I love apples. The are usually my favorite fruit, save the few times the orange comes in to reign for sporadic times in the year.
It is disturbing to me that in pictures and in plays regarding the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden: The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they always use an apple. I even think I have heard sermons where the priest or pastor has actually referred to Eve taking a bite of the apple.
That said....
I have been wondering about this "Knowledge of Good and Evil"
J. will tell you that the events that took place in Garden of Eden, and quite possibly the garden itself, is more likely a folktale passed down by Jewish fathers to their children to better explain how man screwed up. (I am not sure on his theory completely because it was merely something I heard him speak briefly between pizza and homemade beer at church one saturday afternoon).
Nonetheless, whatever your thoughts are regarding the Garden. One truth remains.
At some point in time.
In some significant way.
Humans, created by God...
discovered that they had an evil inside of them.
And for lack of a better way to say it, I believe God has an evil side to him. Or at least I know that he holds evil inside. He has to, otherwise how did we get it? We were made in his image.... in his likeness.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that nothing but good comes from God. God does not hate anyone, I don't care what Slayer says. (Oh shit.... Tom Araya is at my front door! --- Sorry a little Slayer humor) Still, God has evil. He has everything. But he is God, so he knows how to control the evil.
Now, I have established in past blogs my evolving process of understanding about how finite the devil is. The devil as in Lucifer. Even more so, devils and demons and such. Listen, I believe they have the power to possess and torment, I do. In my younger years when my beliefs and my tongue gave power to them I watched them possess friends of mine. I ran youth groups where at times we had to cast out demons. I have been physically overpowered by girls half my size who were possessed, i have sat on a persons body with 10 other people to try and hold them down as the demons squirmed in his flesh.... I could go on; however, I am not trying to boast that. If I knew then what I know now, those things -- those situations would never have escalated like that. I digress...
The knowledge of good and evil --- the knowledge of evil is not to be confused with Satan, devils or demons. I have evil inside of me. I know about it. I know what's right and what's wrong. Not because someone wrote me a book about whats right and wrong, but because as I grew up in my body I grew up in my mind and I began to see the world around me. And as I grew in body I grew in my knowledge of what was good and what was evil.
The devil did not come to me as he came to those in the garden or even as he came to Jesus when he tempted him for 40 days. Lucifer would not waste his time, because he knows that humans do not need his help discovering what evil is.
Mira:
Romans 1:28-32
28 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Notice the line I highlighted. Who is inventing the sin? Not demons. Read the full context. Humans. Men and Women alike. ME. WE. We invent our sins.
You know that saying, "It's only a law because some ass hole did it."
Well...
People think God came down and gave the Ten Commandments and set a standard for Adam and Eve. The Ten Commandments were given somewhere between 1300 and 1700 BC depending on who you talk to. Without going into too much detail.... basically, man was messing up well before those laws were dropped. If you read further in the specific laws decreed unto man in The Pentateuch (first 5 books of the bible) you read plainly that Man has been perverting the ways of life for a long time. I mean, if you gotta tell people not to stick their thang thangs in mens butts or livestock.... I mean... WTF Chuck? But read it. It's there. Can you imagine God.... I mean its funny really. Think about a father watching their child. The kid doesn't know that the dad is watching him. So he opens the gum wrapper and starts chewing the gum. Dad thinks, 'He knows he shouldn't be eating gum, where did he get that gum?' Then the dad watches the son pull the gum out and play with it... the gum ends up in his hair, the boy starts crying, dad intervenes. I can see God in the same situation, only he's looking down at a sheep herder out alone in the pasture one night watching the sheep. Then watches as the sheep herder attempts to rob a lamb of its virginity. God had to have been like, "Wait... what the... HEY!!! What the heck are you doing!?!?!? NO NO NO!!!!!" So God had to come down and give rules about it. Man should not be with man, man should not be with livestock, man should not be with hand, etc.
The knowledge of evil.
I have, for sometime now, been trying to control my evil. I used to blame it on the devil. The devil made me do it, the devil tempted me.... blah blah blah. But the Devil has no power over me. I gave my heart to Christ. He holds it and I am now a child of God, nothing can change that. The word of God says that demons tremble at the name of Jesus. So what am I afraid of. What sickness, what debt, what trouble can hold me down?
Yet, while I say I gave my heart to Christ... what I mean is I have committed my spirit to Christ. My flesh belongs to the world. Not because it has too, but because in the sense of what "HEART" means. I give my heart to this world and the things that please my evil everyday. And I know this.
It is an amazing thing this knowledge of Good and Evil.
I do good all day long. Ask my wife. Ask my friends.
I know I try and do good to them and for them.
I have a knowledge of what is good and what being good to them means.
And they have learned to love me for the good I do.
But I also have this evil inside of me.
It makes me think evil things.
Or I let it allow me to think evil things.
And I plot evil sometimes.
And I do evil things sometimes.
But I understand this today.
Because I am HIS. Because I belong to the ONE.
Abba Father, Jehovah Jireh, YHWH, the Alpha and the Omega.
I am not BAD.
I am not evil.
My buddy always has to tell me, "We're good" when I mess up.
And that's what I am with God.
Good. Not because I do good things, but because God is good and he does good things and he DID a good thing.
This is love. To screw up with someone repeatedly and they can look at you and say, "We're good. Not because I don't think you'll ever screw up again or because I don't think you'll ever drop the ball again, but because I love you and you are mine!"
This knowledge of good and evil.
THE APPLE.
It's an interesting thing to understand.
The devil DID make me do it.
Yes, I can say this.
But only when I am looking in the mirror.
-tryingtofindabalance
find this song and download it.
"Letter From God": Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
Hey There, how, how’s it going?
Long time no see.
I know I haven’t been around much lately
But…it didn’t seem like you wanted me to be
The last time I sent down a message you nailed it to the cross
So I figured I’d just leave you to it, let you be your own boss
But I’ve been keeping an eye on you, I have, and it’s amazing how you’ve grown.
With your technological advances and the problems you’ve overthrown,
And all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and such finesse,
But I admit there are a few things I’m afraid have impressed me less.
So I’m writing to apologize for all the horrors committed in my name,
Although that was never what I intended, I feel I should take my share of the blame.
All the good I tried to do was corrupted when organised religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered
Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
With all these new morals and ethics, survival of the fittest was gone
No longer could the biggest man simply take whatever he needed
‘cause damnation was the price if certain rules were not heeded
Some of the deeds committed in my name just made me wonder were I went wrong.
Back at the start when I created this, the foundation seemed so strong.
See all the elements were already here, long before I began, I just kind of put it all together
I didn’t really think out a long-term plan.
I made the sun an appropriate distance and laid the stars across the sky
So you could navigate the globe or simply watch the sun rise
I covered the earth with plants and fruits,
Some for sustenance and some for beauty
I made the sun shine and the clouds rain so their maintenance wasn’t your duty
I tried to give each creature its own attributes without making them enveloped
I gave you all your own space to grow and in your own way space to develop
I didn’t know such development would cause rifts and jealousy
Cause you go to war against each other and leave marks on this planet indelibly
You see, I wasn’t really the creator, I was just the curator of nature
I want to get something straight with homosexuals right now: I don’t hate ya
I was a simple being that happened to be the first to wield such powers
I just laid the ground, it was You that built the towers
It was You that invented bombs, and the fear that comes with them
And it was You that invented money, and the corrupt economic systems
You invented terms like just-war and terms like friendly fire
And it was You that didn’t know when to stop digging deeper, when to stop building higher
It was You that exhausted the resources I carefully laid out on this earth,
And it was You that even saw these problems coming but accredited them little worth
It was You that used my teachings for your own personal gain
And it was You that committed such tragedies, even though they were in my name
So I apologize for any mistakes I made, and when my words misconstrued
But this apology’s to mother nature, cause I created you
It is disturbing to me that in pictures and in plays regarding the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden: The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they always use an apple. I even think I have heard sermons where the priest or pastor has actually referred to Eve taking a bite of the apple.
That said....
I have been wondering about this "Knowledge of Good and Evil"
J. will tell you that the events that took place in Garden of Eden, and quite possibly the garden itself, is more likely a folktale passed down by Jewish fathers to their children to better explain how man screwed up. (I am not sure on his theory completely because it was merely something I heard him speak briefly between pizza and homemade beer at church one saturday afternoon).
Nonetheless, whatever your thoughts are regarding the Garden. One truth remains.
At some point in time.
In some significant way.
Humans, created by God...
discovered that they had an evil inside of them.
And for lack of a better way to say it, I believe God has an evil side to him. Or at least I know that he holds evil inside. He has to, otherwise how did we get it? We were made in his image.... in his likeness.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that nothing but good comes from God. God does not hate anyone, I don't care what Slayer says. (Oh shit.... Tom Araya is at my front door! --- Sorry a little Slayer humor) Still, God has evil. He has everything. But he is God, so he knows how to control the evil.
Now, I have established in past blogs my evolving process of understanding about how finite the devil is. The devil as in Lucifer. Even more so, devils and demons and such. Listen, I believe they have the power to possess and torment, I do. In my younger years when my beliefs and my tongue gave power to them I watched them possess friends of mine. I ran youth groups where at times we had to cast out demons. I have been physically overpowered by girls half my size who were possessed, i have sat on a persons body with 10 other people to try and hold them down as the demons squirmed in his flesh.... I could go on; however, I am not trying to boast that. If I knew then what I know now, those things -- those situations would never have escalated like that. I digress...
The knowledge of good and evil --- the knowledge of evil is not to be confused with Satan, devils or demons. I have evil inside of me. I know about it. I know what's right and what's wrong. Not because someone wrote me a book about whats right and wrong, but because as I grew up in my body I grew up in my mind and I began to see the world around me. And as I grew in body I grew in my knowledge of what was good and what was evil.
The devil did not come to me as he came to those in the garden or even as he came to Jesus when he tempted him for 40 days. Lucifer would not waste his time, because he knows that humans do not need his help discovering what evil is.
Mira:
Romans 1:28-32
28 Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
Notice the line I highlighted. Who is inventing the sin? Not demons. Read the full context. Humans. Men and Women alike. ME. WE. We invent our sins.
You know that saying, "It's only a law because some ass hole did it."
Well...
People think God came down and gave the Ten Commandments and set a standard for Adam and Eve. The Ten Commandments were given somewhere between 1300 and 1700 BC depending on who you talk to. Without going into too much detail.... basically, man was messing up well before those laws were dropped. If you read further in the specific laws decreed unto man in The Pentateuch (first 5 books of the bible) you read plainly that Man has been perverting the ways of life for a long time. I mean, if you gotta tell people not to stick their thang thangs in mens butts or livestock.... I mean... WTF Chuck? But read it. It's there. Can you imagine God.... I mean its funny really. Think about a father watching their child. The kid doesn't know that the dad is watching him. So he opens the gum wrapper and starts chewing the gum. Dad thinks, 'He knows he shouldn't be eating gum, where did he get that gum?' Then the dad watches the son pull the gum out and play with it... the gum ends up in his hair, the boy starts crying, dad intervenes. I can see God in the same situation, only he's looking down at a sheep herder out alone in the pasture one night watching the sheep. Then watches as the sheep herder attempts to rob a lamb of its virginity. God had to have been like, "Wait... what the... HEY!!! What the heck are you doing!?!?!? NO NO NO!!!!!" So God had to come down and give rules about it. Man should not be with man, man should not be with livestock, man should not be with hand, etc.
The knowledge of evil.
I have, for sometime now, been trying to control my evil. I used to blame it on the devil. The devil made me do it, the devil tempted me.... blah blah blah. But the Devil has no power over me. I gave my heart to Christ. He holds it and I am now a child of God, nothing can change that. The word of God says that demons tremble at the name of Jesus. So what am I afraid of. What sickness, what debt, what trouble can hold me down?
Yet, while I say I gave my heart to Christ... what I mean is I have committed my spirit to Christ. My flesh belongs to the world. Not because it has too, but because in the sense of what "HEART" means. I give my heart to this world and the things that please my evil everyday. And I know this.
It is an amazing thing this knowledge of Good and Evil.
I do good all day long. Ask my wife. Ask my friends.
I know I try and do good to them and for them.
I have a knowledge of what is good and what being good to them means.
And they have learned to love me for the good I do.
But I also have this evil inside of me.
It makes me think evil things.
Or I let it allow me to think evil things.
And I plot evil sometimes.
And I do evil things sometimes.
But I understand this today.
Because I am HIS. Because I belong to the ONE.
Abba Father, Jehovah Jireh, YHWH, the Alpha and the Omega.
I am not BAD.
I am not evil.
My buddy always has to tell me, "We're good" when I mess up.
And that's what I am with God.
Good. Not because I do good things, but because God is good and he does good things and he DID a good thing.
This is love. To screw up with someone repeatedly and they can look at you and say, "We're good. Not because I don't think you'll ever screw up again or because I don't think you'll ever drop the ball again, but because I love you and you are mine!"
This knowledge of good and evil.
THE APPLE.
It's an interesting thing to understand.
The devil DID make me do it.
Yes, I can say this.
But only when I am looking in the mirror.
-tryingtofindabalance
find this song and download it.
"Letter From God": Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
Hey There, how, how’s it going?
Long time no see.
I know I haven’t been around much lately
But…it didn’t seem like you wanted me to be
The last time I sent down a message you nailed it to the cross
So I figured I’d just leave you to it, let you be your own boss
But I’ve been keeping an eye on you, I have, and it’s amazing how you’ve grown.
With your technological advances and the problems you’ve overthrown,
And all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and such finesse,
But I admit there are a few things I’m afraid have impressed me less.
So I’m writing to apologize for all the horrors committed in my name,
Although that was never what I intended, I feel I should take my share of the blame.
All the good I tried to do was corrupted when organised religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered
Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
With all these new morals and ethics, survival of the fittest was gone
No longer could the biggest man simply take whatever he needed
‘cause damnation was the price if certain rules were not heeded
Some of the deeds committed in my name just made me wonder were I went wrong.
Back at the start when I created this, the foundation seemed so strong.
See all the elements were already here, long before I began, I just kind of put it all together
I didn’t really think out a long-term plan.
I made the sun an appropriate distance and laid the stars across the sky
So you could navigate the globe or simply watch the sun rise
I covered the earth with plants and fruits,
Some for sustenance and some for beauty
I made the sun shine and the clouds rain so their maintenance wasn’t your duty
I tried to give each creature its own attributes without making them enveloped
I gave you all your own space to grow and in your own way space to develop
I didn’t know such development would cause rifts and jealousy
Cause you go to war against each other and leave marks on this planet indelibly
You see, I wasn’t really the creator, I was just the curator of nature
I want to get something straight with homosexuals right now: I don’t hate ya
I was a simple being that happened to be the first to wield such powers
I just laid the ground, it was You that built the towers
It was You that invented bombs, and the fear that comes with them
And it was You that invented money, and the corrupt economic systems
You invented terms like just-war and terms like friendly fire
And it was You that didn’t know when to stop digging deeper, when to stop building higher
It was You that exhausted the resources I carefully laid out on this earth,
And it was You that even saw these problems coming but accredited them little worth
It was You that used my teachings for your own personal gain
And it was You that committed such tragedies, even though they were in my name
So I apologize for any mistakes I made, and when my words misconstrued
But this apology’s to mother nature, cause I created you
2 comments:
It is all good. If we are capable of so much evil, you know we are capable of just as much good, and it isn't a matter of trying anymore to differentiate between the two, it is a matter of living in a way that God is doing the differentiating for you. No more, no less. It is all about leaving it all up to God. I suck at this, but I strive for it.
Hey! I got your message sorry I haven't called you yet I haven't forgot you! :-)
Try:
Jazz Apples
Cara Cara Oranges
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