Adam and Eve, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472-1553

I must confess I have murdered dozens of people.  No this isn’t about hate in ones heart being the same as murder.  But there are countless women, some of them I don’t even know, and I have murdered their dear friend or relative.  No, I have not met most of these people and their murders were little more than a construct in the mind of said females, but it is murder just the same, or so it seems.  How have I gone on so long with impunity, you might ask.  Well I assure you there has been nothing but penalty while the actual victims are non-existant.  It generally happens that while expounding one of any number of ideas, that I am wont to expound, I make distinctions, distinctions between right and wrong, the only type I really see any point in making.  But in saying that certain things are wrong I call to the minds of these females the victims I speak of.  They have affinity for these people, even love, therefore my criticism of whatever must be incorrect.  And the fact that I attacked an action done by this other, must me that I am in fact in the wrong, evil even.  For I have killed their acquaintances with my words.  This is the nature of Eve’s deception.  God had made his law clear, for her own good, but she felt something different.  Instead of taking that word and applying it unquestioningly to her situation, she welcomed in the evil, tried it on.  She let it enchant her and she found the Word of God wanting.

Paul tells us in I Timothy 2 that it was the woman who was deceived, but today even the men are deceived.  This type of emotional situational morality, has take over our culture.  There is a sense in which this was always the case. Chesterton said that “men are men but man is a woman.”  He was trying to convey the fickle nature of mankind.  At best in scripture we are the Bride of Christ at worst the harlot of Ezekiel 16.  But I think the victory of feminism has lead to the scenario I laid out above passing for reason a logic with a lot more men than in days gone by.  I can’t tell you the number of women I know who bristle when I criticize homosexuality because the know someone who is a homosexualist. And they aren’t that bad, so homosexuality can’t be that bad.  Scripture is clear, it’s not grey at all, but they make it grey because of an emotional affinity for another person.  Christ tells us that the cost of following him might be giving up our closest family relationships.  He came to bring a sword that divides  Matthew 10:34-39.  And you don’t want to be on the wrong side for the sake of a family member.  Men are supposed to be more logical.  Our sins are generally blatant and overt.  But I see more and more in our culture that this emotional appeal works on them.  We have built whole fields of social science aimed at codifying these emotional appeals.  Granted they often attract more women but men are being sucked in more and more.  But we need to avoid Adams sin of complacency and sort this out and fight this evil.

Modern man likes to mock the stories in the Old Testament as being myth and fairytale.  Well they are.  They just happen to be true fairytales.  And if you think that is silly you don’t need to look farther than the second and third chapter.  God lays out his command plain and clear.  Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:16.  God was not stingy, there were thousands of trees man could eat of and only one he could not.  Now in a good fairy tale, a woman eats an apple and the whole world is destroyed.  But watch as this is played out, it is not such an unfamiliar story.  It all begins with a question “Did God really say. . .”  This is how sin always begins.  Stealing isn’t really that bad.  Adultery won’t really hurt anyone.  But today in reference to sexual sins, psychology has established a canon of such questions.  Since Freud wondered if it was all about sex, his questions opened the door to countless others.  Maybe I’m really meant to have sex with other women.  I was born a man but maybe I’m really a woman.  Then you play with the idea a little in your mind.  Society helps by throwing off any notion that anything you choose to do could possibly be wrong.  You try it out on your lips. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes.”  Then you start to suspect that God is really out to get you.  He want’s to keep you from doing this because he knows how much fun it would be.  And all his little puritanical disciples are just out to wreck your fun too.  So, you push a little further and pursue this evil.  “and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate”  But then you feel ashamed.  Your eyes are opened. What have you done?  Then your worldly friend come along side you and assure you that you are clothed, you are fine.  That’s not your conscience bothering you, it is the social construct of those Christians out to ruin your fun.  So you march and paint rainbows, you continue your sin with the same sex or cutting off or sewing things on, you spit in the face of God.  And nothing bad happens, you don’t get struck down, everything seems fine.

Eve, Anna Lea Merritt, 1885

Then one day you look around and there are no children.  Contraceptions are strewn about everywhere.  The remains of bloody abortions are splattered in every street.  You can’t tell the men from the women from the use-to-be men and women.  The elderly die alone in their beds at a younger and younger age, with no one to care for them.  Then the dictator comes. He rules with an iron fist, now you don’t choose anything.  And, you wonder if there might not be something too that fairytale told in Genesis.

The First Mourning, William Adolphe Bouguereau, 1888