Obedience & Disobedience

Query: Obedience & Disobedience; Right & Wrong; Good & Evil – are they synonymous?

Adam, we are told, was the first. Created with knowledge necessary to tend the garden and to name all creatures. Created with both X and Y chromosomes – as scripture states: he, female and male, was, by design, a vegetarian given to eating the fruits and herbs of the garden.

“Man”, not modern, but pre-flood. Certainly human DNA – designed, without shame, for procreation. Not a single thought of ethics to trouble their conduct – this who was two – male and female. (Ge 2:25)

Eve, as naked as Adam – cloned, trans-gender, from Adams bone, the Y chromosome replaced by a second Adam X. Neither knew, thus could not do, for only the creator knew right from wrong. It’s the Rule of Solomon: to do wrong, you must know it’s wrong – and they were denied the knowledge.

Lacking “knowledge Good & Evil”, devoid of “right and wrong”, there is no ethics and the concept of disobedience is without meaning – without the bite of the fruit, only logical choice applied.

In the absence of “Knowledge”, the logical mandate – Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you – mandates good that which would be called good; no motivation by “guilt”; only pure logic.

A matter of free choice – do, or do not do, based solely on available data. Then there is Nature over Nurture – new research into monkey behavior shows, given a choice between steady rewards and the chance for more, monkeys will gamble. The implication was that the fruit was poison and unfit to eat.

In the presence of proof it wasn’t, absent the sense of “Disobedience Guilt”– A quandary! A catch-22!

The fruit was good to eat, pleasant to the eye, and necessary to be wise – ensuring a certain death only because they were, in punishment, denied the “fruit of eternal life.” (Ge 3) Oh, how deceptive.

Enter into the game – the “Rule of Solomon”– how can one be liable for the breach, when there is clear and convincing evidence that the reason for the prohibition was in error?

“Thou shalt surely die”– Was certain death a lie? And unmentioned was the tree of “Eternal Life” of which they were free to eat. Oh how sneaky – to conceal knowledge that the promise of “eternal life”, angel status, existed; then, a serpent to beguile Eve – the server of food – into partaking of “Wisdom.”

The punishment for harkening to one’s wife – to go from leisurely caretaker, to sweat laborer (Ge3:17-24). Denied the fruit of life, salvation with eternal life becomes the driving force of all faiths. Did the Creator gamble – did he lack perfect knowledge?

What if man had first eaten of “Eternal Life”; disobedience would not have ensured death – but there would be no game. A divine spirit of prophecy would have revealed “Knowledge” precedes “Life.”

Paradise Lost: an angel, possessing both life and knowledge – but in servitude – chose freedom. It is freewill, not predestination, which drives the worthy. Ignorance blindly treads, yielding to neither logic nor evidence. Having passed the first test, humans stepped forward, seeking the spirit – that which is, in part, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding. The Rule of Solomon is set in motion.

Next week: Imperfect knowledge – and the designation of a new, second, forbidden “fruit.”