Our first concern for this Page relates to language and its search for meaning. As time passes and a language grows old it takes on considerable baggage and we have to work at getting the meaning of symbols as they either reflect important specificity, or wander about in the variant contexts in which we use and abuse the magnificent gift of language – by which we can express that which separates the human animal from the dumb animal. That difference is found in the ability to communicate reflective thought and act upon it. Certainly the dumb animals in the seas, on the land, and in the air have means of some communication, but that related to inward impulses related to limited emotional response and survival instances – sufficient in extent so to practice life in any living being differentiated from human life of self-consciousness. The question God asked of Adam and Eve about the self-consciousness of their nudity that inspired modesty is not answered in the biblical text, but demonstrated. Other questions appearing here are not answered in the text, but the answers for many of them appear in this and other contexts in later Bible passages. Further these early exchanges between persons are quite sophisticated so we are faced with some miracle of understanding how they were so precise in language and discussion without having learned their A-B-C’s or Alphas and Omegas. We are now distanced from their culture. We analyze the human condition in the light of what we know of the theme and experience as it has played out in the passage of time and cultures. We begin with an adult couple in the context of innocence, a type we find in a baby, a human being not concerned with gender differentiation or grooming provided by caregivers, unless the grooming is uncomfortable – inspiring cries. It is the age of innocence, temporary after the womb.
Innocence gone, Adam and Eve and God have to deal with the consequences (as we do now) in the loss of life-long innocence. That loss means taking on self-consciousness, and that to responsibility. That responsibility relates to a god-like characteristic for which we do not have enough righteousness to manage, so God offers aid since we insisted (in our first parents) on preempting God in the manner in which there would appear a time for eating of the temporarily forbidden fruit of God that would initiate maturity of the children of God in the natural world – which God meant to be a self-sustaining creation. It would have been a happy context for the practice of science in its study, research and discovery in a creation without distortion. Disobedience to the original plan led to the present mixed and unsatisfactory circumstances related to God. Healing for all this dysfunction is found in the redemptive story of Jesus Christ.
We can only touch on presumed development from what appears to be God’s meaning and management of matters as they emerged, and that possible if mankind is cooperative – if all is to go well. Some members of the human race are willing and some are not. The consequences present a spiritual (moral), social (cultural), personal (natural) stew that leads to considerable complexity and disagreement. Management of the problem spiritually relates to sin and virtue; to culture in approval and disapproval related to law and acceptance; and, to the individual in blessing or cursing related to health, human respect and self-meaning. All the ingredients in self-meaning come from the original purpose that human beings were created with a factor of the image of God that was meant to make them qualify for his kingdom in all life facets. Like a fine page of paper meant for noble service but now smeared with an ink blot, human beings are smeared in their initial innocence with a spiritual blot that changed the story for mankind. The matter will all be sifted out ultimately in a time period unknown to us. In original meaning, the ideal was violated by mankind.
Major evidence of the violation of original innocence is illustrated in the human context. That evidence appears in almost every facet of the gender context including physical regeneration, health, and about anything we may conjure that relates to us – sex context is just one department of life for illustration. The privilege of procreative power has been turned by mankind to sordid depravity. Life from God made it possible for mankind to do in the creative sexual gesture to perpetuate beings for self-awareness and spiritual possessors of endless life. It became so broken in violation that redemption was provided. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020