“Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.”—Genesis 3: 1-5
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He read the passage aloud, then followed, “Little of the trick has changed.”
“What is it?”
“The belief that we may become like Gods…”
“And why shouldn’t we?” the second asked.
“Because we are not, and will never be.”
“But might we grow nearer to?”
“We may…by humility. Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity…Did not Solomon try it all, and with all his knowledge, power, experience, and seeking; was it not all empty save the simple gratitude of existing at all and discerned obedience to God?…And when we look through history, is it not the same story repeated, changed in different guise—deception and consequence of vanity and trick?”
“What is the deception? What is the trick?”
To believe ourselves ever on epoch of new dawn of man, the Man-God in usurpation of the God-Man. We idolize profession of progress and advancement to a new
We believe ourselves on new epoch of human godliness, and in wake of mistaken progress, errantly open way to living hell.
This is the story of human history: bondage, subjugation; the rise and fall of kingdoms; consequence of comfort and pride in prosperity and peak of empire before precipice of disastrous fall; then after-wars—the greater bloodletting events that color mankind’s page; projection of new power by force for establishment of new dominion—idolatry of new professed and deluded almost-gods no different than man before or after—repeating the story learned from knowledge, different than Godly wisdom.
Yes, by the forbidden fruit, we have learned good and evil; but that doesn’t mean we choose or even base knowledge on the right. We delude ourselves when it is not what we wish to believe, divorce knowledge even further from wisdom. In our pride and drift, we crown the most foolish as our kings denouncing and ridiculing the merit and endurance of humble, eternal, truths.
Today, our art is changing. So, too, are the stories we tell—of our present time, and depiction of those in recorded past, counting that few will ever return to the classics and originals and discern in them truths as written, revealing changed meaning and importance in dilution and lens of academic knowledge that tells a mind what to believe rather than inviting it to seek. In further drift, man nears a precipice he cannot see, obscured in pride and vanity of present from humbling correction that comes to all such elevated societies in time…a new winter, dark age, between mankind’s eras of momentary light.
Vanity of vanities,” he spoke. “There is nothing new under the sun…It is the same story, each epoch under new guise.”
“And what is that?” the second asked.
“As with Satan: when man believes himself equal to God and deigns and conducts himself as such—antagonist, and not collaborator with God—man becomes a devil.”