Although I have not read every word in the Bible, I have read in my opinion enough to have an opinion. And no, I’m neither a theologian nor a literalist. Just a guy who picked up the Bible and read a bit, more, I confess than I read in the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Upanishads, all of which I have also picked up to read at times. In all those books and in the passed on wisdom of the Buddha, I sense an underlying, if not explicit, assumption that pride is on average the biggest moral NONO. It’s pride, for example, that enables one to lord over another, to rob another, and to injure or kill another. Sure, there are other motives involved; greed, we could argue, underlies slavery, lust underlies sex slavery, and the other Seven Deadlies underlie behaviors that we might associate with pride, including its excessive form: vanity. If I were so bold as to rewrite the Ten Commandments, I might simplify all of them with a single dictum: “Be not proud” or its synonymous “Be humble.” (Or, for devotees of the King James Version: “Be ye not proud.”)
I suppose that many people believe that the first sin had something to do with sex—what with all that nakedness in Paradise and nobody to watch what was going on. But the two creation stories in Genesis—yes, there are two—provide a context for ascribing the first sin to pride. * In the first creation story (chapter 1) God tells Adam that he is forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the second story, after her creation, Eve encounters the serpent who asks her why she can’t eat from that one tree. The serpent then tells her that upon eating the fruit, she will find her “eyes opened” and that with Adam, she will be like a god. Tell me that isn’t the groundwork for an act of pride. Nothing says “You can’t tell me what I can or cannot do” more than eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Pride is always part of or on the edge of human actions involving authority and individualism, as every rebellious generation runs counter to the previous generation, swinging the social, philosophical, and psychological pendulum. It is the issue of Big Government bureaucrats’ intrusion into the lives of individuals; it underlies the quandary of choosing between any governing person or body and personal freedom. It lies at the heart of collectivism and individualism. Conformity in the extreme is acquiescence; rebellion is self reliance. Both sides of the issue are manifestations of pride, the collectivist deigning that all must follow whatever he writes as law, and the individualist rejecting dicta and accepting the role as a god on Earth, fully aware of the knowledge of good and evil. Pride feeds the root of rebellion, and it seems to be destined to reveal itself either subtly or overtly. If in this year you want to see it subtle variations, watch on-the-street interviews of Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine. In fear that opposition to the official position means imprisonment, those who wish to rebel say, “I cannot comment.”
So, a couple of 2022 stories from America illustrate the quandary over whether or not to east from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to become “like gods,” as the serpent says. First, there’s a story of a ten-year-old girl in Hawaii who, having been bullied by another girl or girls, drew some picture that some of her classmates reported to the bully’s mother. That mother called the school to tell them to call the police. The police showed up at the school, and they carted the ten-year-old artist off in handcuffs. ** How does this story illustrate the quandary? The “offended” mother decided that she could determine what was Good and Evil, and she decided that her Good outweighed the Evil of the ten-year-old. And the police who responded, acknowledging the folly of the complaint still acted to arrest the girl for drawing the picture and supposedly putting on it the word kill plus curse words. They acquiesced, gave up their commonsense, and conformed regardless of their own sense of what was good and what was evil, the latter being the arrest of a hurt child whose only response was to draw a picture. * Big Government (school authorities and police) can control individuals because it makes no exceptions to its rules unless the government officials du jour decide pridefully that their personal agendas are more important than both law and commonsense. In the instance of the little girl, the police obeyed the commandment against violence drawn on a sheet of paper, ignoring, by the way, Big Government’s own rules about freedom of speech.
Second, there’s the story of the bishop in Peoria, Illinois, who has forbidden some Catholics to pray the Rosary in the cathedral during their “March for Catholics” at the end of September. The Catholics are upset by certain actions the clergy—including the Pope—has taken in the past few years, such as restricting the Latin Mass and including rites and religious instructions from other religions. The disgruntled Catholics want to march to the cathedral and pray for the Church’s return to the traditions they know. Now, one might argue that the word of the diocese’s bishop should be taken as law, but again, two sides represent two prideful motivations. On the side of the bishop pride manifests itself in his refusing to accept a questioning flock or even talking to them; on the side of the protesting Catholics pride manifests itself in their Adam-and-Eve like disobedience and defiance of his rule. In past centuries, the conflict between the two would have resulted in actions like torture and condemnation by the Inquisition, and by wars like those of the Reformation. Pride’s at play here, mark my words.
Not that I have opened your eyes to what you don’t know, but I pride myself here in showing you the root problem in most, if not all, human interactions.
That I have also railed against socialism in a number of these postings is also an indication of my own pride and rebelliousness. Sure, I like order and realize that without some ordering system, humans will act in their own interests often to the detriment of others. But I also realize that complete conformity denies me my sense of individualism. And it’s not that I am unaware that in becoming rebellious to some extent isn’t in itself a form of conformism. Take rebellious youth who adopt a fashion and subculture, such as Goth. Their rebellion against the fashion of the times simply manifests itself in the fashion of a group. So, each rebellious person exhibits both pride and acquiescence. Adam, as you recall, followed Eve’s lead.
* The two different creation stories are probably the work of different authors whose works were then collated by a priestly class. The scholarly work on this was done by E. A. Speiser for his translation of Genesis for the Anchor Bible. By the way, he also points out the problem of the first word of Genesis, one implying an introductory adverbial clause and the other implying a prepositional phrase: “When God set about to create…” as opposed to “In the beginning.” Both beginnings present us with a problem. The adverbial clause implies Time before Time; the preposition phrase implies a God who made some mistakes that had to be corrected over the course of six days (“In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth and the Earth was void and without form…” like the adverbial clause presents us with a deity bound by time as we are, acting as we do sequentially)
**https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2021/11/10/response-10-year-olds-arrest-hpd-says-offensive-drawing-was-credible-threat/
I suppose that many people believe that the first sin had something to do with sex—what with all that nakedness in Paradise and nobody to watch what was going on. But the two creation stories in Genesis—yes, there are two—provide a context for ascribing the first sin to pride. * In the first creation story (chapter 1) God tells Adam that he is forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the second story, after her creation, Eve encounters the serpent who asks her why she can’t eat from that one tree. The serpent then tells her that upon eating the fruit, she will find her “eyes opened” and that with Adam, she will be like a god. Tell me that isn’t the groundwork for an act of pride. Nothing says “You can’t tell me what I can or cannot do” more than eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Pride is always part of or on the edge of human actions involving authority and individualism, as every rebellious generation runs counter to the previous generation, swinging the social, philosophical, and psychological pendulum. It is the issue of Big Government bureaucrats’ intrusion into the lives of individuals; it underlies the quandary of choosing between any governing person or body and personal freedom. It lies at the heart of collectivism and individualism. Conformity in the extreme is acquiescence; rebellion is self reliance. Both sides of the issue are manifestations of pride, the collectivist deigning that all must follow whatever he writes as law, and the individualist rejecting dicta and accepting the role as a god on Earth, fully aware of the knowledge of good and evil. Pride feeds the root of rebellion, and it seems to be destined to reveal itself either subtly or overtly. If in this year you want to see it subtle variations, watch on-the-street interviews of Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine. In fear that opposition to the official position means imprisonment, those who wish to rebel say, “I cannot comment.”
So, a couple of 2022 stories from America illustrate the quandary over whether or not to east from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to become “like gods,” as the serpent says. First, there’s a story of a ten-year-old girl in Hawaii who, having been bullied by another girl or girls, drew some picture that some of her classmates reported to the bully’s mother. That mother called the school to tell them to call the police. The police showed up at the school, and they carted the ten-year-old artist off in handcuffs. ** How does this story illustrate the quandary? The “offended” mother decided that she could determine what was Good and Evil, and she decided that her Good outweighed the Evil of the ten-year-old. And the police who responded, acknowledging the folly of the complaint still acted to arrest the girl for drawing the picture and supposedly putting on it the word kill plus curse words. They acquiesced, gave up their commonsense, and conformed regardless of their own sense of what was good and what was evil, the latter being the arrest of a hurt child whose only response was to draw a picture. * Big Government (school authorities and police) can control individuals because it makes no exceptions to its rules unless the government officials du jour decide pridefully that their personal agendas are more important than both law and commonsense. In the instance of the little girl, the police obeyed the commandment against violence drawn on a sheet of paper, ignoring, by the way, Big Government’s own rules about freedom of speech.
Second, there’s the story of the bishop in Peoria, Illinois, who has forbidden some Catholics to pray the Rosary in the cathedral during their “March for Catholics” at the end of September. The Catholics are upset by certain actions the clergy—including the Pope—has taken in the past few years, such as restricting the Latin Mass and including rites and religious instructions from other religions. The disgruntled Catholics want to march to the cathedral and pray for the Church’s return to the traditions they know. Now, one might argue that the word of the diocese’s bishop should be taken as law, but again, two sides represent two prideful motivations. On the side of the bishop pride manifests itself in his refusing to accept a questioning flock or even talking to them; on the side of the protesting Catholics pride manifests itself in their Adam-and-Eve like disobedience and defiance of his rule. In past centuries, the conflict between the two would have resulted in actions like torture and condemnation by the Inquisition, and by wars like those of the Reformation. Pride’s at play here, mark my words.
Not that I have opened your eyes to what you don’t know, but I pride myself here in showing you the root problem in most, if not all, human interactions.
That I have also railed against socialism in a number of these postings is also an indication of my own pride and rebelliousness. Sure, I like order and realize that without some ordering system, humans will act in their own interests often to the detriment of others. But I also realize that complete conformity denies me my sense of individualism. And it’s not that I am unaware that in becoming rebellious to some extent isn’t in itself a form of conformism. Take rebellious youth who adopt a fashion and subculture, such as Goth. Their rebellion against the fashion of the times simply manifests itself in the fashion of a group. So, each rebellious person exhibits both pride and acquiescence. Adam, as you recall, followed Eve’s lead.
* The two different creation stories are probably the work of different authors whose works were then collated by a priestly class. The scholarly work on this was done by E. A. Speiser for his translation of Genesis for the Anchor Bible. By the way, he also points out the problem of the first word of Genesis, one implying an introductory adverbial clause and the other implying a prepositional phrase: “When God set about to create…” as opposed to “In the beginning.” Both beginnings present us with a problem. The adverbial clause implies Time before Time; the preposition phrase implies a God who made some mistakes that had to be corrected over the course of six days (“In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth and the Earth was void and without form…” like the adverbial clause presents us with a deity bound by time as we are, acting as we do sequentially)
**https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2021/11/10/response-10-year-olds-arrest-hpd-says-offensive-drawing-was-credible-threat/
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