Groundwork
Imagine a world where everyone has all they need; where there is no conflict; and where people live in harmony with nature. It shouldn’t be hard — science fiction has provided us with no shortage of stories about advanced civilizations that are free from the troubles that plague our own. These stories generally contain some conflict — a necessary element of stories — which invariably is caused by humans. Either the advanced civilization, created by humans, is built on some horrible secret; or the advanced civilization is alien and humans are somehow in conflict with it. Humans are always the problem.
Science fiction in the western world, like everything else in the western world, is rooted in Christianity, which is — in theory — based on the Bible, and the Bible starts out with a world where everyone has what they need; where there is no conflict; and where people live in harmony with nature. Then, humans ruin it. And, given opportunity after opportunity, over and over, all through the Bible, humans continue to ruin it. We are the villains in our story.
I want to spend a moment on the Bible’s beginning, Genesis 1, because it is both very well known and not known at all. The Bible that I use is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) which tells us, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’”, Genesis 1:26. The King James Version (KJV) uses “man” where the NRSV uses “humankind”. The Hebrew word, rendered in Roman letters, is “adam” and “humankind” or “humanity” is the proper translation. In Genesis 2:21–22, we find, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” The Hebrew does not say “rib”, but “side”, in the sense that one side was taken from the “man”, who we were told earlier was a personification of humanity. The “woman” becomes called “Eve”, which is derived from “chavah”, “living” or “life”.
Adam and Eve, then, are living humanity. The narrative treats them as two individuals, but anyone who knew ancient Hebrew would understand that characters named “Life” and “Humanity” were metaphors. It’s pretty clear. If you’ve read Pilgrim’s Progress, you’ve encountered characters with names like “Giant Despair” and “Mr. Talkative” and, if you’re like me, thought “Geez, this isn’t exactly subtle symbolism.” That’s what ancient Jews would have thought of Genesis.
Humanity lived, according to the foundational document of western civilization, in a very enviable state. Until people ruined it. How did they ruin it? The Bible tells us that they decided to rely on their own ingenuity instead of on God’s wisdom. That’s what the symbols refer to — not to a talking snake and an apple. People decided that simply living in a world of plenty wasn’t good enough. They invented envy and violence — I jumped ahead to Genesis 4 there. My intention isn’t to explicate the entire book of Genesis — I’m just laying some groundwork.
The Bible goes on — and on and on, sometimes tediously — about the rise and fall of nations, always focusing on the two main problems, envy, which is an aspect of greed, and violence, which usually comes about because of envy or greed. The Bible isn’t primarily a history textbook, of course, but if you read any actual history textbook, you’ll get the same thing — humans are greedy and violent — and that’s why we don’t live in a happy world where everyone has all they need; where there is no conflict; and where people live in harmony with nature.
I said I was laying groundwork. I intend to continue writing in this forum, and to build on what I’ve written here. I want to be clear from the outset that I am a Christian, living in the United States, a country which I believe is near to falling apart — or being torn apart. Some people might still be able to believe the lies the USA has traditionally told about itself, but I see it as a nation built on greed and violence, whose end will come just like all the other Babylons that came before. I desire the world I described — the one presented in Genesis, which the Bible tells will exist in a new and different way in the future. This is what I will be writing about — the Biblical presentation of the problems of greed and violence, as acted out by people; and how, I believe, we can do something different.
Let me repeat: we can do something different. The Old Testament foretells the coming of an individual, appointed by God, to bring about the new world. The New Testament makes the claim that that individual came, and it was Jesus of Nazareth. Jews, who don’t accept the New Testament’s claim, are still waiting. Christians are waiting for Jesus to come back and make everything lovely — and I think that’s the wrong way to go about it. I do not believe that the job of the followers of Christ is to passively wait for Jesus to do the work, meanwhile participating in the world’s greed and violence. I believe, to the core of my being, that the job of Christians is to bring about the new world, the new and different Eden, the world where everyone has all they need; where there is no conflict; and where people live in harmony with nature. Not only do I believe that this can be done, I believe that it is inevitable that it will be done because that’s what I read in the Bible.