Tenchi
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Genesis 3:1-6
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"
4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die!
5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"
4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die!
5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
Since the Fall in Eden, human beings have struggled with self-centeredness. It’s the heart of the “curse” of sin inherited from Adam. We all have a natural propensity to serve ourselves and to do so to a radical degree, even sacrificing the well-being of others, if necessary, in service to what we want. It’s vital to our survival, of course, to be self-interested: If I don’t feed myself, and rest myself, clothe and shelter myself, I won’t last long. But this necessary self-interest, warped by the “curse” of the Fall, pursued apart from the control of the Holy Spirit, tends toward pathology and destruction.
Satan appealed to Eve’s natural self-interest, not yet warped by willful rebellion toward God, urging her to think that her Maker had kept the best from her and that if she ate of the Forbidden Fruit, she’d be “like God, knowing good from evil” (Genesis 3:5). What could be wrong with gaining greater parity with Him, with being more like God? Helped by Satan’s lies, Eve’s thinking narrowed destructively to her own self-interest; and as it did, she lost sight of everything else. Forget the incredible delights of Eden; forget walking in unhindered fellowship with her Maker in the cool of each day; forget the dire warning of God about the death-producing effect of the Forbidden Fruit; all that mattered was that Eve would be “like God” – or so she thought. In this is illustrated perhaps the most peculiar feature of human self-interest: Given its head, human self-interest works against the well-being of the individual and as it does, there is an increasing inability to see that this is so.
Along with this damaging blindness, human self-centeredness can also grow highly irrational. The idea that by eating some fruit, no matter how remarkable, Eve could attain to equality with God, that she could rise to His level, is obviously silly; but natural human self-interest is such that it can be inflamed to an irrational, and even lethal, level. Eve had been warned that death, not godhood, would follow the eating of the Forbidden Fruit, but the prospect of being “like God” appeared to overcome all concern for her survival. Like the heroin, or alcohol, or food addict, Eve’s desire to serve herself drove her, against all reason, toward her own destruction.
The same myopic, irrational self-centeredness that characterized Eve’s sinful choice in Eden afflicts modern, North American culture. Today, the cultural hyper-focus on the individual, the belief in the supremacy of one’s feelings, thoughts and desires over all else, has moved many into the very same blind, delusional and self-destructive course that Eve followed. The shape of over-indulged self-interest has appeared in a societal abandonment of belief in God and a necessarily-resulting disconnect from objective and absolute Truth; in the nature of Reality taking on an absurd quality, devoid of objective morality, meaning, and value; and in the rise of delusion, despair and death.
Consider the migration of abortion toward the murder of the newly-born, not just the unborn, child. Among the most eager and radical baby-killers there’s open talk now of killing children even weeks, or months, after their birth. It’s dawning on folks that many of the arguments made in justification of the murder of the unborn can be made against any toddler, also. It’s no surprise, then, to hear of late-term babies that have survived abortion in clinics being left to expire on countertops, or in sinks, their beating hearts and plaintive cries ignored.
Consider the expansion of euthanasia that now encompasses the merely depressed and economically disadvantaged rather than the fatally-ill. Feeling suicidal for whatever reason, or only just uncomfortable and unhappy? There’s a sleek, painless death-pod ready and waiting to speed you to your end. Set it on a mountainside, or at the beach, gather your friends around for a death-party, climb inside and, while your loved-ones watch, suicide yourself.
Consider the bizarre confusion over gender. As the meaning of “man” and “woman” are debated, the denigration of women by men has taken on astonishing and grotesque proportions. Men have begun to caricature women, pretending to femininity in exaggerated, even clownish degree. Competing against males in sports, sharing their locker rooms, bathrooms and jail cells with males, females have suffered beatings, rape, and humiliation. Men pretending to be women have made futile the many years of dedicated training and sacrifice women have endured to be the best among their own sex; men have taken over as icons of womanly beauty, displayed on billboards and magazine covers as models of femininity; men are celebrated as “Woman of the Year,” winning beauty pageants, and lauded as “brave,” and “courageous” for making women appear grotesque and ridiculous.
Consider how racism is decried on one hand but approved and justified on the other, no sense of the deep inconsistency in this thinking apparent. Incredibly racist things are said today about white people – even to the point of suggesting their extermination – without any public censure. But to say the same things about a black, or Asian, or Middle-Eastern person is the height of evil. Though a bloody war was fought in rejection of the horrendous idea that racism is appropriate in certain directions rather than evil in all directions, for a growing number of people in North America, such an idea has come again into vogue.
Consider the terrible butchery of children in the name of “affirmation.” Today, a child who succumbs to the influence of trans-gender ideology foisted upon them from every direction, declaring themselves to be “in the wrong body” as a result, is happily chemically-castrated, developmentally stunted, and even surgically-altered, breasts cut off, genitals deformed, large lumps of flesh cut out of arms and sewn to groins, and so on. With great enthusiasm, adults eager to virtue-signal, to demonstrate their “compassion,” sacrifice their children to the cult of transgenderism.
All of these awful things arise ultimately from the God-defying selfishness that caused the Fall of Man in Eden: My baby interferes with my happiness, so I’ll kill it; I’m dissatisfied with my life, so I’ll end it; I want to be other than what I am, so I’ll pretend to be what I’m not, even if I’m made grotesque - and others, ridiculous - in the process; I resent those who once oppressed my kind, and I believe they hinder my own success and happiness, so they should be persecuted and destroyed; I want so badly to show everyone how compassionate and tolerant I am that I’ll even warp and mutilate my child in an effort to do so. And so on. In any and every instance where human self-interest is permitted to express itself without constraint, apart from God’s authority, and in rebellion to His commands and design, this sort of blindness, irrationality, and destructiveness always results. But, as God did with Eve in Eden, He has warned us plainly that this will be case:
Proverbs 16:25
25 There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 1:21-32
21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips,
30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
