Are you feeling strong negative emotions and also feeling apprehensive, as if something bad is about to happen? Maybe you have subconsciously picked up on a real danger, or maybe you are seeing a pattern in your life that you are about to repeat.
Ask yourself what happened the last time you felt this hurt, this angry, this scared. What are the similarities between this time and that? Why did you go through the pain? Did you have to? Do you have to now? How can you break the pattern? If you don't you are destined to go through the same thing all over again. The only way to change it is to do something different . For instance, if you always run away from a situation- try facing it or if you always face a situation, try running from it. Do something unexpected. Bail out as soon as possible because the longer it goes on the harder it will be to change and the more you are going to get hurt. Breaking these patterns can be hard- but the minute you do you will feel better. You'll go from frantic to calm. And hopefully you'll never have to face that same situation again.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
A Request To Religious Instructors
If you are teaching scripture to people, either in Bible Study sessions, or giving sermons or tutoring someone on a one-to-one basis, or even just correcting people who you think are wrong about their beliefs, could you PLEASE read your textbook first? If you are a Christian, before you can teach or even correct others you should at least have read the Old and the New Testament cover to cover once. I've read the Old Testament twice and the New Testament over 6 times so if you haven't even read it once then don't assume you know more than I do, even if you Have done a Bible Study course. These courses are designed so that you read what the church wants you to read and that you don't read what the church doesn't want you to know about. Read it all, without someone's commentary telling you what they want you to understand out of it. Read it for what it says!!! Same goes for other religions too. If you want to quote the Talmud then for heaven's sake read it first so you understand where it is coming from. Same with the Koran or any other Holy Book. Know what you are talking about! Please!!!!
Credibility of The Amazing Randi
Skeptics love to bring up the Amazing Randi and his offer to give one million dollars to anyone who can prove psychic ability to him. I don't see how anyone could accept any of his results as scientific. 1, He is not a scientist 2. He is world renowned for his trickery- one of the best magicians in the world 3. He has a huge vested interest in having the results turn out one way, rather than another. A scientist being paid by a tobacco company to prove that smoking doesn't cause cancer has no credibility at all, so why should the Amazing Randi? Being a magician he may say he buried a ring in a field, and it may look like he buried the ring in the field and he could even “prove” it using a metal detector, but how could we possibly be sure he actually did it or not? Everyone's worried about the psychic tricking Randi- but not about the Amazing Randi tricking Them! Yet trickery is his livelihood! That's what magic IS! So I don't trust his results at all.
The First Christmas Revisited
Everyone knows the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem, the Inn is full so Mary has to give birth in a stable. The story sounds sweet, emphasizing the humble circumstances of Jesus' birth.
But that's not the message people got from the story two thousand years ago. Here's the way they would have seen it:
Mary is pregnant but Joseph, the man she is engaged to, is not the father and everyone knows it. No one knows who the father is but that doesn't matter- she would have been labeled a whore.
Joseph didn't reject her, which is to his credit because there would have been huge social pressure on him to do so. As evidence, you can see that when Joseph and Mary got to his hometown Bethlehem, no relatives took them in. This is what the rules of hospitality of the time were- if you travel to another town your relatives take you in, if you have no relatives in this town then strangers take you in. You would think that at least someone would take pity on a heavily pregnant woman and let her stay with them but of course if she was known as promiscuous- well, no one would want anything to do with her.
So, they had to resort to trying to find room in an Inn. Now Inns of the time were disgusting flea infested, rat infested places. No one would want to stay there. But even there they were rejected. It is quite possible that the Inn was full if there was a census. There are no records of a census taking place at that time but it is possible this census only applied to the Jewish people, not anyone else- who knows?
Anyway, they do get permission to stay in the barn. So now lets look at the situation through Mary's eyes. Here she is, about to give birth to her first child. She must have been terrified. And hurt. She'd been rejected in her own town, now she'd been rejected in Bethlehem and was giving birth to her child like a an animal without even a midwife to help her through this new and excruciatingly painful experience. Yes, it helped that Joseph was there. He'd probably assisted in the birth of animals before so he wouldn't have been as helpless as say a modern father would be. But still.
OK- the baby Jesus is born. A time for rejoicing right? Well, not for Mary necessarily. She knew that by Jewish law Joseph would have to leave her, so Jesus would grow up without him. She knew that her son would grow up forever being called a bastard. He wouldn't be allowed to play with normal kids- he'd have to play with the children of other outcasts. Also, his marriage prospects would be bleak- again, he couldn't marry just anyone- he had to marry someone of questionable parentage or mixed marriage. And he had to grow up knowing that the Torah said that no bastard to even 10 generations would be a part of God's people. Meaning his children would be cursed too.
But surely all along she knew he was the Son of God so that would be a comfort to her. Well, if she could have seen into the future, I doubt she would have been comforted by it. She would have foreseen that he would be spiritual. That he would study the Law but eventually rebel against the Rabbis that rejected him and start a movement that would lead to him being worshiped all over the world by Gentiles and that millions of her own people would be slaughtered directly because of him. Hmm.
Hardly something she'd be proud of.
So the real Christmas story is one of humiliation and rejection – something not so sweet and certainly not something you'd want to tell your children. So don't.
Personally I think Jesus was a gift to the Gentile world. His message of compassion towards the poor and the outcasts has lasted to this day and leads to social cohesion. He was against organized religion and the hypocrisy that it lead to. You read the Sermon on the Mount and his criticisms of leaders are still very relevant today. His rules of living are simple and relevant- Love God, love and help others no matter what their religion or social status or beliefs, make peace with your enemies, forgive people when they hurt you, live simply, do not judge others. He was against violence in in no way would have supported all the cruelty that was done in his name. Maybe one day everyone will live by his principles and then Mary, seeing into the future, could have been proud to bear him. May that be soon!
But that's not the message people got from the story two thousand years ago. Here's the way they would have seen it:
Mary is pregnant but Joseph, the man she is engaged to, is not the father and everyone knows it. No one knows who the father is but that doesn't matter- she would have been labeled a whore.
Joseph didn't reject her, which is to his credit because there would have been huge social pressure on him to do so. As evidence, you can see that when Joseph and Mary got to his hometown Bethlehem, no relatives took them in. This is what the rules of hospitality of the time were- if you travel to another town your relatives take you in, if you have no relatives in this town then strangers take you in. You would think that at least someone would take pity on a heavily pregnant woman and let her stay with them but of course if she was known as promiscuous- well, no one would want anything to do with her.
So, they had to resort to trying to find room in an Inn. Now Inns of the time were disgusting flea infested, rat infested places. No one would want to stay there. But even there they were rejected. It is quite possible that the Inn was full if there was a census. There are no records of a census taking place at that time but it is possible this census only applied to the Jewish people, not anyone else- who knows?
Anyway, they do get permission to stay in the barn. So now lets look at the situation through Mary's eyes. Here she is, about to give birth to her first child. She must have been terrified. And hurt. She'd been rejected in her own town, now she'd been rejected in Bethlehem and was giving birth to her child like a an animal without even a midwife to help her through this new and excruciatingly painful experience. Yes, it helped that Joseph was there. He'd probably assisted in the birth of animals before so he wouldn't have been as helpless as say a modern father would be. But still.
OK- the baby Jesus is born. A time for rejoicing right? Well, not for Mary necessarily. She knew that by Jewish law Joseph would have to leave her, so Jesus would grow up without him. She knew that her son would grow up forever being called a bastard. He wouldn't be allowed to play with normal kids- he'd have to play with the children of other outcasts. Also, his marriage prospects would be bleak- again, he couldn't marry just anyone- he had to marry someone of questionable parentage or mixed marriage. And he had to grow up knowing that the Torah said that no bastard to even 10 generations would be a part of God's people. Meaning his children would be cursed too.
But surely all along she knew he was the Son of God so that would be a comfort to her. Well, if she could have seen into the future, I doubt she would have been comforted by it. She would have foreseen that he would be spiritual. That he would study the Law but eventually rebel against the Rabbis that rejected him and start a movement that would lead to him being worshiped all over the world by Gentiles and that millions of her own people would be slaughtered directly because of him. Hmm.
Hardly something she'd be proud of.
So the real Christmas story is one of humiliation and rejection – something not so sweet and certainly not something you'd want to tell your children. So don't.
Personally I think Jesus was a gift to the Gentile world. His message of compassion towards the poor and the outcasts has lasted to this day and leads to social cohesion. He was against organized religion and the hypocrisy that it lead to. You read the Sermon on the Mount and his criticisms of leaders are still very relevant today. His rules of living are simple and relevant- Love God, love and help others no matter what their religion or social status or beliefs, make peace with your enemies, forgive people when they hurt you, live simply, do not judge others. He was against violence in in no way would have supported all the cruelty that was done in his name. Maybe one day everyone will live by his principles and then Mary, seeing into the future, could have been proud to bear him. May that be soon!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Science experiment with a ghost
It was the first school day after the Easter
Holidays. I was frantically getting my two children
ready to leave when the phone rang. My Mother-in-law
Frances was calling from Newcastle to tell me her
husband John was going into surgery that morning. She
was a bit worried about the heart operation. I wasn't.
My Aunt had the same surgery earlier that year and it
was so successful she was walking around in days. I
insisted my husband Tim call his dad at the hospital
before the operation. Tim wished him luck. He wasn't
worried either. "See you after the operation" said his
father cheerfully.
But something went wrong. John's heart was in much
worse shape than they realized. They put him on life
support while deciding what to do. Tim and his
brothers and sister rushed to be by his side. Tim's
brother Chris had a dream of his father panicking,
saying he didn't want to die. But he did. The next
day.
We were all shocked. John was such an active man. He
was involved in all sorts of groups The wine club. The
Friends of the University group.Even after he retired
he was doing volunteer work for them. He was an avid
birdwatcher. He subscribed to cycling magazines. And
science magazines.
That's what he, my husband and I and my eldest son
Justin shared with him- a love of science. I remember
having heated debates with him and his friends about
things like God and ESP and such. While I was
passionate about science, I also believed in these. He
and his friends didn't.
When he died I started grieving. This was a surprise
to me. I didn't think I was capable of it. When my own
father died 6 years before I hadn't felt anything.
With John it was different. We had mutual respect and
although he wasn't sure about me to begin with, he
became enthusiastic about all the things I was getting
into, especially when I started teaching science to
year two's. He loved that. And I was VP of the P&C. He
was proud of that too, because I was working on a
survey on the future of our school. He was proud of
every member of his family and enthusiastic about all
their accomplishments.
One night I was lying in bed and thinking of him and
crying, when I imagined my father speaking to me. He
was very angry. "How dare you grieve more for him than
you did for me! I'm your father. If you don't stop it,
I'll really give you something to grieve about. I'll
kill one of your children!"
I didn't know whether he really said that or if I was
just imagining what he'd say, but either way, I wasn't
going to take any chances. I didn't go to Newcastle,
and I tried very hard not to grieve or cry.
Anyway, that Friday I was quietly working on a report
of the survey when I felt John's presence. I covered
up the computer screen. "Don't look!" I pleaded. "I
don't know what I'm doing in this section yet!" I'd
always felt intimidated by my father-in-law. He could
be quite pedantic sometimes and his standards were
high. (Once he gave me a ten minute lecture when I
said "Octopi instead of Octopuses).
That's when I realized what I was doing. I was acting
like he was really in the room with me. This is how we
would normally behave together. It must be him. I
asked him what he was doing here. "Just trying out my
new body" He said. I remembered how the minute my
father died all the power in the hospital went out.
So I said "Tell you what- when everyone's gathered
together at your house tonight- cut all the power to
the house. That way I'll know you were really here and
it would prove that ghosts exist." Then he was gone. I
wasn't sure he heard me.
I was then covered with a sense of joy. See, I wasn't
grieving anymore. How could I? He, he was alive, was
happy and he was himself. He wasn't gone. And if I
wasn't grieving then my father wouldn't be angry, and
my children would be safe. It was a miracle!
That night I anxiously phoned Tim in Newcastle. "Had
there been a blackout?" I asked. Puzzled, he said no.
My husband doesn't believe in ghosts , so I didn't
explain too much. I guess John hadn't heard me after
all.
Anyway, three days later my children and I went to
join my husband in Newcastle for the funeral. During
the eulogy a family friend said how much John loved to
travel and how he always carried a torch wherever he
went. He only needed it once but he was really
thrilled when he finally got to use it during a power
outage at a holiday home he and his friends rented
during their last trip. That was just like him- always
prepared!
After the funeral everyone gathered together, but I
was exhausted and went to the granny flat to take a
nap. About an hour later my niece Zoe and son Daniel came
to wake me up. There had been a power outage. The
whole block was in darkness. The children took me into
the living room, where everyone was sitting around
with lit candles all around them. They were telling
ghost stories, of all things. My brother-in-law Chris
said "Ah- Carmen! You're here. Tell us a ghost story!"
I couldn't speak. How could I tell him he was in one?
I did tell him later though, and that's when he told
me about his dream. He was glad his
father was OK.
So that was the last thing my father-in-law and I did
together- a science experiment from beyond the grave.
I think he'll have to agree I was right about the
paranormal after all!
I never sensed him again.
.......................................
copyright Carmen Lambert 2003
Holidays. I was frantically getting my two children
ready to leave when the phone rang. My Mother-in-law
Frances was calling from Newcastle to tell me her
husband John was going into surgery that morning. She
was a bit worried about the heart operation. I wasn't.
My Aunt had the same surgery earlier that year and it
was so successful she was walking around in days. I
insisted my husband Tim call his dad at the hospital
before the operation. Tim wished him luck. He wasn't
worried either. "See you after the operation" said his
father cheerfully.
But something went wrong. John's heart was in much
worse shape than they realized. They put him on life
support while deciding what to do. Tim and his
brothers and sister rushed to be by his side. Tim's
brother Chris had a dream of his father panicking,
saying he didn't want to die. But he did. The next
day.
We were all shocked. John was such an active man. He
was involved in all sorts of groups The wine club. The
Friends of the University group.Even after he retired
he was doing volunteer work for them. He was an avid
birdwatcher. He subscribed to cycling magazines. And
science magazines.
That's what he, my husband and I and my eldest son
Justin shared with him- a love of science. I remember
having heated debates with him and his friends about
things like God and ESP and such. While I was
passionate about science, I also believed in these. He
and his friends didn't.
When he died I started grieving. This was a surprise
to me. I didn't think I was capable of it. When my own
father died 6 years before I hadn't felt anything.
With John it was different. We had mutual respect and
although he wasn't sure about me to begin with, he
became enthusiastic about all the things I was getting
into, especially when I started teaching science to
year two's. He loved that. And I was VP of the P&C. He
was proud of that too, because I was working on a
survey on the future of our school. He was proud of
every member of his family and enthusiastic about all
their accomplishments.
One night I was lying in bed and thinking of him and
crying, when I imagined my father speaking to me. He
was very angry. "How dare you grieve more for him than
you did for me! I'm your father. If you don't stop it,
I'll really give you something to grieve about. I'll
kill one of your children!"
I didn't know whether he really said that or if I was
just imagining what he'd say, but either way, I wasn't
going to take any chances. I didn't go to Newcastle,
and I tried very hard not to grieve or cry.
Anyway, that Friday I was quietly working on a report
of the survey when I felt John's presence. I covered
up the computer screen. "Don't look!" I pleaded. "I
don't know what I'm doing in this section yet!" I'd
always felt intimidated by my father-in-law. He could
be quite pedantic sometimes and his standards were
high. (Once he gave me a ten minute lecture when I
said "Octopi instead of Octopuses).
That's when I realized what I was doing. I was acting
like he was really in the room with me. This is how we
would normally behave together. It must be him. I
asked him what he was doing here. "Just trying out my
new body" He said. I remembered how the minute my
father died all the power in the hospital went out.
So I said "Tell you what- when everyone's gathered
together at your house tonight- cut all the power to
the house. That way I'll know you were really here and
it would prove that ghosts exist." Then he was gone. I
wasn't sure he heard me.
I was then covered with a sense of joy. See, I wasn't
grieving anymore. How could I? He, he was alive, was
happy and he was himself. He wasn't gone. And if I
wasn't grieving then my father wouldn't be angry, and
my children would be safe. It was a miracle!
That night I anxiously phoned Tim in Newcastle. "Had
there been a blackout?" I asked. Puzzled, he said no.
My husband doesn't believe in ghosts , so I didn't
explain too much. I guess John hadn't heard me after
all.
Anyway, three days later my children and I went to
join my husband in Newcastle for the funeral. During
the eulogy a family friend said how much John loved to
travel and how he always carried a torch wherever he
went. He only needed it once but he was really
thrilled when he finally got to use it during a power
outage at a holiday home he and his friends rented
during their last trip. That was just like him- always
prepared!
After the funeral everyone gathered together, but I
was exhausted and went to the granny flat to take a
nap. About an hour later my niece Zoe and son Daniel came
to wake me up. There had been a power outage. The
whole block was in darkness. The children took me into
the living room, where everyone was sitting around
with lit candles all around them. They were telling
ghost stories, of all things. My brother-in-law Chris
said "Ah- Carmen! You're here. Tell us a ghost story!"
I couldn't speak. How could I tell him he was in one?
I did tell him later though, and that's when he told
me about his dream. He was glad his
father was OK.
So that was the last thing my father-in-law and I did
together- a science experiment from beyond the grave.
I think he'll have to agree I was right about the
paranormal after all!
I never sensed him again.
.......................................
copyright Carmen Lambert 2003
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Shapes Puzzle
Click on the image below to see the instructions for doing a new kind of puzzle that I invented.
Where is the treasure hidden? Fill in the dashes to find out.
_ _ _ _ ' _
_ _ _ _ _ _ ,
_ _ ' _
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ .
_ _ _ _ _ ,
_ _ ' _ _ _
_ _ _ _.
Where is the treasure hidden? Fill in the dashes to find out.
_ _ _ _ ' _
_ _ _ _ _ _ ,
_ _ ' _
_ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ .
_ _ _ _ _ ,
_ _ ' _ _ _
_ _ _ _.
Friday, July 11, 2008
I play dress up
My son got me to try on his Phat pants, hat and jacket while posing aggressivevely with a fire twirling staff. The things I do for my kids!!!!
Ice candles
Start with a candle frozen inside a zip lock bag full of coloured ice.
It burns down, melting the ice around it.
It burns more.
You can decorate the ice with wax dripped from a candle.
The ice melts and fills up the foil-lined bowl it's in making it look like an iceberg floating in the water.
We decorated ours more and added another candle.
Next we added different coloured wax.
By the end we had quite a candle sculpture!
Garden of Eden revisited
Here is the story of the Garden of Eden Gen 2 and 3 excerpts:
..........................................................
7 the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam [h] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [i] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring [a] and hers;
he will crush [b] your head,
and you will strike his heel."
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
20 Adam [c] named his wife Eve, [d] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
....................................
So to recap, God built a special garden filled with trees and plants. He needed a gardener so he created Adam. God figured Adam would be lonely so he created pets for him but none was good enough for Adam so God used living tissue from Adam to quasi-clone a wife for him to also help him in the garden. So far so good.
These two worked the garden naked. They saw nothing wrong with this because they didn't know any other way. After all the animals were all naked too- why should humans be any different?
Thing is once they ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil they all of a sudden “knew” that being naked was wrong. But if them being naked was wrong then why were they not clothed in the garden of Eden. They were doing the wrong thing they just didn't know it, using the internal logic of the story.
But maybe it was suddenly wrong because the tree also gave them vices like lust to deal with for the very first time- before they were innocent now they weren't. Maybe this is analogy of growing up. Young children like running around naked. They see nothing wrong with it but when they become teens they get very self-conscious about their bodies and hide them. Then they are thrust out of their safe world into the world to make their own living and get married and have children. Eve tasted the fruit first because girls mature faster than boys so they reach puberty first. Once that happens they would be in the process of finding a mate which means almost automatically that they'd get married and go through a painful childbirth and be dependent on their husbands to provide for them, thus putting her in his power under his rule because the person earning the money has the power. Of course at the end of life is death and because we grow up we can't live forever. When we are young we feel invincible like we'll never die. As you get older you see more and more death and realize that you too will someday die. It all fits.
So here we have a simple analogy of what happens to humans as they grow up and mature and it is used to prevent women from teaching in churches. Really the analogy is so obvious how could people read it any other way? The snake is puberty. God is the daddy. It says God didn't want them to be “like us” meaning adults. It's very straightforward why- nobody wants to see their kids grow up and face the hardships of life- they certainly don't like the idea of their children having sex especially if they are girls. Parents generally don't want their kids losing their innocence. They want them to always be their little boy or little girl. But the little girl and boy want to grow up and be like the grownups. Just think of how many teens drink before they are adults. The Garden of Eden story reflects that.
Let's look at it another way. Eve is living happily in the Garden with Adam. She was told not to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. And on her own, she didn't. Maybe she never would have thought to disobey God. But then the serpent came along. It said that God had lied to her and was keeping something to himself that she also could have. In effect the snake was saying God was evil and could not be trusted. So, being a scientific type she tested this hypothesis. She had been told that if she touches the fruit of the tree she would die. She, not knowing what death even was, decided to test this hypothesis. She touched the fruit. She did not die. This led credibility to what the snake was saying. Now God might have just been doing what any parent does to stop kids from doing what they aren't supposed to do which is tell them something terrible will happen if they do it even though this is not entirely true. We say it usually to keep kids safe, but sometimes it's to leave all the best cookies for the grownups.
Come to think of it, telling someone not to do something and further telling them doing this would give them something wonderful that daddy and mommy get to have that they don't pretty well guarantees the kid's going to disobey.
Anyway, back to the story.
Eve touches the fruit and does not die. She looked at the fruit and tasted it. Why? It looked good, it tasted good, it would give her knowledge she didn't posses and would give her wisdom, and what human does not strive for that? What would you give for knowledge? Wisdom? Those who don't strive for these things are considered shallow and base. Eve wanted to pursue wisdom and knowledge. Once she had attained it she naturally wanted to share what she had learned with her husband. The husband might have been afraid to eat the fruit but he saw that it hadn't hurt Eve and he wanted some of this knowledge too. Of course once they found it they saw that they knew too much and wished they hadn't. They had gained knowledge and wisdom but forfeited eternal life. But they didn't know that to begin with- they didn't even know what death was. The threat was hollow and meaningless to them because having only ever remembered being alive they couldn't imagine death- never having seen it before.
So anyway, they hide their nakedness from God. Strange because it never bothered God before. Maybe He needed a way to test to see if they actually had eaten the fruit. Hm. Of course if I really wanted to be controversial I'd throw in how the angels of God found the women of earth attractive and ended up having children with them:
Gen 6:1-2 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
This would mean the angels were sexual beings too and thus they would have had feelings for these two newly created people, especially since they were created in God's image. Lustful angels watching Adam and Eve cavort naked around the garden....This doesn't sound as crazy as you think. There's a Jewish tradition that the serpent had sex with Eve resulting in the birth of Cain! So taking this further, the kids hit puberty and all of a sudden the adults are attracted to them. That fits real life perfectly too.
If you wanted you could also look at this in an entirely different way.
This could be a very interesting Artificial Intelligence experiment. So let's try again and see it from that perspective.
God creates a garden with animals and plants in it and then decides to craft a being that are like him and the angels out of clay and mud. It walks and talks and is very lifelike. Maybe Adam wasn't the first prototype but one of many they experimented with. Anyway, Adam is a success so they decide rather than make a female from scratch they'd just make a modified clone of Adam and see how that worked. Eve was a success too. But how were they cognitively? So they gave Adam and Eve commands to look after the garden and stay away from the tree. Adam and Eve obeyed. But maybe they felt the true test of intelligence and cognitive function was to see if they would DISOBEY an order given a reasonable argument. They wanted these robots to seek knowledge and wisdom because they'd need it to survive outside the garden, which they were always meant to be ejected from.
Anyway, the AI experiment was a total success because Eve followed a reasonable argument and broke with her programming and furthermore was able to convince the other robot to do the same! Success!
So they were sent out into the big wide world. Under this hypothesis the experiment is still on.
Of course the people who wrote the story didn't know about AI- they were trying to teach the faithful how to behave.
Maybe this is about simple faith versus complex faith. At first children have simple faith and are close to God, as they get older and learn more things they grow away from God because of all the complicated teachings. Maybe that's why Jesus said that to get close to God you'd have to become like a child again, even thought the Garden of Eden says you can never go back to innocence once you've lost it.
So here you have story about coming of age, the loss of innocence, the pursuit and consequences of wisdom and knowledge and that has been used by Christianity for thousands of years to punish women because it is taught that if it wasn't for Eve we'd be happily playing in the mud in the Garden of Eden instead of suffering in the real world.
Because of this story women have been seen as the evil sex and the cause of our estrangement with God. SO unfair when it's men who make up over 90% of the prison population and are responsible for over 80% of all violent crimes. Men not women are the sinful sex. But men have the power and they don't want to blame themselves. They have the lust so they should control it- but they find it easier to blame the women for it. But everyone should be responsible for their own sinful desires- a truly saintly person should be able to walk through a nudist colony and not get turned on. In fact, that wouldn't be difficult for a woman- but for a man! HA! So really, the Garden of Eden story was just reflecting real life- the spiritual (women) are in the power of the more sinful (men). The promise is that this will change and we'll all be spiritual. One day.
..........................................................
7 the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam [h] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [i] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring [a] and hers;
he will crush [b] your head,
and you will strike his heel."
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
20 Adam [c] named his wife Eve, [d] because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
....................................
So to recap, God built a special garden filled with trees and plants. He needed a gardener so he created Adam. God figured Adam would be lonely so he created pets for him but none was good enough for Adam so God used living tissue from Adam to quasi-clone a wife for him to also help him in the garden. So far so good.
These two worked the garden naked. They saw nothing wrong with this because they didn't know any other way. After all the animals were all naked too- why should humans be any different?
Thing is once they ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil they all of a sudden “knew” that being naked was wrong. But if them being naked was wrong then why were they not clothed in the garden of Eden. They were doing the wrong thing they just didn't know it, using the internal logic of the story.
But maybe it was suddenly wrong because the tree also gave them vices like lust to deal with for the very first time- before they were innocent now they weren't. Maybe this is analogy of growing up. Young children like running around naked. They see nothing wrong with it but when they become teens they get very self-conscious about their bodies and hide them. Then they are thrust out of their safe world into the world to make their own living and get married and have children. Eve tasted the fruit first because girls mature faster than boys so they reach puberty first. Once that happens they would be in the process of finding a mate which means almost automatically that they'd get married and go through a painful childbirth and be dependent on their husbands to provide for them, thus putting her in his power under his rule because the person earning the money has the power. Of course at the end of life is death and because we grow up we can't live forever. When we are young we feel invincible like we'll never die. As you get older you see more and more death and realize that you too will someday die. It all fits.
So here we have a simple analogy of what happens to humans as they grow up and mature and it is used to prevent women from teaching in churches. Really the analogy is so obvious how could people read it any other way? The snake is puberty. God is the daddy. It says God didn't want them to be “like us” meaning adults. It's very straightforward why- nobody wants to see their kids grow up and face the hardships of life- they certainly don't like the idea of their children having sex especially if they are girls. Parents generally don't want their kids losing their innocence. They want them to always be their little boy or little girl. But the little girl and boy want to grow up and be like the grownups. Just think of how many teens drink before they are adults. The Garden of Eden story reflects that.
Let's look at it another way. Eve is living happily in the Garden with Adam. She was told not to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. And on her own, she didn't. Maybe she never would have thought to disobey God. But then the serpent came along. It said that God had lied to her and was keeping something to himself that she also could have. In effect the snake was saying God was evil and could not be trusted. So, being a scientific type she tested this hypothesis. She had been told that if she touches the fruit of the tree she would die. She, not knowing what death even was, decided to test this hypothesis. She touched the fruit. She did not die. This led credibility to what the snake was saying. Now God might have just been doing what any parent does to stop kids from doing what they aren't supposed to do which is tell them something terrible will happen if they do it even though this is not entirely true. We say it usually to keep kids safe, but sometimes it's to leave all the best cookies for the grownups.
Come to think of it, telling someone not to do something and further telling them doing this would give them something wonderful that daddy and mommy get to have that they don't pretty well guarantees the kid's going to disobey.
Anyway, back to the story.
Eve touches the fruit and does not die. She looked at the fruit and tasted it. Why? It looked good, it tasted good, it would give her knowledge she didn't posses and would give her wisdom, and what human does not strive for that? What would you give for knowledge? Wisdom? Those who don't strive for these things are considered shallow and base. Eve wanted to pursue wisdom and knowledge. Once she had attained it she naturally wanted to share what she had learned with her husband. The husband might have been afraid to eat the fruit but he saw that it hadn't hurt Eve and he wanted some of this knowledge too. Of course once they found it they saw that they knew too much and wished they hadn't. They had gained knowledge and wisdom but forfeited eternal life. But they didn't know that to begin with- they didn't even know what death was. The threat was hollow and meaningless to them because having only ever remembered being alive they couldn't imagine death- never having seen it before.
So anyway, they hide their nakedness from God. Strange because it never bothered God before. Maybe He needed a way to test to see if they actually had eaten the fruit. Hm. Of course if I really wanted to be controversial I'd throw in how the angels of God found the women of earth attractive and ended up having children with them:
Gen 6:1-2 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
This would mean the angels were sexual beings too and thus they would have had feelings for these two newly created people, especially since they were created in God's image. Lustful angels watching Adam and Eve cavort naked around the garden....This doesn't sound as crazy as you think. There's a Jewish tradition that the serpent had sex with Eve resulting in the birth of Cain! So taking this further, the kids hit puberty and all of a sudden the adults are attracted to them. That fits real life perfectly too.
If you wanted you could also look at this in an entirely different way.
This could be a very interesting Artificial Intelligence experiment. So let's try again and see it from that perspective.
God creates a garden with animals and plants in it and then decides to craft a being that are like him and the angels out of clay and mud. It walks and talks and is very lifelike. Maybe Adam wasn't the first prototype but one of many they experimented with. Anyway, Adam is a success so they decide rather than make a female from scratch they'd just make a modified clone of Adam and see how that worked. Eve was a success too. But how were they cognitively? So they gave Adam and Eve commands to look after the garden and stay away from the tree. Adam and Eve obeyed. But maybe they felt the true test of intelligence and cognitive function was to see if they would DISOBEY an order given a reasonable argument. They wanted these robots to seek knowledge and wisdom because they'd need it to survive outside the garden, which they were always meant to be ejected from.
Anyway, the AI experiment was a total success because Eve followed a reasonable argument and broke with her programming and furthermore was able to convince the other robot to do the same! Success!
So they were sent out into the big wide world. Under this hypothesis the experiment is still on.
Of course the people who wrote the story didn't know about AI- they were trying to teach the faithful how to behave.
Maybe this is about simple faith versus complex faith. At first children have simple faith and are close to God, as they get older and learn more things they grow away from God because of all the complicated teachings. Maybe that's why Jesus said that to get close to God you'd have to become like a child again, even thought the Garden of Eden says you can never go back to innocence once you've lost it.
So here you have story about coming of age, the loss of innocence, the pursuit and consequences of wisdom and knowledge and that has been used by Christianity for thousands of years to punish women because it is taught that if it wasn't for Eve we'd be happily playing in the mud in the Garden of Eden instead of suffering in the real world.
Because of this story women have been seen as the evil sex and the cause of our estrangement with God. SO unfair when it's men who make up over 90% of the prison population and are responsible for over 80% of all violent crimes. Men not women are the sinful sex. But men have the power and they don't want to blame themselves. They have the lust so they should control it- but they find it easier to blame the women for it. But everyone should be responsible for their own sinful desires- a truly saintly person should be able to walk through a nudist colony and not get turned on. In fact, that wouldn't be difficult for a woman- but for a man! HA! So really, the Garden of Eden story was just reflecting real life- the spiritual (women) are in the power of the more sinful (men). The promise is that this will change and we'll all be spiritual. One day.
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