Adam's sin?

[fhansen]

Another wonderful question begged, even by my first paragraph, is “Why did God create the human with a capacity for shame?” I think the emotion of shame is tied to the drive for popularity. It has been beneficial to our species to have a “popularity instinct” as part of our God-given nature. When we lose popularity, we feel shame; when we gain popularity, we feel acceptance and “pride”. This popularity drive has motivated us to cooperate with group leadership, which greatly enhances survival of the group. Beautiful, isn’t it? It is a carrot-and-stick emotion package that lends itself to cooperation. Just a theory…

Yes, and this means shame isn’t necessarily beneficial. A gang member can experience shame until he fits in with his culture by killing his first victim-the standards can be relative.

In my line of thinking here, the “punishing” that takes place in the creation story is Adam on Adam. Does God actually punish a species for behaving in a way that was made possible by His own hands, or is it actually that we punish ourselves, and we project that God does not accept us?

I think this is may be true, although God would certainly have the right to be offended by a wayward creation that abused its free will. But perhaps the “natural” immediate consequences of being out of order with the universe, of disobeying Gods will, are to be exiled from the Garden, split off from ourselves and simultaneously from Him. The consequences of disobedience, of not adhering to His righteousness, is that righteousness or morality, for us, becomes relative, with changeable standards, meaning we can find ourselves in the perverted situation of feeling guilt or shame for not doing the wrong thing, such as killing a victim, or alternatively, of not feeling guilt or shame when we should.

I guess what I mean is that pride ends up actually being the problem because it ends up having no rudder; its only motivation being to feel good about oneself without regard to the standards used to get there as a result of circumventing God’s authority-His Godhood. What was meant for good, perhaps, is used in a twisted or faulty manner. Just some thoughts.

 

[elysianverse]

Why were they ashamed of their nudity?

 

[fhansen]

Why were they ashamed of their nudity?

Why are people still ashamed of their nudity? By eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, humankind was took it upon themselves to determine morality *for *themselves, meaning God no longer held that position from their perspective, which means, for all practical purposes, that they no longer had a God. All human misery and sin follows from this first act of obedience according to the Catechism.

And so this first act of disobedience involved a separation from God, and so a separation from their very own selves, since He alone knows with certainty the right order of things, that which is right for us in terms of morality. In any case, this split consists in relegating the Creator to a status inferior to ourselves, and therefore opened the possibility of looking upon His creation-including us- as inferior as well. Shame must, by its nature, be a shame of both ourselves as well as *Him. *

Pride is at once the problem and the “solution”-it’s the denial of our “creaturely” status, an uncomfortable paradox of human nature. We aren’t so comfortable being ourselves, and yet we’ll never be comfortable until we accept ourselves completely -and the God who made us. This is actually what the New Covenant-and the Atonement that secured -it is all about, restoring the lost relationship of man with God, by restoring the trust in Him that was undeservedly lost at the Fall, according to the Catechism again.

 

[Journey322]

I have a question I thought of about the sin of Adam.

Some say Adam sinned by eating the apple, others say it was by the will to eat the apple. Some say Eve sinned, some don’t.

It occurred to me that maybe the sin, in itself, isn’t what separated the first Adam from God.

The thing that made Adam cover up was triggered by whatever sin it was, but the result is Adam felt shame. That’s why He didn’t want God to see him. It wasn’t until he felt shame that I think he really could have understood the full burden of knowing good and evil.

Does this mean anything to anybody but me, or am I still crazy?

Alan

Scripture clearly indicates that sin caused the separation. The knowledge of good and evil (and the shame that followed) was another result of that sin, just as God has promised when he gave the warning not to eat of the tree.

 

[elysianverse]

Scripture clearly indicates that sin caused the separation. The knowledge of good and evil (and the shame that followed) was another result of that sin, just as God has promised when he gave the warning not to eat of the tree.

Then what sort of knowledge did Adam and eve have pre-fall?

 

[thistle]

I have a question I thought of about the sin of Adam.

Some say Adam sinned by eating the apple, others say it was by the will to eat the apple. Some say Eve sinned, some don’t.

It occurred to me that maybe the sin, in itself, isn’t what separated the first Adam from God.

The thing that made Adam cover up was triggered by whatever sin it was, but the result is Adam felt shame. That’s why He didn’t want God to see him. It wasn’t until he felt shame that I think he really could have understood the full burden of knowing good and evil.

Does this mean anything to anybody but me, or am I still crazy?

Alan

Nobody ate an apple. The Bible says they ate the fruit. An apple is not mentioned.

The sin committed by Adam and Eve was the sin of disobedience.

 

[OneSheep]

I guess what I mean is that pride ends up actually being the problem because it ends up having no rudder; its only motivation being to feel good about oneself without regard to the standards used to get there as a result of circumventing God’s authority-His Godhood. What was meant for good, perhaps, is used in a twisted or faulty manner. Just some thoughts.

I think the rudder is the Love. A gang member killing someone else to be accepted just sets in motion the eye-for-an-eye cycle, which eventually ends in destruction on both sides. Eventually love wins, in the form of self-preservation. Gangs are a good example of the benefits to human groups that shame, pride, and righteousness all play. The problem, however, is the blindness to the humanity of the out-group, thus Jesus’ emphasis on forgiveness. Jesus was great at using the out-group (samaritans) as the hero in order to challenge the thinking, and thus the mechanism, which we are slaves to. Forgiveness leads to inclusiveness, which eliminates the perception of an out-group (those we see as “other” or evil, etc.).

I look at the “benefit” as a net-effect. Yes, creating humans with the drive to punish what we see as wrong will result in some punishing happening that is not beneficial to our species as a whole. Creating humans with the drive for popularity will mean that it is possible that “popularity” may be based on shared hate (practiced by both liberals and conservatives) or doing something that is harmful to another group. But the “net” result has been a successful human species as a whole. I know that sounds rather cold, but these emotions we are talking about, such as shame, are very mechanical. Love is underneath, Love transcends.

 

[fhansen]

I think the rudder is the Love. A gang member killing someone else to be accepted just sets in motion the eye-for-an-eye cycle, which eventually ends in destruction on both sides. Eventually love wins, in the form of self-preservation. Gangs are a good example of the benefits to human groups that shame, pride, and righteousness all play. The problem, however, is the blindness to the humanity of the out-group, thus Jesus’ emphasis on forgiveness. Jesus was great at using the out-group (samaritans) as the hero in order to challenge the thinking, and thus the mechanism, which we are slaves to. Forgiveness leads to inclusiveness, which eliminates the perception of an out-group (those we see as “other” or evil, etc.).

I look at the “benefit” as a net-effect. Yes, creating humans with the drive to punish what we see as wrong will result in some punishing happening that is not beneficial to our species as a whole. Creating humans with the drive for popularity will mean that it is possible that “popularity” may be based on shared hate (practiced by both liberals and conservatives) or doing something that is harmful to another group. But the “net” result has been a successful human species as a whole. I know that sounds rather cold, but these emotions we are talking about, such as shame, are very mechanical. Love is underneath, Love transcends.

Yes, love transcends but its probably correct to say that love also encompasses things like justice, which in any case I believe to also be transcendent-as justice would be part of God’s nature since righteousness/goodness are essential to His nature. Maybe, then, we’re risking minimizing the role and importance of shame and guilt-emotions in general-if we view them merely as some sort of mechanism or program that serves to drive us this way or that. Perhaps they’re of a higher order because they actually amount to our direct experience-our pain- of being out of order with justice/love/goodness-with God and His nature/will. Looked at this way they’d actually be related- negatively, I guess-to our ability to experience God.

 

[OneSheep]

Yes, love transcends but its probably correct to say that love also encompasses things like justice, which in any case I believe to also be transcendent-as justice would be part of God’s nature since righteousness/goodness are essential to His nature. Maybe, then, we’re risking minimizing the role and importance of shame and guilt-emotions in general-if we view them merely as some sort of mechanism or program that serves to drive us this way or that. Perhaps they’re of a higher order because they actually amount to our direct experience-our pain- of being out of order with justice/love/goodness-with God and His nature/will. Looked at this way they’d actually be related- negatively, I guess-to our ability to experience God.

It seems to me that when “the law is written in our hearts”, there is no need to designate “goodness” or “badness” as an operational guide, based on an obedience to the Father. Love itself, the individual seeing the divine in all other creatures, coupled with empathy, the knowledge of what causes pain in self and others, is all that is needed. Thus Jesus’ commandment to love one another.

Where I am coming from is that I think that drives and emotions, as part of our nature, are given to us by a loving God. So certainly a desire for justice, or, I prefer to call it the “punishment drive” has love at its base. Let me take it out of the clouds for a minute and go back to the gangster example. The wannabe finds love and safety in his compadres. However, let’s say that his membership is conditional on him killing a rival gangster. The rivals, in the eyes of the gang, are dirt. They disrespect, they take territory, they hurt people, etc., and they “deserve” to die. So, with this blindness, the wannabe easily goes and eliminates what he sees as garbage. For the wannabe, he is meting out justice, albeit warped in our eyes. Of course this wouldn’t, and shouldn’t stand up in court, but it explains things.

So, in the story that makes sense to me, God created the wannabe (like all of us) with all the potentials for violence, misperception of humanity, and drive to give people “what they deserve”. It was the risk that God took, knowing that such drives would generally contribute to survival, but there would be some issues, which Jesus addressed head-on. I can’t put myself in this god’s place and find reason to subject the wannabe to some kind of punishment. I can put myself in this god’s (small g because “who knows”?) place as a god who subjects the wannabe to knowing the humanity of the person he killed, and the full meaning of that. This type of “knowing”, to know love, and to see the divine in all others, is the ultimate fix. There would be no need for punishment, because the wannabe would have his eyes opened to love.

Now, if we can repair the problem of the wannabe’s violence with such awareness, would there be a need for punishment? No. But our continued desire to punish him anyway, and to project that God would want the same, is our own mechanical drive in action.

This, to me, is a way of untangling the mechanical “punishment drive” from a more basic guidance from love itself. Our desire to punish is functional, but a slavery, no less a slavery than our desire for lots of stuff, a big harem, or to be very powerful and popular. So I agree, our God is a God that wants us to love one another, and not hurt one another. The question is, does true God set out to punish, or to correct, and does He share our carrot-and-stick drive to make everyone behave?, or does He work from within, reminding us to forgive, calling for love, patience, understanding, and gentleness while we act and react according to our programming?