I know the Catholic Church “allows” or various interpretations of the creation story in Genesis.
Are there adults that believe in the literal talking snake? Just curious. Thanks.
If the Catholic Church allows for various interpretations, why do interpretations even matter? It either happened one way or another, right? 1+1=2, not 3. I don’t get this.
Thanks.
Well, the devil exists. I can tell you that from personal experience, let alone the Book of Genesis.
As to the “talking snake” in the original temptation, I don’t give it much thought. But as an** image **of something sinister, a snake being used by the devil to give voice to temptation is a pretty effective image. Snakes don’t inspire me with much confidence I’m afraid. There are some people who like them and keep them as pets, and they would probably find my imagery distorted and unfair at best But that’s how I feel - it’s an effective image - slithering, silent, cunning, cold eyed, scaly, tough, and they strike like lightning.
Incidenally years ago I went through a stage when I’d get this image of the
tail of a snake in my mind at night, when i was sleeping. I’d then wake up. I spoke to my old pastor about it, and he thought it might have been an inference of the devil’s activity in one way or another.
Some years later, and long after the old pastor himself had died, I picked up a book called “Weeds Among the Wheat” by Thomas J. Green, SJ, with the subtitle “Discernment: Where Prayer and Action Meet”.
In this book, I came across the following intriguing reference to the
“tail of the snake”….
“It seems to me that, again for the practical purposes of the pray-er and the director (spiritual director), it is not of great importance whether the desolation we experience comes from our own subconscious, from the environment and culture which is the very air we breathe, or from the literal devil. From the point of view of discernment we can take the “evil spirit” of the “devil” to mean whatever forces are working against God, whether they be “natural” or strictly diabolical. It is of legitimate concern to the theologian which impulses are traceable to natural causes and which might be properly supernatural. But when the pray-er recognises the tail of the snake, he is wise to run away without looking for the rest of it, and to leave the species determination to snake specialists”.
I have no doubt that real snakes, apart from killing quite a number of people every year as lethal members of the natural order, are really the innocent parties in all this. But it seems to suit the devil to use the image, even when he is harassing Christians by giving them an slide show of a
“tail of a snake” at night in their mind - the tail will suddenly appear, and then slide over a log or something, and then disappear. The person wakes up in a bit of a sweat, wondering what it was about.
As I said, it’s a very effective image.
Now it’s back to you to make of it what you think.
