The Basis Of Choice

In the beginning, choice was an imposition…

If you follow the story of the garden of eden, you will find that we really never had a free choice.

and the creator never really played fair with his creation.

In Genesis 1:26 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” The original hebrew meaing for IMAGE: TSEH’-LEM; from an unused root mean. to shade; a phantom, i.e. (fig.) illusion, resemblance; hense a representative figure, espec. an idol:-image, vain shew. also used in 1:27. LIKENESS: DEM-OOTH’ ; from 1819; resemblance; concr. model, shape; adv. like:-fashion, like (-ness, as), manner, similitude. this meaning is not used again in the first three chapters of genesis.

Let us imagine for a moment what it must have been lkie for Adam and Eve being born of the divine, and yet having mortal physical components to begin to understand all that has been put around them…we were not made perfect by the creator. created on the sixth day with the animals, Genesis 1:31 says “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” we clearly were not created as mindless children, we could reason and understand right out of our birth. we obviously would want to understand what we have yet to fully comprehend as beings with a divine sense…

So, what does the creator decide he should do with us as the apex of creation? Genesis 2:15 “And the LORD GOD took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” So now, the creator who made us of his own image and likeness thinks all we are good for is to be a GARDENER?! do you think in the mind of man, he would readily accept such a lowly position with such divine character he was given?

Then we see the imposed choice given only to the man in Genesis 2:17 “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” what do you think that in the mind of man, would be the basis of imposed choice he would take? surely it would be constantly racing through his mind. yet he didn’t have enough information yet make his decision…

Then we have the first acknowledgement of woman by the creator in Genesis 2:18 “And the LORD GOD said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” and in Genesis 2:21–23 explain how the creator took the rib out of adam and made the woman from him-a little counterproductive to the way he set up pro-creation don’t you think? it’s funny to me that the man was created from: “…formed man from the dust of the ground” Genesis 2:7 man was made individually, but the woman was not. she was not created freely, she was tied directly to the man in creation-not given the same value and rights as the man who was created first! she was created as a secondary creation as to be a help to the man. Genesis 2:18.

You would think with this many knocks against the woman, and of course tied to the man, she would not think much of the creator who made her this way. when we pick up the story in chapter 3, she might be open to an alternate opinion when the snake comes along. clearly Adam would have told her the choice that imposed upon them both about dining arrangements…in Genesis 3:1 the serpent goes to the woman and asks”…Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” in Genesis 3:2–3 she tells the serpent what she was told to say. Genesis 3:4–5 “And the serpent said onto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For GOD doeth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

I cannot allow for this idea that Adam and the woman(i might add that she did not even have her own name yet) didn’t even discuss or just think about the choice before them imposed by the creator and that what the serpent had presented to them was the first time the thought or idea ever appeared in these divinely mortal creatures-god would never have made such mindless creations of himself that couldn’t reason things out and make up their own minds. that would be an insult to the creator himself and what he made!

Genesis 3:6–7 “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also onto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

I find this passage very confusing. why would knowledge make them both feel that being naked was suddenly a bad thing? the only conclusion i can come to is that by gaining the fullness of the divine was obviously a little overwhelming! having their eyes opened must have been the greatest drug trip anyone could have ever been on! nothing made much sense for that first while to begin, and reacted totally insane.

Meanwhile…the creator casually walks through the garden in verse 8, and verse 9 wonders where they both are. knowing full well what has happened, the creator acts so shocked and surprised that we would disobey such simple requests of us!

In a tripped out state of having our eyes opened, we just gave ourselves up and both the man and woman tried to cover both our asses-he blamed her, and she blamed the serpent. and the creator ultimately had us where he wanted us-something less than himself which he can manipulate.

Genesis 3:16 “Onto the woman he said, i will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”

The punishment for the man goes in verse 3:17–19 “…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns and also thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return onto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and onto dust shalt thou return.”

In the end, we were made too much like himself, therefore we must be knocked down to no longer be a threat to him who calls himself “GOD” Genesis 3:22 and 24 “And the LORD GOD said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:” So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cher’u-bims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

Point One: Man and Woman are created in the image and likeness of god himself. we had a nature that was tied to a mortal coil, but bound in a puzzle of the devine that would long to be fulfilled. to be made by the creator to choose between being whole in our nature of himself, or to be satisfied with never being complete by the imposed choice god gave us, what would be the reasonable choice?

Point Two: What god shows in terms of value towards the man and woman. he puts Adam in the garden and makes him a gardener. he creates Woman as a secondary creation just to keep man from getting lonely and a helper for the man(if god were America, that would make the man and woman the first Mexicans!). all the animals are given names by Adam, yet the woman doesn’t get a personal name of Eve by Adam until Genesis 3:20. do you honestly think that it just slipped Adam’s mind to not to give his wife a personal name? or for the creator of all to not either mention it to Adam or do it himself to give the woman some respect and value by giving her her own name like Adam had? i don’t think she was timid in giving Adam hell about this-they must have had a long discussion about what god told him and what they might do. it’s of no surprise to me that the serpent goes to the Woman and gives her the hard talking to. she was no doubt…already there.

Point Three: The nature of the tree. Genesis 3:6 tells what the tree of knowledge of good and evil was like: “good for food…pleasant to the eyes…desired to make one wise.” the word WISE in hebrew translates as: SAW-KAL’ : a prim. root; to be (caus. make or act) circumspect and hence intelligent:-consider, expert, instruct, prosper, (deal) prudent (-ly), (give) skill (-ful), have good success, teach, (have make to) understand (-ing), wisdom, (be, behave self, consider, make) wise(-ly), guide wittingly. this all means that the Woman and Adam both made a purely rational and intelligent choice to knowingly disobey and thereby fall into sin by the choice we were given.

Point Four: Disobedience is our divine right. to be born of the divine, we were left to reason out all the evidence to discern the choice we had been given. we were not as children unable to make a choice: we had been given the gift of himself to know, and want for more. we would never have been content to have just one piece of the divine puzzle given us. it would be perfect for the creator to make our act of failure to be manifested in the very longing in our nature: GOD NEVER PLAYED FAIR WITH US!!!

What do we take from this story in modernity: I had recently watched the MATRIX films that made me think about all of this. the one idea that kept recurring to me was ‘the problem is choice’. in everyday life you will always have some greater that will be imposing choice upon you. true freedom is in being able to make the choices yourself-when no longer being dictated to decide. so, maybe true freedom has never really existed. all you can have is when the imposed choice has been passed you can then discern a sense of freedom by what you do beyond it-make it your own. about those things you can’t control…all you can do is use the divine within yourself and reason out the intentions by learning, which is your spiritual process: evolution is the process of creation.

In the end, true freedom is in when you go beyond the imposition.

Completed on january 26th/2011.