Mankind's Greatest Threat is Described in Genesis

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I love posting about Genesis 1-4 because it’s a bottomless well of insights about the development of human cognition and our relationship with gods and God. I should mention, as I’ve done in previous posts, I believe the stories are divinely inspired and weighted with truths we should explore, but I don’t take Gen. 1-4 as an accurate historic account. Now, hold the cabbages just a minute my churchy friends. Let me explain.

Not My Point, but Let’s Review

Italics represent specific Hebrew words: in Genesis 1 God just speaks. The heavens and earth appear. Adam and Eve are created on the 6^th 24-hour day together, male and female, and it’s all good. In Gen. 2, the earth is not fully developed because mankind hasn’t appeared yet (2:5). God forms Adam out of the same dust/mud/dirt that he makes the animals. God makes him a living creature using the same Hebrew word for the animals (2:19), but not all is good yet. Something important is missing. Yahweh Elohim settles Adam in the garden alone. After an unspecified amount of time in which he names the animals, God builds Eve, but not out of mud. In Gen. 1 God is Elohim. In Gen. 2 God is Yahweh Elohim. In Gen. 1 Elohim creates the “heavens and earth.” In Gen. 2 the author writes about the “earth and heavens.”

The change in style occurs in the second half of 2:4. You think the scribes that put this book together in final form were so dense they didn’t recognize the difference? These two documents were sewn together with the same deliberation that a quilter joins disparate pieces into a whole blanket, but they are not the same literal, historic account. I was a church attending, Evangelical Christian for 15 years before I understood any of the above, and then the epiphany only came as I read and translated the Hebrew for my Jewish rabbi mentor.

For my educated, scientific readers, yes, yes, I believe in Intelligent Design, Old Earth and hominids evolving over time, but please set all that side for a bit. I want to draw from the narrative as it was written as if it were a hundred percent true, and I want to make it apropos for today, so bear with me.

The First Threat

In the Garden, Adam and Eve have perfect adult bodies and full language capability. They’re allegedly immortal, but they’re stuck in this interdimensional death-free space that doesn’t fully connect with the earthly world they are supposed to inherit according to Gen. 1. I remind you that when Cain killed Abel there were humans that would have killed him simply because he was alone and not supported by a clan or family. They were fully human and were never part of the Garden that Adam’s family were expelled from.

The new couple can’t possibly fulfill the mantle of authority laid on them in Gen. 1 if they are naked and don’t know the difference between right and wrong. They are like toddlers. We speak of ‘original sin.’ Do we impute sin to 2 year olds? Adam and Eve are like aborigines in Paradise Lost. They need to grow up, explore the world, adapt to new environs, multiply and fill the earth. Remember, the Garden isn’t really Eden. The Garden is in Eden. Was Eden also death free? Adam’s whole job in Gen. 2 is to tend the Garden for Yahweh Elohim.

Enter a new voice in the Garden. Adam and Eve had a commandment to obey, but the serpent sidled up to Eve when she was pondering what her existence was all about. Apparently, Adam was not far away (3:6). First, the serpent wasn’t ugly, or Eve would have screamed and run. Second, he must have had legs to stand on because the curse had him slithering on the ground. Third, he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t really a serpent either. He had a voice, he spoke perfect…er, whatever they spoke back then. (Hebrew didn’t exist yet) Still, something about this other-world entity was serpent-like.

Some of my Evangelical readers may be shocked that I write about UFOs and demons. Jesus had a lot to say about demons and the devil. He warned us many a time to fear only the eternal ruin and death that Satan can wreak and not mankind. Well, guess who rules as one of the worst entities of the UFO world? A mean, ugly creature called a Reptilian.

This entity knew how to manipulate the new humans. After all, how would they know who to trust? Nothing bad had ever happened to them. They didn’t know what bad meant because they didn’t know the difference between good and evil. The serpent didn’t lie to them. He planted a seed of doubt about God’s intentions in telling them not to eat the fruit. He told them they wouldn’t die if they ate the fruit. And they didn’t drop dead after all. He told them they would be like gods, knowing good and evil, and he was right…to an extent. This promise was a little exaggerated. Kazzam! In a moment their perception and understanding became fully adult. The serpent is looking pretty good at this point.

Folks, please. This passage in the Bible is a metaphor. There’s no food that’s going to make us wise. The Genesis author is writing about mankind coming into full cognizance and intellectual potential, which means they are accountable for the wrong that they do.

Kerpow! Mankind develops quickly. Sex, kids, animal husbandry, agriculture, religious ritual. Shazzam! (no disrespect intended) Within a relatively few generations, the descendants of Cain invent cities, writing, metallurgy, art, music, and war.

The voice in the Garden didn’t deny the existence of Yahweh. It questioned His motivation, His benevolence. It made alluring promises, so many promises for results right now. Power, knowledge, status, “wisdom.” Right now. Jesus said that the devil is the Father of Lies. He’s really good at it. Adam and Eve were not stupid, in a state of sin or rebellion, or mad at God. They were blindsided by something more complex and malevolent than they could comprehend, and mankind has been confused ever since about who to believe and who brings “life” as well as riches, health, children, safety, and guidance in everyday life. The thing is, the invisible entity with a reptilian essence lies, and does it very well.

The Second Threat

Quite a few years ago, one of my Assembly of God friends retired from her nursing career. Her husband retired from teaching, so between them they had a nice nest egg to live on. She and other congregation members invested a lot of their money in a fund run by one of their fellow members. He had been in the church for a long time, so everyone knew him and knew his godly testimony. When they came to him for financial consultation, he would often pray with them. The problem turned out that his fund was a Ponzi scheme, and this man, who led a nice life in an elite, gated community, was a scam artist. My friend was not stupid, sinful, or mad at God, but she lost $350K to this shyster.

Christians are an especially easy target for such schemes because lies and malfeasance just aren’t on their radar, but scammer Bernie Madoff and his family members collected billions from universities, Jewish charities, banks, and average citizens while the SEC looked the other way. Con artists don’t look like sleazebags. They are charming. You can’t help but like them. They are your best friend, until they aren’t. When they lie, they are really, really convincing. They usually wrap their sausage of lies in a skin of truth.

So, the second biggest threat to human existence is our ability and willingness to lie to one another to gain political and financial advantage. Why are lies and slanders so dangerous? Because they can manipulate and transform society and can lead to dangerous governmental policies. Malevolent men and women can lie with  great passion to gain positions of power.

I have always been half interested in the news, but ever since the summer of 2015, I’ve been an absolute junkie. I doomscroll all morning, reading a vast array of sources, including books. I have both conservative and liberal friends, and after a decade of watching the MAGA machine roll over the U.S., after listening to all the arguing, hearing the vast divide between RW and LW news sources, I’m convinced that among those producing the news, there are those who still care about journalistic integrity and those who would report anything true or false if they were required to. Among the voters, there are RW brains and LW brains which process not only different information, but would process the same information completely differently. We have shared this country since the 1700s, and have butted heads from the beginning. It seems that we’ve always been close to 49/51 on our differing viewpoints depending on the economy. That’s just not going to change.

There have always been scurrilous politicians, greedy millionaires, egregious bigots, and lying journalists. The absolute illogical belief, encouraged by political parties and media, is that one side or the other commits all the corruption, does all the lying. But if one party uses their temporary access to government power to lie, cheat, and steal, you can bet they’ll accuse the other party of doing everything that they themselves are doing, and they’ll do it with great passion and posturing. If they got there by cheating, they won’t give up their privilege easily. That right there is a good indication which side is which. The good guys will cede power when it’s time. The bad guys won’t. The bad guys will keep the voting base in a blender of fear and hate, creating enemies on which to focus so the voters don’t focus on what the politicians are doing with their levers of power.

Because of the contemporary surplus of information and the resulting confusion about whom to believe, people resort to voting for their pet issues…the price of eggs, abortion, the Ten Commandments on school grounds, the appointment of RW or LW judges, tax cuts, immigration, etc. In our times, Americans will put up with a lot of corruption if they can vote their pet issues into existence, because they’ve heard for years that the other side is worse. Character still counts, but media disinformation makes everyone look like a fool, a criminal, or a pedophile.

I can’t offer a good solution to this problem other than to encourage people to read broadly.

It’s intriguing to me that the Bible essentially begins with mankind being lied to and seems to end with a confrontation between a deceptive antichrist and the returning Messiah. The Apostle John seems to believe that the antichrist was a movement rather than a specific man. A good case can be made for that. The Apostle Paul was looking for a man whom he called “the lawless one” or “the man of lawlessness,” (2 Thess. 2:3-4). I believe that Paul was hearkening back to Daniel 7 which describes the Son of Man coming into His full kingdom authority (vv. 9-27). Verses 19-22 describes a boastful, conquering king who will “try to change the set times and laws.”

Evangelical Christians like to say that we are in the End Times. We may be indeed. If that is true and Paul is right, then a man will arise before the Second Coming of Jesus who will oppress God’s people. But what if rather than oppressing God’s people he just subverts them with really convincing new ideas? What if he claims that he is the righteous one, that he is the patriot, that he is the Anointed One, that only he can save the world? Would you be ready for that?

I am the first to admit that understanding the news today is complicated. It’s almost more than the average, busy person can wrap their head around. But Jesus said that if the blind lead the blind, they all fall into the ditch. The ditch is there. In our day, it’s called dictatorship or autocracy. To maintain our democracy and avoid falling into the antichrist’s honey trap, we can’t be blind. Don’t think that God will appear and inform you whom to vote for. God didn’t save my charismatic friend from the scammer, and if we don’t use our brains to properly educate ourselves in both the Bible and the news, we won’t be ready for the profound deceptions that the End Times will bring.

This post can also be seen at https://medium.com/@janetkatherineapplebysmith/mankinds-greatest-threat-is-revealed-in-genesis-cda1dd19af74 and at https://theologylighthouse.substack.com/p/mankinds-greatest-threat-is-revealed.

Check out my website www.janetksmithpersonal.com where you can read for free The Legacy: A Memoir of Personal Guidance and Korean War Sabotage.