My Treatise

My Treatise

January 12, 2024

Treatise- a systematic exposition or argument in writing including a methodical discussion of the facts and principles involved and conclusions reached — MerriamWebster.com

My project this year is to continue to chip away at the mysticism encasing God, Jesus, and the Bible. God wants us to know Him. He already knows us.

People might choose distractions from the Biblical realities. People might prefer to decorate the Bible stories with fantasies. We tend to assuage our responsibility to understand, to participate, and to respond to God — who reveals His precepts to all of us through the Bible. Many rather spend their energies on vituperative talk, trashing people they do not know and principles they cannot fathom.

Fortunately, the light of a candle in the darkest prison cell cannot be overpowered by the darkness. However the light inside us is encrusted, the candle still remains lit.

Thus, such strategies might be convenient ways to ignore God, Jesus, and the Bible, but deep down in the dungeons of our restless souls, a fire burns. In our own very little worlds those strategies of avoidance might work quite well temporally; nevertheless, in the much larger eternal Universe they work quite poorly.

Eternity is a great big ocean, and our boats are quite small and insignificant. Yet, to God, as revealed in the Bible and through the Messiah, Jesus, it is very important to God that each boat has a successful journey and reaches safe harbor, no matter what furious storms might arise.

Humankind struggles so very hard to overcome such challenges as big oceans or obstacles like Gravity, and we dream persistently to fly off to escape into other worlds. No amount of money is enough… No exhaustive prioritization of technical skill, effort, and prowess… No sacrifice is too great to reach our Glorious Manifest Destiny… We give no second thought to consideration where our Self-determination will end. Destroyed on a rocky shole? We act as Man Possessed.

Doesn’t Gravity make for a safe environment? Is escaping it a reasonable pursuit? Why are we like lone landlubbers, forever lost on the tides? Without a compass or the knowledge of the guiding stars? No way of knowing how to find that safe port in a storm?

It has been my experience that God is like the Seasoned Captain of a tested, sturdy ship.

Jesus is like the Ship’s Compass, the North Star to guide.

The Bible is like the strong rigging and the provisioning of the ship.

…Nevertheless, it seems most landlubbers pace the decks trying to figure out a way to get across the ocean to the other shore by getting off the boat.

…The ocean isn’t going away. The tides consistently flow out, and they always flow back in. The waves lap in steady rhythms. The moon and the stars reflect off the waters, twinkling as the sky above…

…What may look like an opportunity dissipates in the ebb and flow of life.

…The clouds often veil the lights above.

Well, enough of that…

This year, I think I’ll start at the beginning of the Bible, the story of Creation, Adam and Eve, and the Fall from Grace…

The spurious stories I’ve heard about the Creation Story, are certainly a testament to Mankind’s ability to weave a tall tale, but they certainly do not help our revelatory understanding and enlightening perception of God, Jesus, and the Bible.

Typical to our impatient nature, we quickly skim over Chapter One of Genesis, missing at least one important point: After the Creation of the Universe, the heavens, and the Earth, God created Mankind — Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” — Genesis 1:24.

Shortly after He checked everything out and saw that it was all very good.

Then, God took a break.

Done. Fin. Hecho. Avslutat.

Now, follow me carefully here: In the next chapter (2:7–8), God created Adam and later, Eve: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Then they were placed in the Garden of Eden, apart from the rest of Mankind: Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

This division, this separateness, is very important to our understanding of the rest of the Bible. The principle of coming out and being a separate person or a separate people is essential. You see, the mystical English word “holy” comes from the Greek word which implies being “set apart” and “different.” In reference to God, He is definitely a world apart from us: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. — Isaiah 55:8–9.

Most of us have been told the Story of Adam and Eve, more or less as a nursery rhyme, but I suggest we should get a readable Bible for ourselves, and find a quiet place and start to read the first chapters of Genesis for yourself — slowly.

(Here might be a good place to mention that the Genesis story is not intended to be an exhaustive scientific treatise to earn a Doctoral degree. It was recorded by ordinary men to be read and heard by ordinary people to communicate the basic truths. However, that doesn’t open the door to the Big Bang Theory. In my mind, it makes far less sense than the Genesis account and takes way more blind faith to believe: Nothing existed; there was no existence. Then, out of nowhere,there appeared a whole lot of empty space with a magically appearing container filled with some kind of super compressed energy made up of quarks, neutrons, protons, and electrons. It suddenly, and for no particular reason, exploded into existence. Then the nothingness of empty space expanded into even more nothing in order to accommodate the explosion… Really? Initiation without inertia. Design without direction. Results without repercussions. Production without purpose. Existence without explanation, hidden behind the shrouds of billions and zillions of millennium… Finally, when the dust settled… Poof! Here we are!)

Anyways…

One silly story I heard was that the fabled apple which Eve ate represents the first act of sexual intimacy. That doesn’t seem to be written anywhere in the Bible — especially after God told everybody to be fruitful and multiply, and I haven’t been able to find such a thing anywhere in the Bible during over fifty years of reading.

So, obviously: No. Not true. The botanical identification of the forbidden fruit has never been known… Never.

On the other hand, as for Original Sin being disobedience: well, yes. However,there were a few more Original Sins not widely recognized. They must have slipped through the ecclesiastic doctrinal nets:

• Satan raised doubts in Eve’s mind about what God had plainly said.
• Satan lied, saying not to worry, because God is love and you will know everything and become just like God. (my paraphrase)
• Adam and Eve tried to cover up their disobedience so as to escape the consequences.
• Adam initiated the blame game unloading a double barrel shot: It’s your fault God you gave her to me…and…and she gave it to me to eat.
• Eve, not to be stuck holding the bag, said that the devil made her do it.

Well all that didn’t erase the consequences. Satan received a curse. Adam received a curse. Eve, however, she got a mixed bag: Bearing children would become more difficult, and she would have to put up with her husband as the bead of the family, but down the line her offspring would put an end to Satan’s works, all the harm he had caused. Hence, the birth of Jesus.

By the way, the forbidden tree was named errantly as the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil,” when actually it was the tree of the knowledge of “evil/good”’ or “good/evil” — an ancient phrase which meant the knowledge of “everything.” …and as Mankind has proven over and over again and consistently throughout the decades, knowing everything and knowing how to use that knowledge are vastly different things, far above his abilities and pay grade.

What haven’t we ruined? Peace? Environment? Society? Brotherly love and friendship? Morality and Virtue? Marriage? Personal peace?

We have turned every technical advance into machines of War, every acre of land has been turned into battlegrounds, and we bravely cry “Peace! Peace!” But there is no peace.

The “Original Sin” were actually comprised of several sins: disobedience, lying, mindless acceptance, trying to hide from God, playing The Blame Game.

The first ones are more or less personal faults, but I see the last one being much worse. It has quickly grown more broadly, universal, and expansive, so as to permeate individual’s social lives and most troubling, spreading its malignancy throughout all of Society and throughout all the World.

We blame everything and everyone but ourselves.

People claim God doesn’t exist and yet continually blame Him, too.

We don’t seek solutions.

We seek arguments.

We are stuck in an endless loop.

People are separated from God instead of separated for God.