Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secret is hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
From the Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church, USA.
People worship. Perhaps not everyone, but a number of us still do. I believe there was a time in early human history where most everyone worshipped some form of divinity as an essential function of life on this planet. At that time the world of humans was largely orientated to theism. Gods and goddesses ruled every aspect of life and nature and we humans from monarch to slave were dependent on their favor and subject to their wrath.
Worship was a way of ameliorating their favor by a demonstration of sacrifice, an offering up life to preserve life. This could be a symbolic act or an actual taking of a life, animal or human, as a means to secure divine favor and protection. Worship in this sense was done as an appeal to power or a means to acquire power.
This history is clearly evident in the Hebrew Scriptures of Abrahamic monotheism, but the Hebrew narrative changes the perspective of worship from appealing to and acquiring power to divesting ourselves of it, giving it back to God.
This was the intuitive insight that the prophets of Israel brought to bear on theism - God doesn't want sacrifices. God wants us as true, contrite creatures who acknowledge the unbreakable strength of God's tenderness. So worship evolved in Abrahamic monotheism from acts designed to appeal and acquire power to its divestiture and acts of faith.
POWER AND SIN
Let me be clear from the onset of this discussion there is nothing intrinsically wrong with power (the appeal to, the acquisition of, or its use), the instinct to survive, or the desire to succeed. It's how they are applied, that becomes problematic.
THE MISUSE OF POWER
The mythos of the misuse of power is likely found in every culture and theistic religion. It is the root cause of every conceivable ill. What I find interesting is that in the mythic stories I'm familiar with, power is not specifically mentioned but its misuse is evident.
In Abrahamic monotheism, the misuse of power in human hands is termed sin; therefore, we need a working definition of power. Power is simply defined in any dictionary as the ability or a capacity to do or influence something. Having this in mind, let's examine its mythic origins as described in the Hebrew scriptures.
Once again we turn to the Book of Genesis. Power is first defined as a creative imagination or, to be succinct, God's creative imaging of what exists. Chaos is turned into Cosmos by God merely calling it into order. Humans are specifically made in the image of God and brought to life - empowered - by instilling God's ability to be creative, to name the creatures God made, to have the power to choose, to have control.
I have no idea what the writers of Genesis originally had in mind when writing this story, but I am impressed by its artistic simplicity which allows it to be examined and applied in any number of ways. As such, permit me to indulge in sharing my thoughts on one way it can be applied.
After making the first human, Adam, God places him in the Garden of Eden. Into this mythic paradise God also places two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is an intuition that the writers of Genesis bring into this story by the introduction of these two trees. They resonate, on a certain level, with what I have described in earlier posts as the instinctual drive to live and the intellectual desire to succeed. What becomes interesting is that God forbids Adam from eating from the Tree of Knowledge. God tells him if he eats it, he will die. This all occurs before Eve arrives on the scene.
Why God only forbids the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a bit of a mystery.
Why not the Tree of Life also?
I believe the answer lies in God instilling in humans the capacity for choice in the form of desire. In Paradise there is no need for the drive to live, so God introduces the human mind to desire by granting humans the power to chose; in essence, to chose between life or death. The choice is very subtle because death comes wrapped in a pretty package with benefits - life - not so much.
It appears that God is conducting an experiment to see where human desire, as a creative force, will lead. God does not forbid eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. He doesn't bring it to Adam's attention. If Adam was aware of it, it doesn't appear to have interested him. In fact, Adam doesn't bite one way or the other.
God perceives something lacking in Adam. He lacks the capacity for desire. He simply does what he's told - no questions. He doesn't act much better the animals he names. This incompleteness is described as loneliness; as in, lacking personal initiative or a drive to live creatively.
So God creates a partner from the very being of Adam. In essence, God draws Adam out of himself as another, who will eventually become recognized as a separate entity, Eve. But from the beginning they see each other as part of the same being. This often gets lost in the telling of the story, but it essential to hold on to this
I would suggest that the characters in this primal myth present general human characteristics. In Adam and Eve we encounter the Masculine and Feminine Principles which play a role in all of our lives. (Click here for a further explanation). It's not about gender, but rather about perceptual tendencies. In the character of the Serpent we encounter the subtle force of intellect, the reasoning mind which engages desire that is associated with the feminine principle.
I find it interesting and rather intuitive on the part of the writers of Genesis to portray the reasoning mind as a reptile. Serpents in many ancient cultures are a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. I see it, in my modern application of this story, as a transference between the reptilian drive to survive and the intellectual desire to succeed.
Everything Eve knows of God is through Adam. Adam and Eve are literally one person in two bodies. Until Eve's encounter with the Serpent, there is no sense of personal power. It is the Serpent who presents the questioning mind with a thought, "What if....?" In fact, the Serpent lures Eve to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with a question, "Did God say you shouldn't eat of any fruit from a tree?" Eve corrects the Serpent and says there is only one, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; that if they do they will die. Adam happens to be tagging along during all of this and says nothing - subtle clue to the masculine and feminine principles at play in this story.
The Serpent questions God's warning, "Surely God wouldn't let you die. The fact is you'll become like God, knowing good and evil." If this were a literal story, the concept of death would have had no meaning, since there was no experience of it. The Serpent plays off this and invents the lie, which is best served with a side of truth. The truth being they will know good and evil.
Being a myth, the writers employ some license in telling this story. First Eve sees that the fruit is good to eat and looks pleasant to the eye, she also desires to become wise and takes a bite and then offers it to Adam and he eats it. It is only when both eat that their eyes are opened. This is the first time that power by a human was exercised independent of God and it was an attempt to usurp the power of God by acquiring the knowledge God possessed, which bring us to concept of sin.
THE CONCEPT OF SIN
There are several standardized definitions of sin, most of which I find useless as they generally tend towards defining it as some sort of offense to God.
In essence, the true nature of God cannot be offended.
What is offended is our sense of God as we are prone to lose sight of our dependence on the tender strength of God. Losing sight of God gives us the perception that we can, in some way, offend God because that is the feeling we have when we become aware of what happens to us in our attempts to go it alone, when we attempt to live by our own power and strength and lose sight of God. We feel that whatever bad happens as a result is either because God turns away or is angry. Such feelings are merely a projection of our own unbearable feelings projected on God. The reality is we cannot wrap our minds around the concept of God without anthropomorphizing God as having our same feelings.
The basic concept behind sin is getting or doing somethings wrong or, in the parlance of Greek and Hebrew archery terminology, missing the mark. In keeping with my discussion on theism and the divestiture of power, I would like to suggest that sin, in essence, is the abuse or misuse of power in human hands.
The writers of Genesis brilliantly bring this into focus at the very beginning of their telling of the human story. The story of Adam and Eve and the story of Cain and Abel are a set that are best read as one continuous narrative as sin is defined first as a desire and then as an act. The saying "knowledge is power" becomes operational in the serpent's temptation of Eve.
At first its all good until she gives it to Adam and he eats and their "eyes were opened." There is a subtle significance in the fact that this story makes knowledge operable only when both eat. As reality is a consensus of perception, so too is knowledge. Seeing is knowing and what they see is the unbearable burden of seeing and knowing they are different from each other and ultimately from God.
They hide/cover their differences so they can look at each other and then try hiding from God. There are many types of death, and the separation they experienced was one. They also know that they will physically die, the perennial human angst we all have to live with.
Sin in this case, is committed in the act of desire for what will cause them harm. We are led to believe that the sin is trying to be like God, but the evidence is contrary to that notion, since we already are made in the image of God. The sin is in the harm they brought upon themselves in ignoring the harm they will do to themselves and which is immediately expressed in the destruction of their unified existence with themselves and with God. They immediately suffer the consequences of their action.
According to this myth, death is not the result of sin. Death is a result of knowing good and evil - knowing death. Suffering is the result of sin. Adam must toil with the sweat of his brow. Eve will suffer the pain of childbirth and the desire for Adam, the lost oneness they once shared.
The expulsion from paradise is to ensure that their suffering will not be eternal by eating the fruit of the Tree of life. This can be easily missed as the writers tell the story in a way that can lead one to believe that God felt threatened by the fact that they knew good and evil like God and might become eternal like God.
It's possible to interpret the story that way, but I think it misses the point. Adam and Eve are in a state of suffering the moment they know. Death is an end to that suffering as God tells Adam that he will toil until he returns to the dust he was made from
The desire and use of power becomes sinful when we use it to harm, to get our own way at the expense of others, to dominate and destroy the other for the aggrandizement of self, in trying to be something we are not - a God unto ourselves. This applies to individuals and nations alike, which brings us to Cain.
Since I have talked about Cain in my last two posts, I won't retell his story here. The story of Cain killing his brother, Abel, starts with Cain seeing a difference in how God reacts to Abel's sacrifice rather than his. His jealousy becomes a desire to get back at God by getting rid of Abel. The story makes a point of God speaking to Cain in order to warn him that his desire will lead him to do evil, which Cain does.
The desire and use of power to do harm and for personal aggrandizement is the basis of sin. Genesis will carry this through to describe it in global and national terms as seen in the stories of The Flood and The Tower of Babel.
In the story of The Flood humans see no need for God and mingle with the sons of God, which I understand as a reference to the mythological gods of other religions. The result are demigods, legendary people of great power and might. I see this as a nod by the writers of Genesis to the other religions that existed at the time it was being written, but what the writers depict as most offensive to God was "that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:5
In the story of The Tower of Babel, human hubris literally reaches a pinnacle in a metaphorical attempt to become god-like by making a name for themselves. They are all one people with a shared perspective and a shared imagination to which God responds, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and one nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." Genesis 11:6
What the writers of Genesis point out is that sin is a matter of the heart, the seat of imagination from which evil can be enacted. The King James version captures this by the use of the word imagination, the power to create as opposed to the more literal translation of inclination and purpose respectively.
So sin is rooted in the desire and use of power to do harm in the form of personal aggrandizement whether self is meant as a single person, as a nation or as a species. Genesis does not stop there. Genesis takes a leap forward to the story of Abraham. With Abraham, the Genesis narrative changes from myth to mystic legend.
GOD'S CHOICE OF AN AVERGE JOE TO RESET CREATION
Throughout the mythic portion of Genesis, God is shown as trying to reset the trajectory of human history on a restorative path. I would suggest that story of Cain and The Flood are both depictions of God trying to restore the trajectory of human history. He tests Cain who fails to heed God's warning much like his parents. In the Flood, God virtually wipes out all of life save two of each kind of animal and Noah and his family. This too doesn't end well with the construction of the Tower of Babel. So the writers of Genesis depict God as taking a different approach in resetting the trajectory of human history, by making a personal choice in choosing Abraham.
God chooses Abraham and Abraham chooses God as his personal, familial God. What is interesting about God's choosing Abraham is that there is not much interesting about Abram, as he was first known. Abram truly is an average Joe type.
What Abraham possesses, however, is great capacity for faith. Abraham and Sarah become God's reset. God is no longer interested in seeing whether humans can reset themselves by recreating themselves. It's not about a quick fix, but rather a personal journey on the part of God with God's creation through a chosen people beginning with Abraham.
There are so many layers to these stories that I could spend several posts on each one, so I rely on the reader to have some knowledge of Abraham's story and the promise of God to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Of course, Sarah, his wife, gives birth to only Isaac. In turn, God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt sacrifice to God. There is no reason given why God demands this of Abraham. The importance of this story is in the fact that Abraham never questions God's command as a knowing, reasoning person. And we know Abraham is capable of great reasoning in his compassionate defense of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The story goes out of its way to point out that God knows how much Abraham loves Isaac and still makes this demand. When Abraham arrives at the appointed destination, he places wood on a makeshift altar, binds Isaac and places him on the altar and just as Abraham is about to plunge his knife into Isaac, an angel stops him and reveals that God knows that he fears God above all else.
Isaac is spared and a ram is sacrificed in Isaac's place. What matters to God is not the act, but the condition of the heart behind the acts. Abraham's silence in this account is telling. He relinquished all sense of personal power in the face of God's devastating mandate. He does not question even though he is capable. Unlike Adam he does not act blindly, but knowingly. In Abraham knowledge is sanctified. We can know beyond good and evil. We can know aright. We can know to act from faith, from the heart rather than the head. Abraham's faith is the first step in the right direction towards a fuller redemption as he empties himself of all sense of self, his very heart, that is embodied in his son, Isaac.
I believe Christian teaching gets this Hebrew story wrong. Most Christians see the angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac because God will send Jesus to be the sacrifice for sins of the world. The point of the Isaac story is that God does not want any physical sacrifice. Period.
This journey into my musings on the foundation of power and the concept of sin in the Book of Genesis is to set the stage for a discussion on the topic of worship as kenosis and it's importance today. The topic of worship as sacrifice is graphically displayed in the stories of Cain and Abraham, both of which present the notion that true worship is not a matter of acts, but rather a matter of the heart rather than the head. The writers of Genesis place the topic of worship and the trajectory of human history under the microscope of God's chosen people, for us to examine the intimate working relationship with all of creation. Worship evolves in this working relationship as a divestment of power, which I define as kenosis - the emptying of self as a reset for people on this side of life to enact God's loving power in our midst and in our time as acts of faith to heal the wounds and the suffering that we have inflicted and do inflict on ourselves as individuals and as species.
Until next time, stay faithful.
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