About Layman's Ass

In the Bible, specifically in Numbers 22-24, there is a story of how God used a donkey, or an ass to speak to one of His prophets. This story is commonly referred to as "Balaam's Ass" because Balaam was the name of the prophet, and it was his donkey through whom God spoke.
As a play on words, I called this blog "Layman's ass," first because I'm a layman (not a member of a clergy, nor a Bible college grad) and second, I would like to jump out in front of you as a reader and prevent you from accusing me of "speaking out of my ass," because as the title indicates, I am already admitting to doing so.
I manage a couple websites, and blog in several places, but this one will be my "theological" blog, my way of expressing thoughts on books, Biblical passages, sermons I hear, and other Christian and religious topics as they come my way.

A garden, two trees and the art of not enjoying sex

I grew up in a form of fundamentalism that made clear distinctions between right and wrong, black and white, and good vs. bad. If you were a Christian, then you were supposed to be "saved from sin." We practiced a form of Pentecostalism that made everything in the "spirtual realm" good and holy, and everything in nature (or in the flesh) bad. It was this kind of dichotomy that kept Jimmy Swaggart twisted in spiritual and emotional knots for years.
Later, I encountered another form of fundamentalism that came straight from Bob Jones University. I attended a Christian School that believed in the Bible as the literal, inspired, and infallible Word of God. In the simplest description, this meant if it can be found in the Bible it was true, and not only true but was meant to be a model for how we lived- in thought, word, and deed.
So, for example if there happened to be a story in the Old Testament about a man named Onan whom God kills for "spilling his seed on the ground" a fundamentalist must infer that it must be a sin to spill one's seed on the ground. So- by its very nature, this means that masturbation, contraception and for a male, any other means of spilling one's seed must be a sin. I can't tell you what this way of thinking does to a teenage boy.
In my 20's I attended a non-denominational somewhat independent church and found new theological positions that freed me from fundamentalism, but in my opinion didn't go far enough. My pastor at the time spent a large amount of time talking about Adam and Eve in the garden, How God has a plan for our lives, that we are to cultivate our sphere of influence, yadda yadda.

I think the important part of the story of the garden isn't what humanity was supposed to do- but in what Humanity did.

I don't want to spend a bunch of time talking about whether there was an actual Adam and Eve, or if the story is an allegory, or if it is a contrast of some other culture's creation accounts. What I do want to focus on is the fact that in the story, Adam and Eve were innocent, not only without sin- but without a knowledge of what the concept of right and wrong were. They could literally do no wrong.
So, as the story goes- there were two trees in the garden. One was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the other was the tree of life. We all know the story- Whether it was Eve's fault, Adam's, or the serpent's they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in Genesis 3:7 "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths."
So, never mind utopia, and forget about what was supposed to happen in the garden. Everything was ruined, everything was going to change, and the next time they see God, the "fit is going to hit the shan."
The church, and theologians have had differing opinions about what this meant for humanity moving forward. Some have taught, that ever since this event humanity has been tainted. We're born with a propensity to sin, and if we are all born with this tainted nature, then it is logical to assume that we're passing it on generationally somehow. Is it in the blood? Is it through taught behaviors? During a particularly dark period in the church, it was even thought that sin was passed down during the act of sex itself. (So if a baby could be born without someone enjoying the act of sex, then the conception would be immaculate.) This led to all kinds of whacked-out teachings for a while, and people actually tried to "do it" in such a way as to impart as little sin as they could (meaning, they tried not to enjoy it) during conception. (the origin of the missionary position?)

This is just one example of the extremes and the extent to which humanity can become hung-up on worrying about sin, trying to avoid it, and eventually screwing ourselves up spiritually, emotionally and even physically worrying about trying to "be good." I think, that the true nature of THE FALL was to ruin our capacity for innocence. To fart without fear of consequence, to stink, to fail and get back up, to be dirty and not wash, to be and do everything that Elizabethan Era England wasn't.

In the book Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoffer he addresses the concept of dichotomy (the concept of two spheres) by saying that "So too, today, when Christianity is employed as a polemical weapon against the secular, this must be done in the name of a better secularity and above all it must not lead back to a static predominance of the spiritual sphere as an end in itself. It is only in this sense, as a poloemical unity, that Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms be accepted, and it was no doubt in this sense that it was originally intended."

He uses Matthew 7, "Judge not, lest you be judged" as a statement against not only avoiding the pitfall of condemning others, but to be like Christ, and stop trying to make distinctions between right and wrong- since the act of trying to discern right and wrong are born out of a sinful act in the first place.

In Christ, there is no room for right and wrong- only the will of the Father against the propensity to place everything in two camps. There is no debate over clean and unclean, or death and life, or appropriate and inappropriate; in Christ's mind, it is only the will of the Father, and everything else. In Christ there is no guilt or shame, there is no sense of the spirit as separate from nature. Christ didn't come to teach us the difference between right and wrong, or to judge us- but to free us from the bondage of constantly worrying about right and wrong.

This is the true nature of the Good News of the Gospel of Christ. We're screwed up, we're hung up over our own guilt and shame, we sin further by trying to make sense of it, and Christ has come to free us of that conflict, to make us whole- to remove the dichotomy, to allow us to be both natural and spiritual at the same time.

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden appear couresy of Passion for Paintings