The Two Worlds of Adam: an Incomplete Introduction

How do we reflect---or fail to reflect---the glory of God? What IS the glory of God?

Another way to ask these questions is to ask what is a caste system, and what is the sacred? Here are some answers:

The greed of the last three generations in America has lead inextricably to the problems of the present one. Every moral problem of, and every cultural evil faced by, the current twenty-something population is the necessary result of the set of the various forms of greed by which the last three generations have enriched themselves. Culturally and biologically speaking, there is not only no free lunch, there is no low-cost lunch. You get what you pay for.

And, if you, the reader, are a lower-middle-class person with a load of debt, and you don't think you've been enriched, think of this:

If Warren Buffet, with all his wealth, were in the lowest ten-percent of earners in America (so that the other ninety percent made many hundreds more billions than he already makes), he might easily feel he is in the 'just-barely-making-ends-meet' category. The reason he might feel this way is because, like every other fallen human being, he is under the Curse. The Curse is an objective state of poverty the effects of which we all are subject to feel deeply. The problem is not that we feel it, but what we do with it. Do we act selfishly, naively, defensively? Or, do we genuinely and thoroughly reflect the glory of God? The culture of the next four generations depends on it.

About seventy years ago in America, there began a new, higher plateau of commissive and ommissive greed; a new normal of naive, and otherwise misguided, self-interest. (See Joshua Harris "I Kissed Dating Goodbye"). Near the front of this 'New Greed's' advance into society was Ayn Rand, former lover of the former FED chairman, Alan Greenspan, and founder of what was then considered a cult of economic greed. Rand held that economic greed was a virtue, and that economic altruism was a vice. This was part of her radical new philosophy she called 'Objectivism'. She wanted to liberate individuals from the oppressions committed by basic institutions of social values, beginning with the family. She had identified certain evils with which she herself had been oppressed through these institutions, and proceeded to condemn the very kinds and instances of such institutions as contrary to the nature of the individual. Karl Marx did an exactly analogous thing, in regard to an opposite set of evils and their associated institutions.

Today, most people in the developed world still reject Rand's reversal of traditional, implicit, humanistic values. But, to reject the notions of greed-as-virtue and altruism-as-vice does not equal a genuine acceptance of their opposite: greed-as-vice, and altruism-as-virtue. This is because of the basic nature of the world in which we all must live: a world in which toilsome effort is required of a society in order for it to have a lifestyle above that of mere subsistence-at-best. Rand recognized that this fact of life was true for each individual as such. And, unlike Marx, she understood that it was inherently connected to the sacredness of individual autonomy. While Marx consciously identified the social and economic values of the natural family, Rand's emphasis on the individual had the deeper (but for her, unintended) perspective: families are made up of individuals.

But, deeper doesn't mean right. Rand's model of the world was simply the lesser of two evils. While it could be sustained longer, this has come, like Marx's model, at a cost. Neither Marx nor Rand had the full view, and there was a reason why. They both rejected that the nature of the present world implicitly presupposed a different world. They both thus were left only with the present world as a standard by which to judge its own problems. This, in effect, is the problem for all of us.

We all live in two worlds: the Real, and the Ideal. So, we would do well to know what they each actually are. Further, we need to keep them together with us so we can use each to help better understand the other, and thus our own lives.

Many Christians consider the story of Genesis 1 and 2 to be a useful myth. But, much of that usefulness is missed by thinking of the story as a myth. After all, even while believing it is a myth, many of its most important values can be seen only by thinking of it in literal terms. This is because seeing those values merely by analogy to what we know of in the present world depends on what we do know of in the present world. If all we know of, and if all we focus on, about the world is greatly imbalanced, then to mythologize the story likely will not correct the imbalance. There is a myth about sailors falling off the edge of the world, but it is useful only as analogy since there can be no such literal edge.

We naturally grant that a human-made myth will not likely show us much of any value, even if it is a story about human origins. And, most of us are prone to ignore any mythical story in favor of things which, right or wrong, are far more spelled out for us.

So, if the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is literal, and if we take it as a 'useful myth', then we complicate the initial problem when, in the natural course of our needy inquiries, we conclude as basically right a set of things which happen, in fact, to be a combination of both right and wrong ideas. Once a society takes any such impure set as normal, then the ugly snowball of blindly-pragmatic 'wisdom' keeps rolling down the mountain, compounding the speed with which it both accumulates such 'wisdom' and rejects the sacred scriptures as antiquated-at-best.

God created a man alone at first. This show many things. One thing is shows is that the individual has a primary value which cannot be subsumed to another individual, nor to the wider society. Another thing is that the individual needs companionship with his or her own kind, specifically of a fully mutually complimentary nature.

So, in creating a man alone, and only then creating a woman, God introduces the principle of social balance. This is contrary both to Rand and Marx, who arrived at their respective extremist views by having rejected Adam's story as superstitious myth.

Now, with the man and woman both created, we can say many more things about what it shows. Here are just two: God made one couple alone, and stopped, showing the primacy of the family to the wider society. It is the man-woman unit that produces all of human society. This means that the man-woman unit, and the manner of its formation, is paramount in the development and continuance of the good society---of a wise human culture.

Ayn Rand and Karl Marx fell off the edge of both the real and the ideal worlds. They rejected basic truths as myths, and made their own myths to fill the vacuum. They each ended up without either the true Real world or the true Ideal world. They were not just opposite extremes on a spectrum. They literally were two worlds apart.

But, in our day-to-day lives as Christians, it is not enough to consciously accept the claim of a literal, original, unfallen, world. In those same day-to-day lives, we do not automatically put its values into effect (see Focus On The Family's 'The Truth Project'). It takes effort. It takes sacrifice. It takes understanding. This effort and understanding is the essence of religion.

Never mind the traditions of pompousness, selfishness-driven peer-pressure, and other vices with which theistic pulpit-practice today is often imbued. Religion is not mainly theistic, nor mainly preaching. It is mainly human---a simple, humble recognition of the sort of 'boat' we all are in. The fact that a belief in God is most naturally associated with the integrity of the natural family, and with the sacredness of its autonomy, is simply an indication of the character of the God which the family presupposes. The most functionally healthy family, in terms of its individuals, gravitates toward, if not necessarily exists within, the worship of such a God. A flawed view of the family, society, and civilization necessarily leads to a flawed view of God. Adam worshipped God before Eve was made, yet such individual worship is incomplete, and Adam knew it.

Ayn Rand rejected both God and family because she had never seen much of the true forms of either. At fault was the greed of the modern Christian Church. If the Church exists----and it does---and if its true believers comprise the overwhelming ratio of the total U.S. population---and they may---then what, in God's name, is going on? Tell me, if you can, what is sacred, and why? Do not tell me that it is defined as 'anything that God says is sacred'. Tell me what you know in yourself as to what it is. And, then, tell me what it has to do with the original world?

Signs and wonders have an end---a purpose; they are not an end unto themselves. And, God does not approve of their being copied by superstitions the forces of which are generally available to every human being regardless of world-view. In other words, everyone has spiritual imagination. There's a right---and a wrong--way to live in the world. Miracles mentioned in the Bible were always for a point; they were never implied as a way of life. The way of life was first spelled out to the children of Israel---and is they who shall best live it out during the beginning of Christ's Millennial reign. It is they who, even now, keep some of the basic parts of it---contrary to the practice of popular Christianity. This is, in fact, one of the justified objections of orthodox Jews to Christian evangelism of their members: If you run down God's laws in both lanes on a two-way street, you have no business driving a car. Please get a taxi.

The Orthodox Jews are not without their God-given advantages. The sooner the 'Popular Christianity' Christian understands this, the better for everyone. You can't save souls whom you naively give good reason to reject your claim of Divine authority. The orthodox Jews do, in fact, have spiritual imagination, yet popular Christianity thinks they are just idiots who can't tell traditionism from their left foot. They know that it is YOU, the 'Popular Christianity' Christian, who are the idiot regarding certain very important things. After all, as you well know, God does not play favorites; he swears allegiance to no one, including those who live righteous lives by their own standards.

Spiritual imagination is how Ayn Rand freed herself from abuses committed in the name of altruism. Spiritual imagination is how Karl Marx freed himself from abuses committed in the name of individual economic autonomy. It's how everyone can see some error---and that error's associated truth---for what it is. But, with Rand and Marx as prime models of its singular effectiveness, spiritual imagination is not enough. That's why God is merciful, even unto the third, and fourth, generations of those that fear him and know his laws.

Most people today fall nearly in the middle between the extremes of Rand and Marx. They thus feel that they have a balanced view. The problem is that their exact position between these extremes is, in fact, ultimately random. In other words, they are naive. And, naive is no place to be in a basically disharmonious world. Think of the 'Happy Days' TV series: it was the epitome of socio-sexual naivete. My own dad took its culture for granted as being normative. He once wondered aloud why God 'designed human beings to become sexually mature so many years prior to attaining the social maturity necessary to handle it?' If you don't have even a hunch that this question is basically flawed in its understanding, then I may not be able to enlighten you by any amount of words.

Fortunately for me, my dad had a far more wise view of certain other facets of the fallen human life, and of human origins. It was from my inheriting of his belief in the literal Biblical story of Adam and Eve that I've learned by far most of what I know today, in all its complexities. In fact, I am even sane today only because of it, since I grew up with invisible socio-cognitive disabilities which effectively made me the prime prey of the greed of the modern, rationalistic, predatory, Christian Evangelical movement which Charles Finney championed-and-lived-to-regret-without-seeing-his-basic-mistake.

My dad knew almost nothing of what I know. He never could have imagined how deep the insights possible from the literal, Biblical model of human origins. But, he paved the way for me. And, what I have to tell you here is that the principle of sacred service---including, but not limited to, the tithe---has for so long been too-shallowly taught even by its best spokesmen. The result is everywhere: good, naive, Christian people who feel that the what, when, how, how much, and to whom or what is charitably rendered is ultimately a matter of personal sentiment; that what a person gives to the service of the sacred is rightly defined in terms which, in fact, Ayn Rand would have abided: a personal indulgence. Even that most tragically superstitious figure, 'Mother' Theresa, seemed to know this much. There is no such thing as a 'sense' of the sacred. Love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will.