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Thursday, January 12, 2017

My Thoughts On The Bible--A Series--Genesis

This is a series I am going to be partaking in on my blog.  I am going to read the entire bible and share my thoughts on it, be they positive or negative.  Today we are starting with Genesis.  I'm INCREDIBLY familiar with Genesis, as in my attempts to read the entire bible front to back, I've always started over with Genesis.  I have read it upwards of 10 times.  I'm going to share my thoughts and what has struck me the most over the years, from childhood to now, as Genesis has always struck a few chords.

For this series, I will be giving no explanation of my religious beliefs, what religions/lack thereof I support, whether or not I go to a church of some sort, or explaining the relationships I have with other people who are of other religions.  You will just have to experience this series, completely without the judgement and the biases of what my BACKGROUND is, and purely understand this as a critical writing.  I know that can be hard for some to do.  But it's a good exercise to practice.  I invite you to participate, with eyes open, into what might be a different perspective than your own.  And--that is totally acceptable.

This morning I woke up and I thought about the passage of Adam and Eve.  There is a portion of the story there that has troubled me since small-childhood, nagging at me, though I never really could conceptualize why.  I figured it out.

Adam's Rib

Women bear the great biological responsibility and weight of ALWAYS having to be the ones to bear children, whether or not they like it or the fact that it can kill you, and completely rip apart your body, never leaving it the same.  For that, they really should be respected, and considered as the mothers of the earth.  But nope.  Apparently women don't get that.  What we have to thank, is Adam's rib.  *claps*  God made all those birds, animals, and trees from scratch.  He made Adam in his own image (God's image is apparently a dude).  He said let there be light (the motherfucking SUN) and there was light.  But, women?  Adam's rib!  Of course.  Genius.  When it comes to male-dominated society, we have to start early, after all.

The Tree of Knowledge

First of all, let me get this out of way, I've ALWAYS found Genesis incredibly sexist, even in childhood, and you bet your bottom dollar that nobody around me was telling me that it was.  I'm sorry but if there is ANY SEX OF HUMAN that has trouble with temptation, it's a man.  Who are we constantly on the lookout for in child abduction, rape, and basically any case involving sexual temptation and control/dominance issues (the latter of which, God clearly has--we'll get to that later).  I understand that in our society, female rape is something that, due to cultural stereotypes, is sadly, highly concealed.  But let's look at the statistics of something much more finite: missing children cases.  Those are HIGHLY, highly publicized, at least in the US.  While I don't currently have access to files on the global statistics of the ratio of women to men who kidnap children from their homes (we aren't talking about parents who are arguing about custody, but strangers), I do have access to the news.  And almost EVERY case, if not every, of this type of abduction is by a man.

And yet poor Eve gets the burden of being tempted by an apple, hanging from a tree with a snake on it.  The garden is so happy and beautiful and wonderful, lets go hang out with this gigantic snake.  Surely this is reasonable.

So apparently the Snake, which God made, can talk, and it tempts Eve with, "Knowledge."  What sort of knowledge?  Knowledge and knowing are often synonyms for sex in the bible.  But the snake, quite weakly just renders this as the knowledge of good and evil; these are VAST, VAGUE terms.  Eve, eats the fruit from this so-called (by a talking snake) Tree of Knowledge, and not even a page after her entrance into the bible, has already screwed up.  God, in his almighty, omnipotent wisdom put a tree in the garden that two human no-nothings are not supposed to eat, sat back, ate some popcorn and basically watched them break the rules.  He could have at least made them work for it.

We never find out if Adam would have broken the rules either, but the rendition of the bible (the New International Version) I am reading says he was with her.  In some renditions Adam is innocent of all of this aside from eating the bite he was offered, and we never know whether he would have done it or not.

Then Adam and Eve realize they are naked and are both bashful.  They aren't going, "Hell YEAH!"  They hurry and cover up.  Are they truly embarrassed or did they just realize God's been watching them the whole time?  Who knows.  The Bible as per-tradition doesn't clarify such things that could help to provide us with some credibility.  God just wants you to drink the koolaid.

"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.”

"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.”

So then God, even though he put the tree there, and he made the snake, and he knew all of this was going to happen, for whatever reason, gets pissed.  And even though just in the last page, Adam was with Eve (whether or not he could also hear the snake talking is also not clarified), apparently Eve now is the one who gets to bare children.  And now they have to eat food and live and die and just turn back into dust.  Wait isn't that atheism?  What happened to the greater beyond that everybody always talks about.  If we are lucky, we'll find out in the next sequel!

“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.”

"Us?"  Who is, "Us?"  There are more than one?  I'm scared.

So then because of this, humans can't live forever by eating from the Tree of Life, and then we all know what happens with Cain and Abel, as referenced above where offspring are mentioned.  It's our great punishment for doing exactly what God set up for us and knew about the entire time.  Makes perfect sense.

But the Greater Question in all of this, is this:  Why did this, "God," not want humans to be knowledgeable?

And what does this say about this particular religion?

I suppose we will delve into that in the future.