Question #8, revisited because Saunier didn't accept my one word answer, dangit.

To review, the question was: What would the world be like if Adam and Eve had not sinned? My original answer was: "Better." Saunier (my teach) wants more, of course. Teachers always do..

So anyway, the reason I was bored with this question to the point of not answering it is because I am a discontented mess at all times, so I've thought this whole original sin concept through in my mind approx. 20 billion times and my thoughts go all over the place and it makes me want to die, the thinking, because ultimately I end up hating the answer I finally rest on (but it's the only answer my mind will let stay.)

But fine, whatever, I'll talk. Just be warned that when I talk, I really talk..aka this is going to be a long one so prepare yourself.

Alright. For starters, as I was walking around the Kesler Center aka the gym(ish) that I work at, I noticed this 40-something guy who is always in here, literally always, and I just got really sad and I want to tell him to go away, that he's obsessed, and that it's not like he looks any better than before anyway (and I can say that cuz seriously, I've seen him in here at least once if not twice a day everyday for the past 3 years that I've workd here and he looks the exact same and yeah maybe he's simply avoiding obesity, but in that case..well..just stop eating??)

Anyway the point of that is that it got my crazy mind running on and on about our human obsessions and how we're all so flawed which led me to think about the really bad stuff like rape and murder and even the hidden habits like bad thoughts or cursing God...and in Christianland these things are considered to be the worst, and even if we preach that all sin is the same, we don't practice that, be honest. But I was thinking about how sad it is that those things don't even matter because the real issue is that, even at our best, we've forgotten how good good really is, maybe because we've never seen it the way it could have/should have been, the way Adam and Eve saw it before they F-ed it all up. There's a line of one of my favorite Saosin songs that goes "We seem so far away from these things we used to know/We seem so far away from everything we are."

As for Adam and Eve..they had something to know. They knew goodness at it's most pure. They had uninhibited access to the God of the Universe. He was their lover and friend and confidant and...God. They had a world where it was safe to be stripped down to one's most bare self, a world without the need to buy products like makeup to cover up our shame or toys to push away pain..they had a oneness with animals and plants, nature, and everything was pure. I bet the air felt so good to breathe in, cool and refreshing.....you know the kind. There was no lonliness or greed or abuse or any of those things that each of us now carries around like we're carrying backpacks filled with bricks, like we're lugging around cars and mountains as mere humans. Now, well....we're so far away from that place that we don't even have anything to remember.

Fortunately, we have the hope (and the common sense) that each of us knows, in the core of us, that God exists and that's He's our dad. We're told in Psalm 19 of a general revelation that has been revealed to all creation, so that all of us have "heard word" of what's right and who/what we're supposed to be and of a special revelation that has occured in each of us..He was written on our hearts. Unfortunately, we're reminded in Romans that we choose to suppress these revelations and exchange the knowledge of God for idols. (People say the Bible doesn't make sense but I urge them to not give up on it, because someday..it will. How true are these passages in describing our hurting world?)

So the fact that we all have the knowledge is great, but the problem is that we know something is missing and we know something is not right and we kill and rape and become addicted to exercise or pornography or we commit suicide because we all know that this world is off..really really off from what it is supposed to be.. but we are so lost because we don't have a clear picture of what it's supposed to be!!!!!!!! Adam and Eve had a clear picture, they held a precious, immaculate painting and were careless with this unimaginably important work of art and spilt crap all over it, as if they were dancing in all their merriment and danced right into the punch bowl and now there's a big, ugly fruit punch stain all over God's world, and yeah, fruit punch tastes good, but not on canvas, and as it sits there it starts to mold and turn icky poo brown and erode the medium, just like their stupid original sin has eroded all of us and everything around us. Not to suggest that someone, eventually, wouldn't have messed it up anyway, and it only took Adam & Eve, what, like a day?? So yeah, if they hadn't done it, someone probably would have eventually done it, so sin was probably inevitable, but didn't God give us a chance to be more careful? To keep and take care of and forever remember and experience what was once so pure and so good? We had a chance to be more careful--it only takes one slip, one trip-up to knock over a punch bowl and stain the world, but just as accidents happen, they can also be avoided, and clearly we were capable of avoiding or else he never would have given us the chance to avoid it all in the first place. He never would have given us such a beautiful work of art. This leads me to a somewhat related thought:

He knew we'd mess it up, but he gave it to us anyway?

Well...why do I buy Jo expensive clothes when I know she'll stain them and grow out of them too soon? Because it gives me joy to see them on her even if they're only clean for a second, and because I want her to have the best that I can offer. God wanted to give us the best he could offer, and it saddens him to see it go, but isn't a stained beautiful shirt still a beautiful shirt underneath? Aren't some things so beautiful that not even the biggest, moldiest thing living on top could make it unbeautiful? Don't we blame the mold, not the beautiful shirt? Maybe God still sees his painting at it's best..maybe we, this, is so beautiful that it's worth it to have risked it being stained or altered from it's original design. What a loving and caring and involved and understanding and passionate Artist!

So the world doesn't suck so bad, in God's eyes, but I think that all of us have faced a time when we wished we would have watched our step, been a bit more careful, so that none of the beauty we'd stained had to be covered up.

The world would have been better. Better. If only we'd been more careful.