Original Sin

Original Sin
by Alan Gray

THE SIN

Eve, being the feminine wonder that she was and not accustomed nor designed to face the brutality of Satan's vicious assaults, was caught unaware while her mate and companion was not around. Like the woman brought before Jesus, after being entrapped by the sons of the same devil, she was really quite helpless and unequipped to deal with what came at her. She wasn't devious or rebellious, she was simply a responder and designed to shine in the protection of her Father and in the presence of her dear Adam.

No doubt, being the wide eyed, innocent wonder that she was, she was full of trust. But the one who stood before her now would nearly always trump the moment over the One who had entrusted her with the freedom to wander on her own. She merely listened, as we all are so unfortunately familiar with doing, to the smooth toned, warm, round words of the greatest deceiver the universe has ever known.

When Adam found her, she was different. She knew more than he and he most certainly knew it the moment he saw her with his own eyes and she averted hers. Being the perfect man that he was, he inquired no doubt, with his heart rushing to meet hers where ever she was. Quite possibly, in the fast moving events of the moment and the overwhelming change Adam had suddenly sensed, decisions were made in haste and Adam fell headlong into the deception.

This second deception had no doubt been masterfully engineered by the snake - Satan. It is always a sign of someone who is infected with the will of this devil who waits and preys on women and children. They are to this day the most loathsome of criminals. Nonetheless, the deed was done. Their eyes had opened and the whole of creation suddenly took on a darkness they had never before noticed.

They saw, for the first time, the futility we see every hour. They felt gravity pulling them down, never before sensing the weight of their own bodies. The once warm breeze had turned cool and for the first time they felt a chill. They felt their nakedness, it was strange and raw. They were suddenly aware of their own bodies in ways they had never known before. Even looking at each other, they suddenly needed to cover themselves in the shame of noticing such a difference between them where they had just moments before seen nothing less than a glorious yet unique sameness.

I have never doubted that at the moment His children became aware of the two, dualist opposites they had never before perceived, He knew something terrible had happened and came looking for His children, the crown of his creations and for the first time having to call out for them. When He finally found them, they peered up from the bushes at Him, wide eyed and hunted.

THE SEPARATION

He looked in the eyes of His two children and down at the creature who had had his way with them and knew that with innocence lost, nothing would ever be the same again. They could in no way joyfully play in the world He had made for them, free of all drive and compulsion except what their own nature suggested they enjoy. He knew that they had already begun weighing the value of everything they had only moments before accepted openly without condition. He knew they would be burdened with decisions and choices they were entirly unfamiliar with. It would no longer be the simple joy of putting their hands to the activities of the day they would enjoy but rather a burdensome task and a demanding requirement.

What was going to be a joyfully and momentarily painful delivery of their first child, would now weigh on Eve's mind as she could no longer simply take each moment on it's own, but rather chose to hate the pain that was forced on her, knowing it was not a 'good' feeling and certainly a 'bad' one. She would place it, along with every other experience on this new mental spectrum of good and evil and would now look in fear to the future of the pain she was inevitably forced to endure.

Nothing would be the same. Everything had changed. The simple laughter coming from the garden, the joy in His children's eyes as they played with the many animals Adam had himself named, the wonder on their faces as they stood and stared out at the fields and gardens He had made for them, was never going to be the way of their lives, as He had planned. The terrible knowledge of the war waged between Himself and enemy and the inevitable sorting of what was right and what was not, was no longer His own to bear, it had spread to His children. They had, by this one violation of His will, brought a powerful system of control and manipulation down upon themselves and their progeny.

Knowing the power of this new knowledge and the great destruction it would inevitably produce, it would be necessary to introduce as well, some system of futility to temper it's otherwise devastating result. It would need to be checked by a system of struggle such that the judgements and rejections, the manipulations of personal worth and feelings of superiority they would now have to negotiate would not have a free hand but rather be slowed down to a frustrating pace by the increasing of their labor and multiplied pain of their proliferation.

It was a sentence that no doubt broke His heart yet in it's absence would give them no chance at all to survive, let alone multiply and fill the earth. But far worse than that, the deadly warning He gave them about that tree would sadly be their only hope of rescue from this dark and heavy knowledge. Death would be required of each of them to provide it's relief to their suffering and the hopelessness of the unsolvable riddle of constantly having to weigh out every moment on the scales of good and evil.

THE RESULT

Each morning when the sleep now required from the previous day's labors had ended, they would awake to a vision of futility that they could mostly overcome, but it would take everything within them to do it. Every moment would be a challenge to keep their focus on those thoughts and actions that did not bring them grief and disillusionment. The loveliness of the garden they once were able to see clearly with their eternal eyes, was gone. They looked out at the previous day's remains and everywhere around them stood the incongruous patterns made by human hands. These man made patterns disturbed their souls and brought grief to their hearts. Straight lines that had never been part of their previous world, save the horizon, were now everywhere.

A momentary glance up at the trees and clouds brought back a refreshing reminder of the days when they looked out and saw the artistic brush strokes of their Father's hand spread across the land and sky. Shapes that defied definition. Shapes that swayed and changed filled with innumerable shades and colors, all changing with the whim of a breeze or the shifting of the sun. Now however, they were some how only painful reminders of all that they had lost. The garbage and debris of their fending for themselves, the stench and disease of the rotting remains of their slowly passing days would rise up to remind them of the smell of death they would one day both dread and long for in their uncharted future.

THE CONSEQUENCE

As a baby emerging from his mother's womb, eyes closed and clogged, ears plugged, lungs gasping for breath, we are born with nearly no sense of the spiritual. We sense it's surrounding presence but we are at complete loss for words to describe it and so, have no way to understand it, let alone appreciate it's amazing wonder. We see only the physical, feel only the touch of the tangible. Our five senses are limited to perceive only those things that are destined, under the ancient sentence, to die or otherwise fade away to ultimate destruction.

While we enjoy the many visions of life around us and our souls grasp for deeper spiritual connections with life and with the other isolated human souls embodied in those loved ones we hold dearest to us, they remain beyond our reach and we must be satisfied, if we are able, to simply know they are there. We are separate, we are alone. We carry our thoughts deep in the recesses of our own minds, so deep that we ourselves cannot even trace their origins. God seems as far from us as our own imaginations can take Him yet, with some effort and concentration, as near to as our own thoughts and feelings. We are separated but not abandoned.

THE OFFER

"Repent, the kingdom of God is imminent" says Jesus as his introductory herald of the evangel of our rescue and release. "I have come to make a way, I have come to make you sons and daughters of your one true Father again. I will lead you to Him, as he is very close at hand. But you must believe me and what I tell you or you will wander, as is your nature, off the very narrow path I will lead you on. You must lay aside your reasonings and calculations. Your common sense will only return you to the circles you have orbited from the beginning.

The darkness and isolation of your soul, the private fears and anxieties that have been your self constructed guard rails will be washed away when, in the presence of the Light of our true Father, your spiritual eyes will begin to clear. Your ears will begin to open and your lungs, for so long barely breathing, will be filled with the freshness and life giving oxygen of Spirit and Truth. You will grow, day by day, to recognize your true Father standing beside you, listening, hearing, ready to catch and hold you. You will begin to know the feel of his warming, living water showering down on you as you simply step back into it's showering streams. You will begin to feel the completeness and the new and unfamiliar justification and right to be here, when leaning back into His arms and finding your self simply absorbed into His, where you will begin to understand and know your life and His are, more and more and from time to time, One.

You will begin to experience and feel the eternal, unlimited, unhindered life that knows no death because it needs no saving death to rescue it from the futility of a world caught up in sorting out every right from every wrong. A life that needs no duality to provide balance. No ying and yang, no yes and no, because in Him it is always yes and in this life there is no darkness. In this life there is only light and life. In Him is life and the life is the light of men. This light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot understand it nor can it overcome it.