’at enoshi—human consciousness—and which, I suggest, includes the working of the unconscious. In this new phase, delays, impediments, inhibitions mark the transition into the moment of desire. In a sense, it is this experience of delay that now constitutes desire. Now, arousal becomes necessary, which implies a time lag between first impulse and fulfillment. We are haunted by time—by memory, expectation, dreams, and disillusionment—in short by imaginative life. Sexuality, as well as spirituality, seems often to rule out simplicity.”[1]
“Lo yit-boshashu—in Eden, they were not ashamed; they live in the oceanic moment, without memory or expectation. Then came the vibrations of self-consciousness, the crosscurrents of past and future.”[2]
Consider the implications of Zornberg’s analysis. Eating of the Tree is necessary for the development of human self-consciousness. Prior to eating of the Tree, the created beings who later become human are, in fact, not like human beings at all. We have already noted that they have no family identity, no past, no inherited ancestry, no pain, no trauma, no sense of alienation. All of these are now essential to what it means to be human. We might call them human beings, but our ability to identify with them is strictly theoretical. They simply are not us.
Now Zornberg notes that their transition from this prior state of alien humanness to something like us requires the development of arousal and desire, and that means an awareness of what is not the case, that is, memory and projection. The unconscious is born, out of necessity, so that these creatures are no longer alien but are now as we are, “haunted by time.”
Perhaps most importantly, shame, that sense of disconnectedness in a sudden moment of exposure, also becomes constitutive of being human. The more we read this story, and the deeper we look, the more the story becomes a narrative tale about the emergence of human being and less about a couple’s mistake in a mystical garden. As Zornberg points out, expulsion from the Garden is the real moment of human birth.
You may wish to argue that God’s intention was for human beings to remain in the paradise of perfection and that all of this trauma, disconnectedness, unconscious alienation and shame is the result of sin, something God never intended to occur. But then you will need to entertain the question: How are we to determine what makes us human? Are we to look at characters in a story that have no psychological, spiritual or emotional makeup like ours, or are we to look at who we are and decide that these two strangers to the human condition act as foils for humanity, not models?
Topical Index: shame, Adam, Eve, human, yit-bashashu, Genesis 2:25
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections of the Book of Numbers, p. 110.
[2]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections of the Book of Numbers, p. 116.
Thank you … babies are born naked and without shame….. but I guess they grow up to become the sub total of their experiences… I guess that makes them human… but very different story to being born destined to hell unless they are the elect … one is man made theology the other depth theology of humanity as my theology unravels.
Babies (according to what we now know about what epigenetics confirms about the teaching of the Bible on this subject) are born full of the sum total of the choices of those before them. Babies with colic are known to be, so many times, exhibiting the fear of their mothers, both parents, or even caregivers, and native cultures all over have always recognized that prenatal influences shape that baby for good or for ill. Babies are INNOCENT of these flaws in their make up but they are still SUFFERERS of them. I think this is because we can suffer from the results of the sins of others: in fact, the very definition of sin is “trespassing” (“boundary crossing”) onto another’s sovereign space, and thus causing them to suffer for our choices.
For example, I was born with the inherent shame of my father. I can never remember a time that I did not feel that shame, but also never a time that did not know that it was his, and not mine. I knew it wasn’t mine, but that made no difference. What he did not recognize and refused (lacked tools) to process got passed down to me (“trespassing”) to process – through epigenetics. I felt dirty and inadequate my entire childhood for things I did not choose. That shame left me when I “stood and confessed the sins of my father”: which is to say I recognized it and took responsibility in creation for those choices made by those before me. Now my skin only crawls when I do something wrong. Halleluah!
I am not buying this one. Nope. Why not? Because if sin was ‘necessary’ for our design, then the sinless One had a design flaw because He lacked both sin and its attendant shame. Zornberg does not have to lay her analysis up to the standard of our Example, but we do, and her conclusion – that we ‘need’ sin to be human – falls flat before the sinless Human, who is our Example. Please try to add Him into these discussions – if you want to show me relevance to my life, anyway.
I become who I am when I become like Him: when I live His life in me, I fulfill my design: as He lived the life of His Father in Him, and thus fulfilled His design as the perfect Human. I think He came to show us that we are symbionts: God living in us. Sin excludes God, and thus excludes the other half of what it means to be human. Down through the ages of eternity, I bet none of us will miss sin or shame. Both are unnecessary and useless to life. Sorry, tree snake.
P.S. I am afraid that if something acts and quacks like a Luciferian, it may be one. Spiritualism (which, according to my friends steeped in it, is credited to Kabbalah) is the overt worship of the snake, who, they tell me, came to make us more ‘human’. The Fall, they assert (as does Blavatsky, who is their premier spokesperson) is a “fall UPWARDS” (Blavatsky quote): is an essential ‘addition’ to our design as humans. Please show me, by bothering to go look at the claims of Luciferianism, and contrasting them with what you are trying out here, that you are not just saying more of the same?
But maybe we have the wrong idea of sin
As I apparently have not had much experience with it, please enlighten me. What have I been missing?
Skip,
Yes, there certainly are different ideas of “sin”, one of which I outline just below. What is your idea of “sin”?
Perhaps, Gen 3:20
Adam gives insight as he calls Eve, Mother of all Living…. Adam did not exclaim “now your name will be mud”!!! Perhaps Eve chose as a purposed direction for humanity…
an option in depth of relationship.
Did God not provide another option as well… If they would reach out and eating the tree of life… Gen3:22
They were already eating from it. That’s why they had to leave the Garden, so they wouldn’t continue to eat from it and thus perpetuate evil forever.
Laurita if I read Gen 2:9 correctly the tree of life was also in the garden and the tree of knowledge. Two different trees. In verse 2:17 the prohibition was only on the tree of knowledge. It was this tree they ate from. If Gen 3:22 is read as part of the story I trust the implication is they did not as yet eat of the tree of life…
And I measure myself against this option as well. In every temptation do I rely on knowledge of trust in the faithfulness of the life bearing tree… The anointing or purpose of being alive and in a specific place VERSUS anticipating or visualizing an outcome from my action?
Which is then living in the moment?
Let me explain on Friday I did some shopping and had a thought of offering my change and a packet of biscuits to someone I caught a glimpse of… Needless to say knowledge won and after leaving the Superette without making tee small sacrifice I was left with a guilty feeling and later shrugged it off… That is how easy we move between eating from the two trees. I have to adapt and listen again to that small voice in me softly calling me towards living in the moment instead of living in the anticipated foolish outcome. Maybe I should ask what will benefit the other and not myself… In the circumstances…
I think they were already eating from all the trees, including the Tree of Life, because they had to have that fruit to live. We know this because when we lost access to the Tree of Life, our race started to die. It was a physical tree and the life was physical life. Now we all physically die because we lost that Tree. In the earth made new, Revelations tells us that we will depend upon the Tree and the River for life again.
Life comes from beyond us. I think God put His life into things to eat and drink in the Garden to remind us of the physicality of life: that life is not possible without engaging the entire nephesh, including the physical biology of that nephesh. We cannot ‘spiritually’ separate life from our biology, for we are dependent upon that biology as a partner in that life. Stop and think about the fact that our bodies run largely upon the DNA and the direct and indirect action of not only our inner biome, but also the information of all other life around us. We now know that food is not just calories: it carries information from other life that becomes our own information. This is why GMO’s and other misformed life are so dangerous to our life, for we share all that other life: we literally become what we eat, drink and breathe through that information. This is scary. Our lives have been biologically tied to all other life: if it dies, we die: conversely; what we nourish nourishes us. This is our design; and, the way I read the Good Book, it will continue to be our design when we go back to the Beginning to try this again.
Thank you for the response Laurita.
That we all carry the blueprint of life I agree. The only codependency is consume or be consumed… Including our bodies.
As for life itself I doubt as the source for life is God not another part of his creation. We can manipulate and abuse other forms with life in them that is true. But our life per se is a key solely held by God. Current natural resource indicate that; Water will outlive other life forms by close on 3 000 years. Oxygen by nearly 10 000 plus years.
So our role seems more to protect another purpose not revealed in scripture, debated and argued into over 6 700 dogmas and religions. (Or is it only 1 700… still confusing claims and assumptions made.)
If the tree of life was physical that is possible. Does it still exist, probably.
We have come to believe that the tree of knowledge seems only to be mentally… The same possibility and probability for this tree never removed or chopped out of the Garden. Only mankind was expelled or sent into exile…
Can the animals or other living beings see the Garden and its wonders most probably and for that sole reason are they more tolerant towards us than we are towards them…
Please, open our eyes so that we can truly see Your wonders. Is what we may need to pray for when we have learnt to overcome ourselves….
I nearly fell for we all being part of the life giving energy in new philosophies founded on Chinese wisdom of 6 000 years, but the reality is we are but forms being used by this energy. The life returns to the giver the rest to dust if not consumed by other living organisms.
Just my 2c and I doubt actually relevant to this forum. It may just show us how far we have distanced ourselves from living in the moment.
Life does come from God, Seeker – thanks for championing Him – but look at the pattern: all life is dependent upon all other life for that life: nobody and nothing lives ‘by itself’.
If our “role is to protect another purpose not revealed in scripture”, please tell me what you think that role might be?
The rest of creation is still being obedient because it was hardwired for relationship (instinct), you are correct: we are the only ones who chose to fall, but we dragged all in our stewardship down with us in the RESULTS – the effects – of that fall, so now “all creation is groaning” with us.
The East is wrong about the SOURCE of life-giving energy, but the energy itself is very real: science admits that it takes a lot more energy than creation has contained within it for life to run on: a sort of spiritual hidden force. Other life is not the source of life, you are quite right, but it is an indispensable vector of it: no life lives ‘on it’s own’. The very design embedded in the complicated interplay between all species concurrently demonstrates the fact that the inherent design started it all up in unity (which is what perfection is) together (which is what righteousness is). Therefore, all nature glorifies God, the Designer of that web of life. Life did not start itself; nor can it run itself; nor can it run without all other life at the same time.
I think living in the moment is about being plugged into the sum total of reality in that present (which is perfection in practice), which is what grace returns us to when we allow it to work for us by repentance. Christ, through His completed relationship with all, shares that relationship (love) with us, and we get to enjoy the connections we did not make just as if we had made them. And may we stay there this time, “perfected” (completely connected) in the love God has for all His creation.
Laurita.
One God, one faith, one baptism etc. All glory to God.
What our purpose is…
I think the anointing by the HS will reveal that independently to each, unfortunately we will not realize it ourselves others will benefit from it ourselves will just be instruments of true religion…
All the rest we are still in Jerusalem until anointed what to do. All busy participating in the Job dialogue….
I think what we might be missing is that, while these attributes attached to sin are part of what makes us human, Yeshua doesn’t try to take us back to the Garden to before sin and before these attributes became a part of humanity but that we are becoming a new kind of human by following our Rabbi who interpreted Torah properly. Not reverting to our prior state before sin. But by being made new. Look up the Hebraic understanding and difference between the Garden and the garden of Eden (Gan Eden).
I think we will always remember why sin should never be chosen in the Earth made new: we will have our memory (which is why we have to be resurrected with all the components for that memory): but Revelation makes it quite clear that our next existence is going to be in the Garden with the Tree and River of Life, too. The difference is going to be that this time we are going to have the cheat sheet for the test/choice. We will not be ‘innocent’ when it comes to what we remember about sin, but we don’t ‘need’ sin to be complete (“perfect”) in God, as per our original design. We must be very careful to not accuse God; that is the job of the Accuser. Let us not be tempted to join him in it, is my prayer for all of us.
Laurita, Wow, thank you for this appraisal. I have long been a believer in the necessity of us experiencing evil, as that supposedly, was the only way that we would be able to appreciate, and, be thankful for, the good. Seemed to make perfectly good Greek logic. But I never thought of applying that logic to Christ. (And I guess that should be particularly relevant to those who believe that Christ was fully (and merely) human. It would seem, (if He were sinless), this puts them into a no win situation.)
So now I have to reconsider my paradigm. (It does happen.) Maybe the Garden wasn’t the perfect place we have always assumed it to be. After all, if it truly was a perfect Paradise, how was it possible that an adversary had free reign of the place? And what was the need for laws, (thou shalt not eat), if there was nothing evil to protect Adam and Eve from? And if the story is a metaphor, what really is the meaning of; tree, knowledge, good and evil, and, eating? Now you’ve really got me thinking.
“So now I have to reconsider my paradigm. (It does happen.)”
I have been waiting a long time for this day Dan
Further possible thoughts, Dan: what if the prohibition against the Tree of Experience was because it was the only place where the Adversary was allowed – the only place where they could experience evil in that Garden? Surely it was no arbitrary command, as none of them are: what if all the Commands are about our safety FROM EVIL in some way?
Evil, after all, is separation from life; right? Even a short gap in an electrical line will kill the connection it has to have to even be what it is. Sin kills because it cuts us off from the life from beyond us that we have to have. Grace bridges the gap – literally builds a bridge for life to continue to even those who are cutting the lines as fast as they get repaired, so as to make choice fair to the deceived. That’s a lots of punishment to Whoever’s Body is taking that punishment! I think “by his stripes we are healed (reconnected)” is the very description of what grace does, and is the best one I have been able to find.
I don’t think “perfect” is synonymous with “no free choice”; therefore, for the free choice that love has to have to be real, there has to be risk. In the earth made new, we are promised free access to the Tree of Life again, but because the Adversary will have already been rejected by all the denizens of that country, he will have been collectively voted off the island – even by God, Who, incidentally, got to (through His connection with us and our choices) experience that evil right along with us. There will be no need for the Tree of Experience there because everyone will have already made that choice. Evil could, theoretically, be chosen again, but why, when there is no more knowledge (experience) about it that anybody lacks?
Moses tells us that eternal life is a free choice, too, but that choice, by necessity, excludes death. No ying yang: no duality; no ‘purpose’; no reason for the parasite of evil to exist at all in a place where everybody is carrying their own weight (sorry, teachings of false religions). We are told in the Bible that love wins everything. This is a fight to the life “and the end thereof is certain”. Halleluah!
Joni Mitchell penned those lyrics to her song based, in part, on her then-boyfriend Graham Nash’s retelling of the events at Woodstock and, in part, on her own New Age/neo-Gnostic conception. Below is the chorus:
In the final chorus to her version (the first one played and recorded, though released a bit later—listen here: youtube dot com/watch?v=26LYjMww0GY&t=3m40s) she adds the words “million year old carbon”, and “caught in the devil’s bargain”.
By this she means we (the “golden”, i.e., our Divine/Deity essence) are imprisoned (via the “million year old carbon”) in our inferior (imperfect) outer shell/physical body (“caught in the devil’s bargain”), which was imperfectly made by an inferior god (“the devil”), which some call “Jehovah”, others the Demiurge, and still others by other names. The physical ‘Garden of Eden’ is the result of the “fall” of humankind, which occurred when primordial man (in Lurianic Kabbalah, the Adam Kadmon, the perfect Adam), a purely spiritual being, somehow got entangled in this inferior matter, which engulfed his spiritual self. This is the ‘original sin’.
But, according to New Age Theosophy it was Lucifer the “Light-Bringer” or “Light-Bearer”, who gave Adam (and Eve) the ‘true light’ via the serpent. In this conception “the devil” or “Satan” is not the same entity as Lucifer (or the serpent), with some even equating “Satan”/”the devil” with “Jehovah”.
The objective then is to return to the REAL Garden of Eden, understood as a spiritual state from which humankind fell, thereby ‘reversing the curse’ of having gotten trapped in inferior matter. There are various ways to re-achieve this state, depending on the ideology. One way is recognize that the “Light-Bringer”, aka Lucifer (the serpent) gave the nudge to eat from the Tree of Life so that humankind reacquires the knowledge (gnōsis), the proper consciousness, to begin the path toward shedding the outer inferior shell in order to free the “golden” (Divinity/Deity) inside. This makes Lucifer the “savior”.
Thus, the key to understanding this particular conception is that there are two different Gardens of Eden—one is the perfect spiritual state of existence, the other is the imperfect physical one in the Genesis account.
I prefer the traditional Jewish and/or Christian account of the Garden of Eden or some variation thereof.
The following provides more information regarding one ideology in this vein (theosophy dot net/profiles/blogs/lucifer-the-lightbringer)–though, in equivocational fashion, conflates “Satan” with “Lucifer” here, whereas elsewhere the two are distinct:
Above (March 31, 2019 8:29 am) I obviously meant “Tree of Knowledge” not “Life”.
Choice is completely dependent upon a sense of self. If pre-fall humans were unconscious then it was not only impossible for them to choose to obey the instructions, it was unfair to expect them to be able to. “Nonsense remains nonsense”, says Lewis, “even when we are talking it about God”. This stuff just falls apart when you start expecting it to walk around on its own legs. If the fall was ‘necessary’ to complete the design, then the ‘choice’ fails the test of a true choice. If so, then what does that make the instructions? Nonsense?
If they were “without memory” prior to eating from the Tree of Knowledge, how is it Adam was given the privilege of naming all the animals? I don’t think he later forgot what he named them. So, what is this “memory” they lacked that came to the fore once they received “the vibrations of self-consciousness, the crosscurrents of past and future”? What past is being referred to here with respect to Adam and Eve?
“expulsion from the Garden is the real moment of human birth”
Perhaps I’d be a bit more comfortable if she would have added, “as is apparent today.” The trouble being, they were already instructed to “leave” the garden (…and fill the earth…) the difference is that they were expelled forcefully. As a consideration, an activity engaged in, contrary to God and His will, isn’t considered sin (which is against God) until it’s done knowingly and willingly, even though it may cause harm or even death. Playing in a rattlesnake den without the knowledge of danger will kill you just as dead as someone who knows the score. As Paul pointed out, even though there was no “law”, death reigned from Adam to Moses. Perhaps what Genesis 2 points out is the fact that we are where we are because of our freewill choices, both for and against the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s clear that there is choice right from the beginning as there are two heavens (authorities) in place right here on earth to chose from, and they both have real repercussions. It’s also clear that God intends to make us in His Image, the “choice” we have is the how of it. The long road or the short road may be a decent way of looking at it, “the law” isn’t necessary for those who are doing the will of God, as they are already fulfilling it. The law is for those who chose evil. The Messiah took the short road, (30 something years) we’ve been at it considerably longer.
“Are we to look at characters in a story that have no psychological, spiritual or emotional makeup like ours, or are we to look at who we are and decide that these two strangers to the human condition act as foils for humanity, not models?”
I believe we are to look at the “second Adam”…Yeshua of Netzeret…who had a psychological, spiritual and emotional makeup like ours…in every respect human, and tested by the choices presented by the illusion of independent (i.e. ‘apart’ from the Creator) self-determination…”yet without sin”.
When people get severe burns, the dead skin is removed by performing surgical debridements. Then the wounds are “covered” with skin grafts (xenografting or autografting). At that point the pain is so unbearable, that the patient needs to “be and live” under induced coma, otherwise they will die. The scars bring a lot of shame as their “original” appearance had dramatically changed.
When i read the account of the garden, i see exactly the events that happen to each and every patient at the burn units.
I believe that Adam and Eve were created at the image of God, spiritual beings/ like plasma kind of entities. The serpent made Eve aware that there were senses available to them to get in “touch” with the external world (the creation); so Adam and Eve Saw, Touched, Tasted and Smelled the fruits of the garden, then they Heard the voice of God. They were not longer pure spiritual bodies. Then Yah “made” skins to cover their plasma kind of body.
When we are in dying process the process start to reverse. We start losing the sight, the taste, the hearing, the smell; the skin gets thin, cold and numbed, we lost contact with our surroundings, to later become just dust
When i believe that sin comes to play? When we abuse the senses; addictions, the need to feel/ experience something different, more exciting than ever before. When happiness have to come from the external rather than from an inner-connection with the Ruach of G-d; then is when i believe we miss the mark