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Everything you need to know about Life..... (well, kinda)

Everything a person needs to know about imperfect human behaviour is contained in chapters two, three, and four of the first book of the bible.

Let me explain.

We'll start with the story of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. But before I tell you that story I have to tell you another story.

This story is about my mom and orange juice. 

When I was little, we lived in the middle of a beautiful orange grove with wonderful juice oranges and I would juice these oranges whenever I could and I would try to get my mom to drink the juice, but she never would. So I asked her "why?". Her reply was "when I was a little girl whenever we got sick my parents would give us Castor oil, and they would always mix it with orange juice, and to this day I can't drink orange juice without thinking of the taste of Castor oil".

The reason I told you that story is because every time we hear the expression "tree of knowledge of good and bad" we instantly, in our minds, put the serpent in that tree. We just can't separate the two, just like my mom with the orange juice and the Castor oil. But the tree of knowledge of good and bad was not made with the serpent in it, and to really understand what the point and purpose of the tree was, it's necessary to take the serpent out of the tree and just see the tree by itself. At this point it's important to note that God himself called it "The tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad" before the serpent even came into the picture. Why? That's a very good question, and I'm glad you asked.

Just because humans are made with the inborn capacity to make choices, (not just about right and wrong, but about many, many things; flavours, colours, designs, etc. etc.) that doesn't mean that they have the inborn resources to make those choices well. That's where training and experience come in. The capability to make choices achieves more of it's potential as a result of training and experience. Enter: "human behaviour training lesson number one" i.e. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad.

The lesson that the Creator was trying to teach the first two people was this: "The earth will one day be full of people... And there's one, maybe two lessons you need to know to get along. One: you can't take other peoples toys, because then you'll start hitting each other. But always remember, you'll always have more than enough to make you happy, however, there will always be nice things that belong to other people that you can never ever have. And if you learn to not desire, take, or touch those things, well, that's good, but if you do learn to desire, take, or touch those things, well, that's bad. So, we're going to use this tree to teach this lesson. This tree belongs to me, and if you learn to not taste, touch, or desire it's fruit, well, that's good. But if you learn to taste, touch, or desire it's fruit, well, that would be bad. So we're going to name it the 'Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad'".

It was really a very learnable lesson. And can be described as the kind of training that any father that calls himself a father should give.

However, thanks to Satan's pressure and stunts (that's a whole other subject as to why he was allowed to do what he did) Adam and Eve's failure introduced into the human psyche the equivalent of a computer virus, a 'thought virus' (to makeup a phrase) that has infected all human thought. That 'virus' has a very simple name. Can you name it? It's name is "greed". Can you name any crime, sin, or wrong of any kind that's not a product of greed?
Can you ?

But wait, there's more.

The first noticeable change in their behaviour from their 'default' settings, as it were, was their view of their reproductive equipment. Now, instead of just normal curiosity and natural desire about the appearance and function of the reproductive equipment, curiosity and desire combined  forces with greed to create 'lust'. Stated as an equation it would be written:

(native curiosity + natural desire) ×
greed = lust.

(incidentally, this is also the formula for pornography; it is pure greed expressed through the medium of reproductive curiosity/equipment).

This is why they felt naked, the term "nakedness" also implies vulnerability or exposure to attack, and now that they had the mindset; 'if I just want it, I can take it', they were now truly naked to each other and themselves.

Another distortion to human behaviour is a simple but profound pattern I call "the blame game". It works like this; if I'm guilty, but don't want to take responsibility, I'll make you feel guilty. It's easy to play, and I'm sure you already have. Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake, and fortunately for them, the snake could no longer talk. By the way, whenever you feel terribly guilty and don't know why... it may be that someone is playing the 'blame game' on you.

And now we come to the two-headed beast of envy-jealousy, as Cain demonstrated in the first full-blown case-history. Envy-jealousy is the manifestation of greed in it's competitive form. If you're expecting a story here, I'm sorry but it's just that simple. (of course you can read the bible's account if you want).

Surprisingly, this pretty well covers everything about flawed human behaviour, you can go to college for years, and study psychology but you'll find that chapters two, three, and four of the first book of the Bible pretty much says it all.


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