The True Story of Adam and Eve And the Garden of Doom (Based on real events)

 

The Great and Powerful Gardener had a Great and Gorgeous Garden, beautiful beyond description because words had not yet been invented. In the Gorgeous Garden trees were heavy laden with fruit and nuts: walnuts, hickory nuts, coconuts, peanuts, and pecans. 

One non-24 hour day, the Great Fixer-Upper, tinkered with the Milky Way that was not lighting up the way the Great Tinkerer had intended.  Once it was just right the God of Corrections remembered the Gorgeous Garden and discovered what Gardens do when you’re not watching. The Gorgeous Garden had grown into a beautiful and gorgeous but tangled jungle. 

The Great Gardener had better things to do than prune and weed a jungle; therefore the Glorious  Creator created a poor but useful undocumented worker to square away the jungle until it was a gorgeous Garden shipshape Bristol fashion. And the Great Name Caller called the worker, “Man”, which was the Great God’s word for Adam. 

The gorgeous Garden became more beautiful every day, but Adam looked glum and glummer. The Wise and Powerful God wondered if Adam had the flu, but the Almighty One hadn’t created the flu yet. Or dyspepsia. There were fruits and nuts and berries; why did Adam have no appetite? 

The Great Omniscient God studied the other animals the Creator had formed. The cattle were lying in the shade chewing their cuds in contentment. The crocodiles greeted their Creator with a smile. The unicorns were so fat their Creator feared they would knock off their horns trying to get in the ark, but that was later. Adam had everything the other animals had but a companion. 

Adam hung out with the dogs and that’s why humans have flat nails rather than pointed nails. For flea disposal. Filing your nails to points is wrong and stop it.

The Great and Creator God had learned some things in creating so the Holy Maker created a mate that was better built than Adam. The woman was built like a 36-34-36 Abrams tank. With a personality to match.

 And the Creator looked at the woman and she was good. But she was a mistake. She opened her eyes and didn’t like what she saw. “I have to fix this place up,” she said. “Make it a decent place for a woman to live in. And no dogs in the house.” 

And the Ever Present God said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

A lot of things displeased the woman, starting with the hairy thing that said he was an Adam. The woman didn’t know how many Adams there were but she knew they all required fixing up to be presentable. This one didn’t even wear clothes. She didn’t wear clothes either but naked women looked better than naked Adams. Except King David. But that was Michelangelo’s David. God’s King David had feet of clay.

This Adam had invented language and with his first words said she was his servant. Well, that was heifer dust.

“I’m hungry,” Adam said. “Get me something to eat.”

“Get it your…”, she paused. 

Adam had picked up a club and he swung it at a round orange thing on the ground but he was thinking of her. 

”Try these,” the woman said, handing Adam a handful of peanuts. Peanuts gave Adam gas and Eve plucked peanuts, threw them on the ground and stomped on them. And that’s why today peanuts grow under the ground. 

The woman went to the river that flowed through the Garden to get a drink in a still pool and saw her reflection. She didn’t know what it was until she tried to touch it and saw the reflection of her hand. She examined her reflection in the pool. “I have to do something with this hair”, she said. 

She decided to explore the Garden to find a comb and maybe something that would surprise and please Adam. Maybe if she pleased him enough he would do something with himself to please her. Maybe he would pluck his own food from the trees. But no more peanuts.

In her exploration she found the prettiest tree in the Garden. The woman had an eye for beautiful things and hands for practical things. Beautiful blossoms, luscious looking fruit. She picked blossoms and stuck them in her hair to please Adam. She really should wash her hair but … later. 

She couldn’t reach the fruit because there was a serpent under the fruit. It was probably a Komodo dragon because if you see one today it will stick out its tongue and flap its mouth trying to talk, but the Great and Terrible God made it dumb for being so smart.

The dragon said, “Did the bad cop tell you that you can’t eat anything in the Garden because it’s His Garden?” 

The woman said, “God doesn’t speak to me. The Almighty only speaks to Adam.” It was a complaint.

 The woman plucked a fruit from the tree and gave it to the dragon. It was probably a pomegranate.

The dragon closed its eyes and tasted the pomegranate. Drool ran from the corners of its mouth. “When you taste it you’ll think you died and went to heaven,” the dragon said.

The woman tasted the fruit and she did think she had died and gone to heaven. She thought to herself, I know, I’ll take some to Adam. He’ll eat anything, even peanuts. I need to give him ambition, improve his taste, make him a person with feelings. 

She wished she had a skirt or a shirt so she could carry more fruit. She could only carry two, one in each hand. She tried to carry one between her throat and her chin but she sneezed and the dragon grabbed the pomegranate, closed its eyes and died.

The woman took the fruit to Adam hoping he would notice the blossoms in her hair. They were so pretty and smelled like chocolate. Adam noticed nothing but the pomegranates. “Where did you get those?” he asked.

“From the prettiest tree in the Garden. You never notice anything.”

“God told you that you could eat from any tree in the Garden except that tree,” Adam said.

“God doesn’t speak to me,” the woman said. It was a complaint. “The Almighty Name Caller hasn’t even given me a name.” That also was a complaint. Until he met a woman Adam had never heard a complaint. “Why didn’t you tell me?” the woman asked. “You never tell me anything.”

“I tried,”Adam said. “But you talk so much I never get a chance. God told me that if I ate the fruit of that tree I would die.”

“I gave the big lizard a pomegranate and he said he felt like he had died and gone to dragon heaven. Then I dropped one and he ate it and was speechless.”

“Since you went all that way and brought me one, I reckon we ought to eat them.”

It wasn’t a thank you but Adam did notice she had done something for him and she was speechless.

They ate their pomegranates and heard thunder like the  Great and Powerful God waking from a nap. They felt the shake of the earth as the Well Rested God went walk-about. What if the Great Explorer God looked for them? And they knew they needed a door. For the bathroom. And the bedroom, and maybe a front, and especially a back door. But there were no doors so they made aprons of leaves so they would have a way to carry more pomegranates. 

The God Who Knows Everything asked, “Why do you need a door? Have you eaten of the Tree of Doom?”

Adam didn’t have a mother he could blame. That left God and the woman. God was scarier but the woman was louder and in his face. Adam said, “The woman that You gave me made me do it.”

Soon-to-be Eve was miffed. Adam blamed her for everything and the first time God spoke to her it was to blame everything on her and put a curse on her and also all the female mammals in the Garden. And the Almighty of All Good Things didn’t give her a name but let Adam give her a name.

Adam. Adam couldn’t remember what he named the velociraptors and called them Evangelicalciraptors. And the transgender duck-billed platypus, Adam couldn’t remember whether to call it guy or gal, man or madam, dawg or the B word.

“It’s not fair,” Eve said. “You made the Tree of Doom the loveliest tree in the Garden where you knew I would notice it,” Eve said. “Adam never notices anything. A dragon could crawl up and kiss him on the ear and he wouldn’t notice it. You made it good for food when You knew I was the practical one who was most concerned with feeding the family. You made it desirable to anyone who wanted to be wise when you knew Adam spent his time dreaming of another wife or two and an air-conditioned tractor.”

Adam had asked for a handiwoman he could use around the house and God had given him a Marine drill instructor.

“You knew I was the one in the family who hated serpents. Why did you put one in the Garden? When you destroy the world with a flood don’t let serpents in the ark or it will be your fault.

“And besides,” Eve said slowly winding down. “I gave Adam a pomegranate because I’m the one who shares. Adam doesn’t even share his feelings.”

Adam put his hand on Eve’s shoulder that was draped in leaves and guided her away from the wrath of the Source of All Help lest it destroy them both. Adam knew he had to stand between Eve and the All-Loving Father, lest she persuade God that she was an Adam, too. Or deserved equal pay. 

Eve prayed more than he did, except in public. The Eternal Father loved all creation but Adam wanted to be loved most. Adam didn’t want to be shipshape Bristol fashion. Adam kind of liked his faults. If he had to give them up he would miss them. Adam wanted God to cut him some slack with Eve.

“Sometimes I wish I could choose my own husband, someone who wasn’t wrapped up in himself all the time or kicking or throwing or clubbing fruit because it was round. That would be nice,” Eve said.

Adam resolved to keep Eve busy washing children and tending dishes. Especially when Adams gathered to make rules, pass out leadership roles, and decide what Eves were good for and what they should wear. Adam would assume authority over Eve. In affirmation, Adam squeezed Eve’s shoulder.

“That hurt,” Eve said. 

“It’s for your own good,” Adam said.

God killed a couple of animals and made clothes for the naked: a donkey for Eve and an elephant for Adam because God hated clothes that were made of different kinds of leaves. 

And Adam and Eve left the Garden of Doom knowing they were going to die, which is the root of all knowledge.

Germany 1930 America 2017

There is no equivalency between Germany in 1he 1930s and America today, but there are parallels. One of those parallels is religion. Germany, Austria and Hungary were among the major Christian nations in the world. No American president has more blatantly declared his Christianity than Adolf Hitler and since Hitler the faith of no politician has been so widely accepted.  Millions of Christians around the world admired him, including Americans. Some German-American Bunds taught German propaganda, as did Defenders of the Christian Faith, Knights of the White Camellia, Sentinels of the Republic and the Christian Front.  The America First Committee accepted funding from Germany.  

Christians admired Hitler for several reasons:

  After World War One he called his nation to repentance. “Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell…And in this hour we sink to our knees and beseech our almighty God that He may bless us, that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our people. So help us God.”    

His faith-based charity, “With a tenth of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakable loyalty.” 

His morality. He did not smoke or drink and he abhorred pornography and homosexuality.

His mission. “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord”…We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. . .We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press–in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess. . .”

His belief that his nation’s weakness was because  “…the watchword of German foreign policy ceased to be: preservation of the German nation by all methods; but rather: preservation of world peace by all means.” 

His certitude: “The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others.  If an idea in itself is sound and, thus armed, takes up a struggle on this earth, it is unconquerable and every persecution will only add to its inner strength.” 

His promise to end terrorism: “. . .we must not dodge this struggle, but prepare for it, and for this reason acquire armament which alone offers protection against violence.  Terror is not broken by the mind, but by terror.” 

His belief that the Ten Commandments were the foundation of Nazi Germany: “The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul.” 

His desire for birth on demand. “And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve one higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and of the race.  This alone is its meaning and its task.”

And God seemed to favor him.  “I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” “I follow the path assigned to me by Providence. . .there is a God. . .And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years.”  February, 1940

Republicans vs. Religious Liberty

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and most other religions require followers to practice hospitality to others, especially to refugees, “the least of these” as Jesus expressed it. However, politicians who claim to believe in limited governmental power also claim the unlimited power to deny religious liberty to believers who attempt to practice their religion in addition to proclaiming it.

Naomi is the Answer

Many people believe the Bible is a book of answers. If so, is there an answer to our troubled nation? There are many rules in the Jewish Bible regarding hospitality to the stranger, the foreigner, the other. There are many references to the sins of Sodom and all are about inhospitality to outsiders. In the Christian Bible (Matt. 25:43) Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you did not invite me in.” Therefore, you are doomed to the same eternity as Satan and his angels.
However, those scriptures have shallow roots and few seeds. Maybe a story would be more fruitful.
Because of famine, a Judean family moves to Moab as economic refugees. Does God have an attitude toward Moab? Yes. According to a Psalmist, “Moab will be my chamber pot,” God declared, because they were inhospitable to the Hebrews. (Ps. 60:8) In Moab, Naomi and her husband raise two sons who marry Moabite women. That is a violation of the Mosaic law that forbids Jews allowing sons or daughters to marry outsiders (Deut. 7:3)
In time Naomi’s husband and her two sons die. Naomi decides to return to Judea and tells her daughters-in-law to return to the homes of their mothers. Women had few choices in those days.
One of the widows returns to her mother’s home hoping to be invited in. The other, Ruth, tells Naomi, “Your people will be my people.” Ruth was not an economic refugee. She was trying to keep the family together. Nevertheless, to be politically correct Naomi should have said, “No. My people are exceptional people and you cannot be one of us.” (Gen. 17:7)
Ruth also said, “Your God will be my God.” To be religiously correct, Naomi should have said, “No. No Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God.” (Neh. 13:1) Because Naomi was not politically or religiously correct, Naomi and Ruth return to Judea where Ruth meets Boaz, a relative of Naomi. Boaz was not politically or religiously correct either and the rest is a love story with a religious and cultural convert becoming an ancestor of King David, the glory of Israel, and Jesus the Savior of Christians.
Although the story is set in the time of the Judges, many Christian scholars tend to believe the Books of Ruth and Jonah were written in reaction to the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah that chronicle the return of the Judeans from Babylonian captivity. When they saw the desolation of Jerusalem, they vowed to make Judea great again.                                 First order of business: National Security. Rebuild the wall.
Second order of business: Tribal Cleansing. Ezra called for an assembly in Jerusalem.          Those who did not assemble would lose their property and be exiled. Those who did assemble were told they must separate from those unclean. (Ezra 10: 7-11) To be religiously correct, the returning captives rejected their wives, some of them likely pregnant, and their children. The Bible doesn’t tell us what happened to the wives and children but we know. We read it in the newspaper every day.
Perhaps Naomi’s way was the better way, the way our nation should go.

Pro Life Pretenders

Charles Camosy, Professor of Ethics in Fordham’s Theology Department, chided Sister Simone Campbell, spokesman for “Nuns on the Bus”, for calling “Pro-Life” proponents “Pro-Birth”. Once a baby is born it’s abandoned to the mercy of air, water, food and environment polluters and other merchants that put profit before life..

According to Reuters (7-14-05) Unborn US babies “are soaking in a stew of chemicals,” including mercury, according to a report by the Environmental Working Group based on tests of umbilical cord blood that reflects what the mother passes to the baby through the placenta. That stew of 287 chemicals includes 180 that cause cancer in humans, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests. A Government Accountability Office report said the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the powers it needs to fully regulate toxic chemicals. “Pro-Life Pretenders” is the more accurate name for those want to weaken or eliminate the EPA.

Professor Camosy wants a Catholic religious (sharia) law to become a federal law that favors the “most vulnerable” but denies religious freedom to others. Dr. Camosy believes the most vulnerable in a pregnancy is a zygote (fertilized egg) although more than half of zygotes are not implanted. That 50+ percent would be the most vulnerable of the “vulnerable” because have no possibility of life. Yet, no one. including Camosy, proposes any effort to save them. They receive no religious rites and are treated as body waste without protest. Are they to be favored over a family? The mother loses her life, the children lose their mother and the father loses his wife. The family seems most vulnerable to me.

A nun suggested a federal law requiring a father to donate a kidney in exchange for a kidney for his fetus, baby or child should it require one. That seems a good law. The baby, fetus, child is clearly most vulnerable. Most fathers can live an ordinary life with one kidney and he would have some skin in the law. The law would be less prejudiced if the father were required to donate whatever could be transplanted—heart, lungs, liver, skin. So far, no Pro-Life Pretenders in politics, ethics or religion have made any effort to include the father in protecting the “most vulnerable.”

If it’s about “life” or “most vulnerable” which is more vulnerable, the father or the mother?

Deserting an Illegal War

June 28, 2007, The Associated Press reported that America faced a desertion crisis in its military. “Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80% increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003”. A deserter is one who intends to remain absent from the military permanently, or leaves his unit to avoid hazardous duty during times of war. More than 20,000 military personnel have Dropped-From-the-Rolls (deserted) since 9/11.

Also, June 28, 2007, under the banner, “Military makes little effort to punish deserters”, AP reported that “174 troops were court-martialed by the Army last year for desertion—a figure that amounts to just 5% of the 3,301 soldiers who deserted in fiscal year 2006. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey acknowledged that the Army “has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat,” but some deserters are simply allowed to return to their units, while the majority are discharged in non-criminal proceedings on less-than-honorable terms. “The Pentagon does little more than enter deserters’ names into an FBI national criminal database,” the AP reported.

Brandon Hughey, a deserter who moved to Canada, told Scott Pelley (60 Minutes, 12/06/04), “I felt (war) was necessary if (Iraq) did have these weapons, and they could end up in our cities and threaten our safety”. While Hughey was in basic training, he received little outside news, but he did learn that a soldier who obeyed an “order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” (http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/obeyingorders.htm)

After basic, Hughey learned “that they found no weapons of mass destruction. They were beginning to come out and say it’s not likely that we will find any—and the claim that they made about ties to al Qaeda was coming up short, to say the least. It made me angry, because I felt our lives were being thrown away as soldiers.…”

Hughey’s lawyer, Jeffry House told 60 Minutes, “People should have a right to say, ‘I’m not fighting in that war. That’s an illegal war…And anyone who says soldiers should go to jail if they don’t fight in an illegal war is persecuting them. The United States is supposed to comply with treaty obligations like the U.N. Charter, but they don’t”. Making war for regime change is a violation of the Charter. “When the president isn’t complying with the Geneva Accords or with the U.N. Charter, are we saying, ‘Only the soldier who signed up when he was 17—that guy has to strictly comply with contract? The president, he doesn’t have to?’ I don’t think so. I don’t think that is fair.”

Army Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, said he doesn’t object to war and volunteered to go to Afghanistan but considered war on Iraq illegal. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, serving in Iraq would make him party to war crimes. Already low-ranking soldiers at Abu Ghraib who had tortured, abused and degraded POWs had been called “bad apples” by the president, stripped of rank, dishonorably discharged, prosecuted and imprisoned for following orders the president had authorized.

Maj. General Taguba was assigned to investigate the horrors of Abu Ghraib but was not allowed to investigate anyone at a higher rank than himself. He knew immediately that Military Police had not invented the torture and degradation that included rape and sodomy. These prisoners were not suspected terrorists but POWs in a war that permitted no Prisoners of War. After he was ordered to retire Taguba wrote that the rot was not in Abu Ghraib but in the White House.

The Army turned down Lt. Watada’s request to resign and charged him with two counts of Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and a Gentleman (for public statements) and one count for Missing Movement (refusing to deploy to Iraq). (Gannett, 8/05/08)

Eric Seitz, Watada’s civilian attorney said, “What the Army has clearly tried to do with these charges (of Conduct Unbecoming) is send out a message to those in the military, that if you criticize the war and if you criticize the decisions that were made to bring the United States into this war, that you, too, could be charged with disloyalty, contemptuous remarks and disrespect for higher officers, and in this case, specifically in this charge, the President.” (Democracy Now, 7/7/06)

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals (August 12, 1945) said, “For the first time, four of the most powerful nations have agreed…upon the principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace…And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.”

“In 1953, the Department of Defense adopted the principles of the Nuremberg Code as official policy” of the United States. (Hasting Center Report, March-April 1991)

Over the prosecutor’s objections, Seitz and Watada’s military lawyer, Capt. Mark Kim, called three witnesses to question the legality of the war: University of Illinois Professor of international law Francis Boyle, Former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, and Army Colonel Ann Wright (ret.), who retired from the state department in March 2003, in protest of the coming invasion. All three testified that the war was illegal because it was not authorized by the U.N. Security Council, and that Congress approved the war on the basis of faulty intelligence. Therefore Watada was within his rights to refuse participation in it. (Seattle Post Intelligencer, 8/18/06).

Watada was court-martialed in February 2007, with the case ending in a mistrial when Military Judge John Head ruled that the military justice system could not resolve whether the deployment order was unlawful. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2/7/07) After the mistrial, the Obama Justice Department asked the court to drop the case which would require the Justice Department to decide whether the war on Iraq was a war crime. Among the organizations supporting Watada were the ACLU, Iraq Veterans against the War and Veterans for Peace.

“What was approved was basically his request to resign in lieu of a general court-martial for the good of the service,” said spokesman Joseph Piek at Ft. Lewis, Wash., where Watada has been working at a desk job. (LA Times, 9/19/09)

It seems an unfair burden on a young recruit who may be a high school dropout, does not have the information that the chain of command has, and may be under fire to make moral choices in a “preventive” war.

If the military justice system and the Justice Department can’t decide whether the war on Iraq is legal, how can any member of the military who refuses to fight in a war he/she believes is illegal be charged with desertion?

Religious Liberty for Whom?

The majority of American women and men have the religious freedom to plan their family as is best for the family without the dictate of a government or a religion. However a Christian employer can trump the religious freedom of Christian employees and discriminate against them by denying free benefits that a secular employer is required to give them. Trumping the religious freedom of others also increases employers’ profits.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have the religious liberty to choose their life-mate free of the dictate of a government or a religion but until very recently have been denied the benefits of such alliances that were indiscriminately given to others. However, some elected officials claim the right to discriminate based on their reading of their Holy Book. The scripture of choice is often Leviticus 20 that describes sexual sins and the punishment of them. Verse 13 requires that if a man lies with a man as with a woman both must be put to death. If a man has sex with his aunt or his sister-in-law the punishment is that they will never have children. How is that punishment possible without abortion or infanticide? (Lev. 20: 20, 21)

Another favorite scripture is the letter to the church of gentile converts in Rome. Romans 1: 18-27, seems to describe those who formerly worshiped fertility gods where sex with a temple priest or priestess was worship. Judah mistook his daughter-in-law for a temple prostitute (priestess) and impregnated her. (Genesis 38) Thus was Tamar in the geneaology of both King David and Jesus. Greek converts would also know of Greek love. (Matt. 1: 3)

The condemnation does not end at verse 27, and the letter did not have chapters or verses. Those came much later. In Paul’s letter equal sins are greed, envy, gossip, slander, strife, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness. Chapter 2:1, states to the reader: “You, therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”

That’s not all. ““Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.” (Romans 13: 1, 2) Perhaps those whose morality and politics are based on the Bible should read it.

Cyanide picking of the Bible to choose scriptures that condemn those you wish to injure is a sin. Christianity must not become the last refuge of the bigot.