Into It
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- Aug 30, 2008
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Original sin, according to Christian theology, is humanity's natural state of sin. After the Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all of his ancestors bear the consequence. It is a belief that evil is a fundamental underpinning of the human psyche, which is to say that the one thing that separates man from any other mass of molecules, his mind, is tainted, so his entire existence is abominable. If Original Sin is abandoned, so is the necessity of a savior. There is no savior for a man who is not damned.
I can say with certainty, though I base this claim on no fact, that the majority of Christians have been so since their birth. A child has no concept of what is and is not real, so he may be deluded at a young age, his reason marred, and suffer a deformed existence of the most hideous kind without pain. For the blind, the inability to see their own dead, milky cataracts is a boon. Those with sight shudder at the lurid sight of the worn, decayed eyes, and pity that they are not being used, though the blind do not ask this of them. Everyone in the room considers the blind man's disability as he stumbles helplessly, but he is so used to his own mode of perception that his own blindness is far from his mind.
A man born blind does not understand his deficiency as clearly as a man who has poked out his own eyes, because the latter always knows that there is another world, one of color in fact, that he was a part of once, that he has left. He made the choice to deny the sensual reality that he was once a part of, opting instead to pay attention to and place importance on the visions in his mind. He has not altered reality, only his perception of it. Such is the case of the born-again Christian, refusing to partake in the sensuality he once enjoyed, declaring it evil, and focusing instead on the visions of his mind, declaring them real.
The man who has been a Christian since childhood's reality has been so fractured that I would not expect him to be able to piece it back together. He earns my pity, and even some of my forgiveness. The born-again Christian is another matter. He has accepted the words of others, believing that they are capable of some sort of understanding or higher reason of which he is deprived. Accepting Original Sin with the rest of the doctrine, he is dunked underwater. He intentionally drowns the only part of him that is real: the belief that his own conclusions are valid, the belief that he is worth more than the sum of his molecular parts. He renounces his self. He proclaims that he is not. He forfeits. His autonomy chokes and gasps for air as he surrenders both his right to think and his right to feel, and he arises from the water a collection of muscles, veins, blood, organs, and nothing more, by choice. His suicide has occured, and the physical death that eventually follows is not half as tragic.
Who was this 'Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil' created for? Was it created on the off-chance that a giraffe, tall enough to reach its ripe fruit, may obtain this knowledge? Is there a chance that Adam and Eve would have ignored this Tree, in favor of the fruit on the many other trees in the garden, if god had abstained from indicating this particular Tree? And if man, with his innate curiousity, had not yet fallen, then can he be blamed for the decision he made to eat from it? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a trap. Now, we are all found guilty by association, by sharing the same species as the two beings whose trespasses were the result of a premeditated sting. We are guilty for the crime of having a body. Guilty for breathing, guilty for thinking. We have been found guilty without having had the option to take the opposite action, to renounce our body, to deny life, to die!
I can say with certainty, though I base this claim on no fact, that the majority of Christians have been so since their birth. A child has no concept of what is and is not real, so he may be deluded at a young age, his reason marred, and suffer a deformed existence of the most hideous kind without pain. For the blind, the inability to see their own dead, milky cataracts is a boon. Those with sight shudder at the lurid sight of the worn, decayed eyes, and pity that they are not being used, though the blind do not ask this of them. Everyone in the room considers the blind man's disability as he stumbles helplessly, but he is so used to his own mode of perception that his own blindness is far from his mind.
A man born blind does not understand his deficiency as clearly as a man who has poked out his own eyes, because the latter always knows that there is another world, one of color in fact, that he was a part of once, that he has left. He made the choice to deny the sensual reality that he was once a part of, opting instead to pay attention to and place importance on the visions in his mind. He has not altered reality, only his perception of it. Such is the case of the born-again Christian, refusing to partake in the sensuality he once enjoyed, declaring it evil, and focusing instead on the visions of his mind, declaring them real.
The man who has been a Christian since childhood's reality has been so fractured that I would not expect him to be able to piece it back together. He earns my pity, and even some of my forgiveness. The born-again Christian is another matter. He has accepted the words of others, believing that they are capable of some sort of understanding or higher reason of which he is deprived. Accepting Original Sin with the rest of the doctrine, he is dunked underwater. He intentionally drowns the only part of him that is real: the belief that his own conclusions are valid, the belief that he is worth more than the sum of his molecular parts. He renounces his self. He proclaims that he is not. He forfeits. His autonomy chokes and gasps for air as he surrenders both his right to think and his right to feel, and he arises from the water a collection of muscles, veins, blood, organs, and nothing more, by choice. His suicide has occured, and the physical death that eventually follows is not half as tragic.
Who was this 'Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil' created for? Was it created on the off-chance that a giraffe, tall enough to reach its ripe fruit, may obtain this knowledge? Is there a chance that Adam and Eve would have ignored this Tree, in favor of the fruit on the many other trees in the garden, if god had abstained from indicating this particular Tree? And if man, with his innate curiousity, had not yet fallen, then can he be blamed for the decision he made to eat from it? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a trap. Now, we are all found guilty by association, by sharing the same species as the two beings whose trespasses were the result of a premeditated sting. We are guilty for the crime of having a body. Guilty for breathing, guilty for thinking. We have been found guilty without having had the option to take the opposite action, to renounce our body, to deny life, to die!