I know how that sounds. Controversial. Sacrilegious. Cultic. Heretical. Satanic. But it is nevertheless the truth. The purpose of this writing is to express as clearly as I can the root and flower of this misunderstanding, and to succinctly explain the true meaning of the Gospel. It will then be left to the thoughtful reader to come to his or her own conclusions. As an overview I will state simply that the good news is much better than we have realized; much better than most of us can even imagine.

The following is a summary, from beginning to end, of the cardinal points of the Gospel as it is commonly understood today. It is preached more or less in this form by millions of speakers worldwide every seven days. It has affected our songs, our Bible translations, and our religious life. It will be very familiar to most Christians. And it is wrong.

1) In the beginning God created the universe.

2) Everything in the creation was good, including humanity.

3) While God has many attributes, two are of primary importance as it pertains to the Gospel: He is perfectly loving and He is perfectly just (righteous).

4) The creation was a manifestation of his love.

5) In order to assure that his justice might be known, and that we might remember that he is God and to be obeyed, he set one Tree in the Garden that Adam was forbidden to touch, as a test of Adam's obedience.

6) Adam, however, did partake from this Tree.

7) This act of disobedience angered God, and offended his sense of perfect righteousness. It missed the mark of proper obedience. This is called sin. It is rebellion against the perfect will/law of the creator.

8) God therefore punished Adam by casting him out of the Garden of Eden, cursing him with a life full of suffering.

9) This brought death and suffering into the world. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God.

10) God's perfect righteousness cannot abide the presence of disobedience, otherwise known as sin.

11) Therefore, due to this sin, Adam was destined to spend the rest of eternity apart or away from God.

12) However, God's loving heart could not tolerate such a thing. Though Adam justly deserved God's temporal and eternal punishment, God nevertheless wanted Adam to have everlasting fellowship with him. But Adam's sin made fellowship with the perfectly righteous creator impossible.

13) God needed a solution to this divine dilemma.

14) He found the solution in Christ.

15) God needed a sacrifice to atone for humanity's sin, a way to vent his righteous wrath in a way that would not punish all humanity forever.

16) And only a perfect sacrifice could atone for that sin.

17) So God sent his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to suffer on behalf of all mankind.

18) Jesus was the only perfectly obedient man. True God and true man. He was therefore the only possible candidate for the righteous sacrifice.

19) God allowed Christ to be crucified. Christ took upon himself the sins of the world.

20) God punished Jesus for the sins of humanity. He gave to Jesus what we deserved in order to give us what he deserved.

21) Having obtained the perfect sacrifice, God's sense of justice was satisfied.

22) Jesus was then resurrected three days later, proving that he had broken the bonds of sin and death.

23) He now offers forgiveness to all those who will trust in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. If you believe that Jesus died for you, then God will not hold your sins against you. Elsewise, if you doubt or deny that Jesus died for you, then you stand condemned on the basis of your own unrighteousness.

24) There is nothing we can do to deserve heaven. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

25) Our only hope for everlasting life, then, is to have faith in the all availing power of Christ's blood shed on the cross.

26) Washed by God's grace and forgiven through faith in Christ, we can now have fellowship with God.

27) We have been saved from eternal damnation.

28) This is the good news. This is the Gospel.

I will be referring to these later. This is the common understanding of the Gospel, so I will refer to these items as CUG#. The last item, therefore, is CUG#28.

A Narrative Presentation

Here is a more narrative presentation of the Christian message as it is commonly understood and proclaimed.

God made the world and all mankind. Being loving, he set many trees and delights for man to partake. But he is also a God of justice, and as such must be obeyed. So he set one Tree, just one, that he didn't want man to touch, providing mankind with the opportunity to show obedience. But of course, man did partake of this Tree. This angered God beyond measure. It was a spiteful, childlike rebellion, and it incited God's wrath. He punished man by cursing him to a life of suffering and death, casting him out of the Garden of Eden, condemned to die and spend the rest of eternity in suffering and torment, separated from God. However, God's loving side was unable to accept this. What was needed was a sacrifice to appease the wrath of this perfectly just God. Nothing else would do. And the sacrificial offering had to be absolutely perfect. So God sent his own son, Jesus the Christ, to earth. There he was mocked, scorned, beaten, whipped, crucified and finally killed. In as much as Jesus was perfect, being true God and true man, the sacrifice was acceptable. God had vented his wrath, pouring upon Jesus the suffering and condemnation that we all deserve. This satisfied God, whereupon Jesus was resurrected from the dead three days later. This broke the bonds of death. Forgiveness is now offered to those who will have faith that Jesus died for their sins. There is nothing we can do to be worthy of God's righteousness or forgiveness, for we have all sinned and therefore deserve eternal damnation. All we can do, what we must do, is trust in the all availing power of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

The Power Of Interpretation

"Now wait one minute. You think that's wrong?"

Yes, it is wrong. What we have here is a classic case of misinterpretation. We are called to interpret facts continually in our lives. It is a proper and necessary process whereby we transform external events into our personal reality, and therefore determine how we need to react to the situation. For example. I look at the gas gauge in my car. The needle is on empty. That is the objective fact. But what does it mean? And what am I to do about it? How should I react? How am I to appropriate this external truth for my subjective reality? It could mean: I'm about to run out of gas and should therefore proceed immediately to a gas station. No cause for concern, since my gas gauge is broken and I just filled the tank. Nothing at all if the car is turned off.

Any of these could be correct, depending on the circumstances surrounding the event, and the knowledge and experience I am using to interpret it. This is a crucial point, worth repeating. We interpret present external events based upon our subjective reality, which is shaped by our knowledge and personal history. If I have incomplete information, or events in my history have prejudiced me to a certain perspective, it will be difficult for me to make an accurate interpretation of the situation.

That is the case with our common understanding of the Gospel. We have misinterpreted crucial events in the unfolding of God's revelation of redemption through Christ, and in so doing have, for the most part, missed the point. Seen within the context of most people's lives, especially as it relates to the relationship they had/have with their parents, this is understandable. That is to say, there are specific reasons for these misinterpretations. Bringing them to light will, hopefully, give us a "cleaner" context with which to understand God's actions, opening the horizon to purer and deeper understanding. That is the purpose of this writing.

Specifically, then, what is wrong with the understanding of the Gospel as outlined above?

I) It makes God out to be fickle and arbitrary, and fails to understand the nature of the trees in the Garden of Eden (CUG#5).

II) It does not comprehend proper punishment, presenting God as irrationally vindictive (CUG#12). The notion of eternal punishment is incompatible with the divine.

III) It does not understand the nature of sin (CUG#7). Sin is not simply disobedience or inadequacy of performance.

IV) Failing to comprehend the problem, it cannot possibly understand the solution. It slanderously ascribes to God the most abhorrent of behavior (CUG#21). Punishing someone else for what I have done is not good, let alone divine. It is sick.

V) It keeps salvation within the realm of a form of work righteousness, whereby one is accounted worthy of heaven on the basis of something one does or does not do (CUG#23).

Vi) But above all this, it simply fails to understand the true goodness, glory, power and love embodied in the Gospel. The tragedy is that the good news is ever so much better than we realize. We are missing out on incomprehensible blessing.

The Events Of The Gospel Are True

I wish to state quite clearly here that I am in no way calling into question any of the events or facts in the Gospel, only their interpretation. Specifically, God did create the world. There was a Garden of Eden. It contained two trees in the middle. Adam and Eve partook from one of the trees and were cast out of the Garden by God. The wages of sin is death. Christ was sent to atone for this problem. He was crucified, died, and three days later rose from the dead. And this is our only means of salvation.

Two Windows Into Eternity

The Bible gives us two infinite windows into the spiritual world: the fall of man and the redemption. They go hand in hand, working in unison to reveal divine truth. If we fail to understand the one it will be impossible to understand the other. Therefore, what I will do now is begin with a discussion of the Garden of Eden, attempting to explain as clearly as possible where we have misunderstood its message, and present what I consider to be a much cleaner, purer interpretation. We will then be equipped to examine Christ's passion in the brighter light of comprehension.

Chapter 2: The Creation

The Historical Question

The origin of the world is, and will probably remain, a hotly debated issue. Creation / evolution / big bang. "7 days" symbolizing 7 eras of evolution, gap theories, etc. Were Adam and Eve "real", or "only" myths? Did the Garden of Eden ever exist?

For the purposes of the present writing, none of this matters. Whether Eden was real or "only" a symbol is immaterial. The historicity of Adam and Eve is insignificant. That is because the creation / fall accounts in Genesis relay essential truths to us which stand on their own, regardless of their association with material history.

This is a difficult point for many people to grasp. I am not saying that Eden was "only" a symbol, neither am I calling it physical history. I will take no position.

However, what it tells us about ourselves is true. If it is "only" a fable, then the fable has a valid moral. Understanding that moral is limitlessly more significant than worrying about its historical basis. Put another way, what if we were able to establish, to the absolute certainty of even the most skeptical and atheistic among us, that Adam and Eve were actual historical people? What if we had them eating the forbidden fruit on video tape? So what? Who cares? What does that have to do with me?? I am only concerned about the "so what?"

We have a great deal to learn about life from the Genesis accounts of creation and Eden. That is what matters. That is what we will focus on.

The Creation Of The Universe

As is often the case, it is best to start at the beginning. The very beginning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen 1:1) The first Chapter of Genesis accounts that God spoke and the universe came into being. The key word in the account is "good". The light was good. The seas were good. The earth, trees, and vegetation were good. Every living creature, including mankind. "and God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good". (Gen 1:31)

CRUCIAL POINT #1: Everything in the entire universe, every single thing that existed, everything everywhere was good. Beautiful. Wonderful. An extension and expression of the nature and attributes of the transcendently glorious being that had created it. Whether under the earth, in the water, on the land, in the sky, all the stars, all the planets, all the galaxies, absolutely all of creation, all of the entire manifest universe was good! Everything that was, was good. Goodness was the only reality.

We have lost perspective on this central point. We tend to see the world as a horrid, wicked place. But even to this day, the underlying truth is that "For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude..." (I Timothy 4:4)

God is good. God is love. The creation, as an extension or projection of his being, shares in this goodness.

You will find much more on this topic in "The Revealing Science of God."

Chapter 3: The Garden Of Eden

As I previously mentioned, the Bible gives us two windows through which we can gaze at the world of the spirit: the fall and the redemption. Paradise lost and paradise found. Any attempt to understand the one without the other is doomed to fail.

The Two Trees

Verse Gen 2:9 says: "And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every Tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the Garden; and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

These two trees were in the "midst", the exact center of the Garden. What were they? What are they? I ask this because the entire spiritual journey of man, indeed the complete history of the human race, can be seen as different types of reactions to and relationships with these two trees. What were they? What are they? They were right next to each other. They grew, meaning they expand and change over the years. Like the positive and negative poles on a battery they provide the energy to propel humanity into the future. What were they? What are they? One is the problem, the other the answer. Partaking of one, we lost access to the other. Jesus' encounter with his Tree removed the barrier that was placed to bar us from the Tree of Life.

Again I ask, what were these trees? What are they? For in fact they still exist, still growing in the midst of the Garden. In revelation 2:7 Jesus says, "To him who overcomes I will grant to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the paradise of God." Not "was in the paradise of God" or even "will be in the paradise of God", but "is (back then, even now) in the paradise of God." The paradise is the Garden of Eden. It's still there. The trees are still there! Your entire history and destiny lie embodied in these trees.

Have you ever thought about them?

The Account Of The Fall Of Man

To help us begin to examine them, we will need to take a close look at the account of the fall of man. You will see that the entire narrative centers around these two trees, even as the entire Garden of paradise centers around them.

Genesis Chapter 2

9 And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every Tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the Garden; and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any Tree of the Garden you may eat freely;

17 But from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis Chapter 3

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, `You shall not eat from any Tree of the Garden'?"

2 And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the Garden we may eat;

3 But from the fruit of the Tree which is in the middle of the Garden, God has said, `You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'"

4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die!

5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the Tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the Tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its food and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.

9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"

10 And he (Adam) said, "I heard the sound of Thee in the Garden and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself."

11 And He (God) said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the Tree of which I commanded you not to eat?"

12 And the man said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the Tree and I ate."

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14 And the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel."

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for you husband, and he shall rule over you."

17 Then to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the Tree about which I commanded you, saying, `You shall not eat from it'; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

18 "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field;

19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

21 And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever"

23 Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.

24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

The fall of man can succinctly be summarized as:

I) God commanded man not to partake of the Tree in the middle of the Garden. (CUG#5)

II) Man partook. (CUG#6)

III) God cast man out of the Garden. (CUG#8)

These three points will be the foci of each of our next three chapters.

Chapter 4: Forbidding The Fruit

CRUCIAL QUESTION #1: Why did God command Adam to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

In many ways this is the most important question; our answer here will, in fact, shape our entire view of the fall, sin, punishment, guilt, forgiveness and redemption. We must be certain to ponder this very carefully. As a result, we will spend a good deal of time on this issue.

What The Cug Says

The answer given in the common understanding of the Gospel (CUG#5) is that God forbid this one Tree in order to test man's obedience. God's loving nature had created the "very good" universe; God's righteous nature needed obedience.

Let me quote an author who's identity will remain hidden: "Eve ate of the Tree which God, to test man's obedience, had told him not to eat...By transgressing this one positive and express commandment, which God had given to our first parents to test and to try their obedience, Adam and Eve virtually transgressed the whole law, because thereby they broke through the restraint of the entire moral law, within which God wanted them to live."

This is the heart of the matter. The CUG says that the Tree was a test. God demands obedience. Adam failed the test by disobeying. This incited God's wrath, offending his perfect justice. The original sin, then, was disobedience. Sin=evil=disobedience. From this comes guilt, and guilt necessitates punishment. From this one act of disobedience man lost all fellowship with God and was deserving of eternal punishment. The purpose of the law is to show us how truly guilty we all are.

Please notice that the entire theology of sin and redemption, as it is commonly understood, is based upon the interpretation that the forbidden fruit was a test, and that Adam's sin was that he failed the test, otherwise known as disobedience.

We had better be absolutely certain we have that right!

In the above quoted book, and in fact in all references I've ever personally heard or read, the forbidden fruit is treated like any other fruit on any other Tree. The only thing "special" about it was that God said "don't eat it." Again from our mystery guest: "To eat the fruit of a Tree seems to us a rather innocent matter, but since God had forbidden it, it was a sin to Adam and Eve...the eating of the forbidden fruit by Adam and Eve does not seem to us to have been such a great crime; yet it was the disobedience against God, manifested in this apparently innocent act, that made it a damnable sin."

So, as it's commonly understood, the question of the nature and identity of the Tree that held the forbidden fruit is simply immaterial. God said don't touch it, and that settles it.

On Parental Rules

Several factors come quickly into play here:

I) parenting

II) punishment

III) love

IV) justice

They are all related. How we view them shapes our perceptions of much of the world.

Let's say a parent has a rule. A parental law, if you will. Little Adam must not touch the x!@. X!@ Can be anything at all. Why shouldn't Adam touch it? There are three possible answers. The first is parent centered, the other is child centered.

Answer #1: parent centered (selfish): Adam shouldn't touch the x!@ Because it could hurt the parent. Perhaps it's a priceless piece of crystal that parent fears will be broken, or a shirt that no one else wears because "it's mine." Whatever the object, the parent's concern is for him/herself, his/her own interests, which could be hurt if little Adam touches the x!@. The parent is in actuality the object of the parent's love, in this case. In my household, our teenage daughter is not allowed to use one certain type of hairspray because it contains something (who knows what?) That permeates the house and irritates my mild bronchitis, making it actually difficult for me to breathe. There is nothing wrong or sinful about using the hairspray; but its use hurts me. There is no known or imagined harm to come to our daughter from this hairspray. This rule (law) has me as its ultimate beneficiary. Obedience to this rule is necessary for my well being.

Answer #2: child centered (selfless): Adam shouldn't touch the x!@ Because it could hurt Adam. Whether it is a pan on the stove, a knife in the drawer, a bottle under the sink, a crawly thing on the ground, it represents a danger to little Adam. And this danger is unknown to him, because if he knew the dangers he would not willingly touch it. Most adults do not deliberately burn, cut, poison or otherwise hurt themselves. The parent then commands Adam to not touch the x!@ Because the parent is concerned for Adam's well-being. Here, Adam is the object of parent's love. In my household we have another rule that our daughter must have all her homework complete before watching TV at night. This is for her benefit, to help her concentrate on her work when her mind is freshest. Work before play, as the saying goes. My life is not affected one way or the other, regardless of when (or if) she does her homework. In this case, our daughter is the ultimate beneficiary. Obedience to this rule is necessary for her well being.

Both answers are a healthy and normal part of day-to-day human parent/child relationships, when properly balanced. Most parents look out for the needs of their children, trying to protect them from harm. But human parents have needs and desires, too, and it is not "wrong" to try to keep little Adam from destroying a precious family heirloom. Unfortunately, all too many people grow up in an environment where the parent's first and only priority is the parent, and not the child. Absolute obedience is expected simply because that's the way it is. You could say that many of us grow up in an environment overbalanced by too many "answer #1" types of parental commands.

This is a very significant factor in the misunderstanding of the Gospel that has developed over the years. We have interpreted God's actions and commands as those of the autocratic self-serving parent who is determined to have his own way. Obedience is mandatory for God's sake, because he is holy and righteous and simply cannot abide sin. Our disobedience is the hairspray in his divine nostrils, irritating and inflaming the holy lungs. God punishes us for inconveniencing him.

Cug: God Is Fickle, Despotic And Arbitrary

Now it's time to ask Crucial Question #1 again: why did God command Adam to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Did God have His interests in mind, or Adam's? Was the creator of the universe being self-centered or child centered? Selfish or selfless? Was this command arbitrary or purposeful? Was God trying to test Adam or protect him? Who stood to be hurt if Adam ate from the Tree, God or Adam?

The common understanding is consistently based in the "answer #1 (selfish)" scenario. The answer has already been given: the Tree was a test. This was based on God's own interests, in that his perfect righteousness required obedience, and it was therefore necessary for Adam to demonstrate his obedience by keeping this command. This reasoning is based on a human relationship with a self-centered parent who cares not for his/her child's interests so much as his/her own.

This is wrong. It is a misinterpretation of God's motive for forbidding Adam to eat this fruit. It is not that God couldn't have been testing Adam. Certainly the creator of the entire universe has the power, ability and right to do whatever he chooses. This is called Divine Providence. It is His game, so He makes the rules.

Let us assume for the moment that the forbidden fruit represented nothing more than a test of obedience. What was it going to accomplish? What was its purpose? Even if God was being selfish in the purpose of this command, what did he stand to gain? "Well, this test would have been able to establish Adam's obedience." And then? "God would know that he was being given proper respect, being obeyed by his children." So what? Do we really think that the sovereign Lord of the spiraling galaxies was not going to be happy until he had proven to himself that Adam did what he was told?

Let's put this another way. What did God stand to loose, how would He be hurt, if Adam disobeyed? "Adam would not be honoring God or worshipping him. Adam would not be properly acknowledging God as the righteous Lord of his life. Adam's disobedience ignores God's command, making Adam the ruler of his life instead of God."

This reasoning is centered in the notion that Adam's obedience was an end in itself, its own purpose and meaning. It was a test of obedience for obedience's sake only, without any dependent value. It was a test of obedience for the sole purpose of being obedient. The limitless all-powerful universe builder could not have been actually hurt in any way except in the area of pride. He wanted to be obeyed, and that's all there is too it.

Let's go back to my illustration of the hairspray that irritates my bronchitis. What if:

1) the hairspray didn't irritate my lungs;

2) it couldn't harm my daughter in any way;

3) it had no odor of any kind;

4) and was completely benign in all aspects, cosmetically, economically, politically, environmentally, etc.,

And yet I still absolutely and uncompromisingly demanded that this hairspray never be used, under any conditions whatsoever? What would you think of me as a parent? Despotic, fickle, arbitrary, selfish, ridiculous. "My house, my family, I said so and that settles it. No questions to be asked or answered."

What if I further told you the she used this once, and that I had locked her in a prison for the rest of her entire life, and had vowed never to speak to her ever again? Furthermore, I saw to it through my influence that she was put to death in the gas chamber.

Would you want me to help parent your child?

Absurd as it seems, this is exactly the behavior the commonly understood Gospel ascribes to God! The CUG would have us believe that this was just a Tree. Any Tree. The Tree didn't matter. It doesn't enter into the equation. What was essential is that God said "Don't touch it." It's not that the Tree was harmful to God or man, or that eating from it would alter anything. The Tree was no threat to anything or anyone. It was fragrant, benign hairspray that was off limits just because. "Because I said so, that's why!"

Another View Of God: Loving And Purposeful

But hold on one moment! It's not just any Tree. It's fruit was/is not just any fruit. This is a very significant Tree, folks! The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was good for food, a delight to the eyes, could make one wise, and altered consciousness! This was no simple "apple Tree" that God chose just because it was handy. This was The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Not just any Tree. THE Tree.

Not just any knowledge. THE knowledge.

Not just any subject. But good and evil.

And it was in the absolute center of paradise.

Maybe, just maybe, God actually had a reason for forbidding Adam and Eve to eat from this Tree. Maybe, just maybe, his command wasn't a test but a warning! Maybe, just maybe, eating from this Tree could really seriously hurt Adam, and with him the whole of creation. Maybe, just maybe, Adam's sin wasn't a matter of his disobedience, but was a result of what eating from the Tree did to him.

Think about this. Really think about it.

Get a hold of the power of this idea.

It changes everything. This shifts God's motives from Himself to Adam.

Let's say that God had an answer #2 as to why Adam shouldn't touch the Tree. We then can see that:

The Tree was not a test.
It represented a very real danger to Adam, which God was trying to keep him from.
God was not testing Adam's obedience. He was selflessly trying to warn Adam about something that could hurt him.
He was not being arbitrary, but purposeful.
This was not fickle, it was loving. God is love.

(At this point many people ask that, assuming the above is true, why did God ever put the Tree there in the first place? If the Tree was harmful, why did God grant Adam access to it? This is a perfectly reasonable question, which I will deal with, but the answer is dependent on understanding a bit more about the Tree. So the answer will be presented a little further on.)

Which View Is Right?

How are we to decide? Between these two views of God's forbidding of the fruit, which should we adopt as our interpretation? In some respects this is a personal decision that each person must make for him/herself. However, there are two considerations here that overwhelmingly support the second view.

1) The Tree was not harmless. The old saying "No harm, no foul" does not apply here. After eating from the Tree Adam was changed. "...The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked..." (Gen 3:7) God was trying to avoid this change. This change was not desirable. So we see that God was actually trying to accomplish something in this command, which had nothing to do with testing obedience to a meaningless despotism. We will soon be examining the exact nature of this change, and why it was so harmful and undesirable. But for the present issue at hand, as to why God forbid this Tree, it suffices to note that a harmful change came upon Adam, a change that the loving and purposeful creator of life sought to warn against: "...For in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." (Gen 2:17)

Justice apart from love has no meaning. To say that God is righteous is significant only in that it means he is at all times perfectly loving. What is the purpose of a law? Hopefully we've established that a law for its own sake is selfish, capricious and despotic, without any value for those subject to the law. Law must serve a purpose in order to be just. A law serving no purpose other than itself is unjust, and absolutely contrary to the nature of God. So to say that (CUG#3) God has two attributes (love and righteousness) is itself an extension of the very misunderstanding we are dealing with. God's true nature is love; this is good and right. God is righteous in that he is always operating in perfect accordance with his true nature. Thus, there is no divine attribute of "justice" that operates autonomously from the divine essence, which is love. This justice didn't need to be established or demonstrated in any way. So testing Adam's obedience, simply for its own sake, was to try to satisfy a need that didn't exist.

Summary: Why God Forbid The Tree

To summarize, then. Why did God command Adam to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

1) God had a purpose.

2) That purpose was to try to keep Adam from harm.

3) Harm could come because the Tree was a great danger to Adam.

4) So, in love, the Heavenly Father was trying to protect and guide his children. But, alas, it was in vain. Adam did not heed his Father's warning. As so often happens, we had to learn the hard way.

Chapter 5: Eating The Fruit

Having established that God's prohibition against eating the forbidden fruit was an attempt to keep Adam safe from harm, the next logical questions are: what pain was God trying to spare Adam? What was (is) this Tree? What could it do to Adam (us)? That is the subject of the present Chapter. We will examine the forbidden Tree, attempt to determine its nature, and see what effects these have on those who eat from it.

Adam And Eve Before The Fall

What was life like for Adam and Eve before the fall? After they had just been created, what was Eden like for them? What did they think about? We know that they were created in the image of God (Gen 1:26), but what does this mean? These are difficult questions. We have only a tiny bit of information in the Genesis account. The rest we must deduce.

I bring it up here because there is one absolutely critical point that we must understand. From this one point we can gain much understanding about both Eden and the fall.

CRUCIAL POINT # 2: Before the fall, all Adam and Eve knew was life. They did not know evil. And they did not know good as "good". It was only life.

It is quite impossible for me to overemphasize this. This very well may be one of the most significant ideas in the history of our race.

It is a mistake to think that before the fall Adam and Eve only knew "good", and that after the fall they knew evil. In other words, this is wrong:

Before = good, after = evil

They partook from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Before the fall they neither knew good nor evil. They only knew life. Thus,

Before = life, after = good & evil

Before = monism,

After = duality

Yes, everything was created good. But Adam and Eve didn't know it as "good". They only knew it as being what it was. It was what it was. Adam was created "very good", but he didn't know himself as "very good". All he could say of himself was "I am what I am." Thus, he was "naked but not ashamed," living as an organic part of the whole of creation. In that he was a living, dynamic being, with the future of eternity open before him, he could therefore say "I will be what I will be." God knew/knows good and evil. That is why he could declare that all he made was "very good". He knew the difference. But from Adam's perspective, all that existed, albeit good, was all he had ever known. He had nothing to compare this goodness to. It was therefore not relative to anything else, but absolute.

All Adam knew was life. The fruit from the Tree of Life.

His consciousness was single minded, unitive, monistic, free from all awareness of duality or separateness. He lived "as one with nature," to use a modern phrase. Try to imagine that from the moment you were born:

1) you were sitting in a room full of light,

2) you could not close your eyes or turn away, and

3) the light was always on.

Furthermore, no one else existed to tell you about a thing called "dark".

Yes, you would know the light, obviously. But you would know it not as a relative thing, the opposite of another, but as an absolute unchanging permanence. You would have nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference.

So it was with Adam and Eve. They knew good, but not as "good". (I realize that I am repeating myself. Many of these concepts are so foreign to our normal way of thinking that I try different approaches or views in order to encompass the idea.) From this central understanding, we can gather much about the state before the fall.

I will be what I will be the fullest recognition of life.
Unitive a monistic awareness without relative good & evil oneness an organic part of nature.
Harmony living in easy conjunction with all the world
Unashamed nakedness was natural
Egoless no need to clutch to me, myself and I
Peace the life with no enemies or problems
Love for the whole of the created goodness without any limits

Cug: Evil = Disobedience

The purity of this paradise was shattered when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden Tree.

CRUCIAL QUESTION #2: What was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

As we have seen, the CUG answers this question by saying that the Tree was simply an ordinary Tree which became important only when God chose it as the object of his obedience test. Why then was it called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Because:

1) Through this Tree Adam could gain the knowledge of good by being obedient, and

2) through disobedience Adam learned evil and its ramifications.

In other words, in the CUG, evil = disobedience. As we have seen, this is a meaningless ascribed quality, if obedience serves no purpose other than itself.

But what if, in fact, the Tree was intrinsically harmful? If God had a reason for commanding Adam to avoid it, what danger did the Tree represent? To echo an earlier example, what was wrong with the hairspray?

If the essence of the evil contained/represented in the Tree was not an aspect of disobedience, then what was it? This leads us to...

CRUCIAL QUESTION #3: What is evil?

This is the toughest question of all.

Evil: The Very Important Question

And it is so very important, because it has so many repercussions. From this comes our understanding of sin, the fall, expulsion from paradise, the law, and establishing the plan of salvation. But wait! There is more. Biblical religion claims that the fall of man accounts for the root of all problems that have ever been encountered on this planet. Murder, rape, idolatry, theft, lying, child abuse, taxation, war. Cancer, malaria, suicide. All pain and suffering have resulted from this Tree. These are all manifestations of evil.

What is evil?

Please note, if by any chance this point has been missed, that the entire common understanding of the Gospel, from beginning to end, is based on the idea that evil = disobedience. To state that evil is not synonymous with disobedience is to cause a reevaluation of our understanding of the entire Gospel. For this will mean that:

	Adam's sin was not of disobedience
	So the expulsion from the Garden was not punishment for disobedience.
	And the purpose of the law was not to show us how disobedient we are.
	And Christ's death was not a vicarious punishment for all of our wrong doings.

This is, as they say, the cat's meow.

What is evil? That is the question.

What Is Evil?

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil brought into Adam's consciousness duality, the pairs of opposites. The unitive perception of life as it is was, split into dual awareness of good and evil.

Evil is the opposite of good. So all we need do is find out what good is, and its opposite will be evil.

What is good?

Everything!

Huh? That's right. Try to imagine yourself in Adam's and Eve's place before the fall. Everything, everywhere, is good! Remember crucial point #1? Well, here it is again.

Everything that was, was good. Goodness was the only reality.

Existence = good

All that is = good

Being = good

Everything that is = good

Neither Adam nor Eve could look at, point to, or imagine (make an image) anything other than goodness.

We live in a world full of evil and suffering, so it is very hard for us to comprehend the pristine perfection of paradise. Pure goodness and beauty. Everywhere they looked, every thing they saw, touched and thought, radiated perfect goodness.

So what is evil?

Evil is the opposite of good.

Existence = good

The opposite of existence = good's opposite

The opposite of existence = evil

Nonexistence = evil

All that is = good

The opposite of all that is = good's opposite

The opposite of all that is = evil

Nothing = evil

Being = good

The opposite of being = good's opposite

The opposite of being = evil

Nonbeing = evil

Everything that is = good

The opposite of everything that is = good's opposite

The opposite of everything that is = evil

Everything that is not = evil

There you have it.

Existence = goodness

Nonexistence = evil

If good = what is, then evil = what is not.

"What? Are you saying that evil is not? Doesn't exist?" Yes. That is right. That is the exact truth.

"Sir, you are one sick puppy. It is pathetically irresponsible to deny the existence of evil."

Hold on! Don't leave yet! Follow me just a little more. Let's look at the facts:

Fact 1: Everything that God created was perfectly good. "And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good". (Gen 1:31)

Fact 2: Since everything was good, nothing was evil. There was no object that Adam or Eve could point to that was bad.

Fact 3: Against God's command they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge of good. Knowledge of evil. Knowledge of what is, knowledge of what is not. Everything they saw, touched, heard, everything that existed for them to experience and know was good.

For them to know evil they would have to know something that didn't exist in the whole of creation! They had to become aware of something that didn't exist. Knowledge of evil. There was no thing, object, or created entity they could know that was evil.

So here it is.

CRUCIAL POINT #3: In order to know evil, Adam and Eve had to have their eyes opened to what was not. Partaking of the fruit from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve became aware both of what did and what did not exist.

This gives us the answer to CRUCIAL QUESTION #2: What was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil contained the ability to make one see life from the perspective of what does not exist, in addition to what does.

And we are also able to directly answer CRUCIAL QUESTION #3: What is evil?

Evil is not a thing. No thing is evil. Every created thing was and is good. Evil is a knowledge, a way of thinking, an orientation, a way of looking at life. It turns away from the wonderful, good things that are and contemplates / imagines all the things that are not.

Good and evil are not ontological opposites; that is to say, they do not exist in the same manner. Goodness exists. Everything that God made was/is good. Evil is a projection onto the goodness, a denial of it.

Naked: Not Clothed

Goodness is reality. Evil is a mistaken perception of that reality. The Bible tells us so. All you have to do is read it. What was the first thing that happened after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree? Gen 3:7 "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. And they knew that they were naked."

What does that mean? Why is it significant? Certainly Adam & Eve had been aware of their bodies before the fall. Adam said "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." (Gen 2:23) so Adam knew he had a body, and must have known all of its particular details. But this was good. He was made good. The human form is good. God made it so. But Adam ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And the first thing that happened was he became aware of what was not. He was not clothed. Not covered. Having the body was not a problem before. And his body didn't suddenly become dirty, wrong or evil because of this Tree. But Adam had a new perspective. He knew what he was, but now he also knew what he was not, and he was not covered! He was naked. And he immediately started putting barriers between himself and the rest of the creation. This was an absolutely cataclysmic change.

From this perspective has come all suffering into the world. Thus was evil born. This is sin. Not an act, but as a state of being, a knowledge. "A sin" is any single act that is based upon this mindset.

Results Of Eating The Fruit

Knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge of what is and what is not. Adam's unitive perception of life became split in two. Added to his awareness of all that the world contained was the ability to conceive of all that it didn't contain, to see its perfect goodness as lacking something. He became aware of himself as a self existent being, separate and apart from the rest of the creation. He sought to cover himself, to hide, to protect himself from God. I and not I. This and not this. Ego centered. Self centered. The flowing harmony of the creation had been shattered. Split. Shame. Strife. Enmity. Hatred. Adam had reoriented himself from the real to the unreal.

Like God, Knowing Good And Evil

There is a very significant point here, that seems to have been ignored by virtually everyone. It is contained in Gen. 3:22. "Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil...'" Why is this significant? Notice that the serpent did not lie. By God's own words man had, in fact, become like God, knowing good and evil.

Why is this a problem? In the time of pre-creation, God knew all potential manifestations, both "good" and "bad". God could have chosen a world of limitless suffering and pain for all creatures. But God is good, and sought to create/manifest only the goodness into the universe. That is why Adam had only goodness to know. The entire creation was a bringing into expression all that is good and beautiful. When Adam partook from the forbidden Tree, a window opened in his consciousness into the entire unmanifest realm, gaining awareness of all the undesired horrors that God sought to keep out of manifest existence. And what didn't God create? Hate. Strife. Anxiety. Fear. Disease. Death.

Why The Tree Was There

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil had to be there. If humanity was to be free, then the ability to see life from the perspective of nonexistence had to be an option. A baby, during the first few months of life, cannot recognize him/herself as being separate from the world around them. This is a purely egoless state. They have gone from a state of unconscious unity while in the mother's womb, to a state of unconscious separation when born. When they are a little older they discover what is "me" and "not me", and enter a period of ego centered life which constitutes conscious separation whereupon they begin the journey to overcome there own ego as the center of existence, "arriving" hopefully at a state of conscious unity.

We see this cycle flowing endlessly throughout the creation. Adam was at first unconsciously united with God before the creation, when he was only God's mind in pure unmanifest & potential form. In creation he was endowed with free will and a degree of autonomy. But since he only knew the unitive whole of life, he was unconsciously separate from God and the rest of creation. Through the fall he became aware of "me" and "not me", thus entering a state of conscious separation. This is where we find ourselves now. We then embark upon life & the spiritual pathway, to love others as ourselves, to transcend the ego state, and become reunited with the divine nature, whereupon we are consciously reunited with what we have always been and could never otherwise be, God. This cycle is called the breath of God. He expires and inspires. That is why the Tree had to be there.

The Love Of Money

"The love of money is the root of all evil." I Tim 6:10. There is yet another way to look at this issue of evil, and it is related to the famous passage just quoted. When Adam ate from the forbidden Tree, he turned away and tried to hide himself from God. This is a very significant reorientation from the creator to the creation. If we place barriers between ourselves and God, He can no longer be our source. We are our own masters, seeking to solve our own problems and provide for ourselves. How do we do this? With money.

Money represents the potential to manifest the material world according to one's wishes. Money = physical options. Why does anyone want money? Because of its abilities to provide what we think we want. The quest for money is the quest for the material world. Desire for money is an expression of attachment to the material world. And why do we seek to manifest the material world? Because we think it will provide comfort, happiness, satisfaction, peace, etc.

Herein lies the tragedy. God is good. Wants to give goodness, peace, bliss, love, and comfort. That's what the world was made for! And it is precisely those things that we seek. To know that we are ok. What we really want is to know with absolute certainty that we are wonderful and perfectly loved exactly as we are, in our complete nakedness. But in our ignorance and shame we hide from the essence of life itself, our source and origin, God the creator. We clothe ourselves, pretending that we are other than we really are. We hide from God, seeking limited and transitory comforts from the material world, when the answer lies within the spirit realm. So we seek to be able to manipulate greater and wider sections of the creation, thinking that if, indeed, we could rule the world we would, finally, be satisfied.

Thus, we pursue our happiness and satisfaction in a lengthy roundabout. Love of money is indeed the root of all evil. While the spirit quietly waits.

Body, Soul And Spirit

Man, created in the image of God, is more than a body, more than a physical entity. He is also desire, emotion, mind, and will. These we call the soul, the non-corporeal aspects of our being. And within these, animating them, is the spark of life itself. The spirit. In as much as we are all within God, we are a limited aspect of God that has shaped himself into will, mind, emotion, desire, and placed it all in a physical body. Exactly like a man stepping into an automobile (car), so too each "higher" vehicle places itself into the "lower" vehicle in order to gain experience and expand horizons.

The point of this is to note that the soul and spirit of man are of primary importance. They are, in fact, eternal, being nonmaterial extensions of the limitless self-existent being who created this universe. The body is to serve the soul. The soul is to serve the spirit. Life is out of balance when the soul is used to serve the body. Note please that money can only manifest the material world. It cannot, in and of itself, affect the soul. The soul is affected by money / materialism only insofar as the soul is attached to the physical reality.

Before the fall, the spirit was dominant, pouring itself out in different creations. After the fall, the body became dominant. The state of Adam's body (naked) affected his soul, causing him to feel shame and fear. So Adam felt (in his soul) this shame, fear, discomfort, etc. How did he try to solve the problem? Well, he did not seek peace from God, examining spiritually the problem. Rather, he turned to the material world to solve the problems of his soul. If he could cover his body and hide from God (physical solutions) then everything would be fine. The love of money is the root of all evil. Additionally, he denied culpability within himself. "The woman you gave me..." Adam sees Eve as the direct cause, God the indirect cause of his problems. He is a victim of circumstances. This places enmity between himself and his only fellow human.

Evil: The Delusion

One last observation along these lines. As evil crept deeper and deeper into Adam's life, it brought with it an ignorance, a denial of the truth, a delusion. How?

	Adam, even with his fig leaf, was still stark naked. He was only pretending to be otherwise.
	Adam, even with his denials, was the sole cause of his discomfort and problems. He was only pretending to be otherwise.
	God, even with his glorious creation, was still the only reality. Adam was only pretending it was otherwise.
	Adam, even with his unhappiness, was still living in paradise. He was only pretending to be otherwise.

He had forgotten. Steeped in ignorance, he had exchanged the bliss of the creator for the pain of his own making. He stopped seeing what was, and began dwelling on what was not. Thus was born envy. Thus was born anxiety. And he sought to solve his problems with the material world, instead of the spirit that had created it. Sound familiar?

Good And Evil: A Summary

We have come quite a distance from the commonly understood Gospel. The fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the source of all problems. Disobedience was the indirect problem. The direct problem was the knowledge of what is not that the fruit made available to Adam. The results contain ego centered living, materialism, strife, and all the other pains we have brought upon ourselves. Evil is a knowledge. A knowledge of what does not exist. A turning away from what is to what is not.

Here, in chart form, is a summary of these thoughts.

BEFORE THE FALL	AFTER THE FALL
Life	Good And Evil
Real	Unreal
One	Many
Whole	Fracture
Monism	Dualism
Toward God/Creation	Toward Self
Spirit Oriented	Material Oriented
Unashamed	Ashamed
Egoless	EgoSense Of Self
Attuned To God	Against God
Naked	Covered
Open	Hiding
Comfort	Fear
Harmony	Discord
Peace	Strife
Love	Hate
Joy	Sorrow
Us	Me & Not(Me)=You

Chapter 6: Leaving The Garden Of Eden

Our story so far: God told Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam ate it. His eyes were opened, knowing good and evil. Now what? How does God respond? What's a father to do?

God's Response

Here again are the pertinent verses from Genesis Chapter 3:

16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children; yet your desire shall be for you husband, and he shall rule over you."

17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the Tree about which I commanded you, saying, `You shall not eat from it'; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

18 "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field;

19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

21 And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever"

23 Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.

24 So he drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.

The events are clear. God tells Adam and Eve they will suffer. It is also plain that God will cause this suffering. "I will greatly multiply your pain...cursed is the ground because of you..." He casts them out of the Garden, making it impossible for them to eat the Tree of Life. God prevents Adam and Eve from living forever. He, in essence, condemns them to death. Why does God do this? "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the Tree about which I commanded you, saying, `you shall not eat from it'." That certainly sounds as though God is punishing Adam for disobedience.

But he wasn't. As we have seen in the previous two sections, Adam's disobedience was the indirect problem; it led to the direct problem, which was the knowledge of good and evil.

Example: a parent says, "Don't touch anything under the sink." Adam disobeys, drinks some poison and becomes very sick. The parent responds, "Because you didn't do what I told you, we have to take you to the hospital." In this example it is very easy to see that though Adam's disobedience led to his sickness, it is not the disobedience itself that made him sick; the poison made him sick. The fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was poison. And Adam was quickly getting sick. "All right, fine. But God still punished Adam and Eve for eating from the Tree." That is the next issue we must examine: punishment.

The Two Types Of Punishment

Remember from Chapter 4 our discussion of two forms of parental commands, selfish and selfless. We concluded that God must have been acting selflessly in his prohibition against the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, with their best interests in mind. In the previous Chapter we saw the harm that came to Adam from this Tree. Recall also our illustration of little Adam and the x!@. What happens if/when little Adam does indeed touch the x!@? In the answer #1 (selfish) scenario the parent gets hurt. Parent feels anger and loss because the x!@ Is important to him/her. In the answer #2 (selfless) scenario Adam gets hurt. Parent feels sorrow for Adam because he has been pained, and tries to comfort and heal.

Who was hurt through Adam's transgression? The only obvious answer is "Adam". If that is true, and God was acting selflessly and lovingly toward Adam and Eve, then God must have felt sorrow for Adam and Eve because they had been pained, and tried to comfort and help heal them. How then are we to understand that God "greatly increased" their pain and "cursed" them for what they had done?

Good question.

There are two types of punishment, paralleling the two types of parenting:

Punishment type #1 seeks to hurt another as retribution for some harm experienced by the punisher. This is vindictive, after the fact. The parent hates the color green, and has commanded that Adam never wear green clothing. One day Adam "forgets" and wears a green hat. The parent then whips Adam for disobeying, for offending the parent's aesthetics.

Punishment type #2 seeks to deliver a lesser hurt that can be understood/related to, in order to try to prevent some greater hurt that cannot be comprehended. This is protective, before the fact. Little Adam is reaching for a pot on the stove. Parent slaps Adam's hand (which Adam can feel and understand) to communicate the message that Adam must not do that, trying to save Adam from an incomprehensible agony.

Which type of punishment do you think God gave to Adam and Eve?

The Vindictive God Of The Cug

The commonly understood Gospel, while wrong, is at least consistent in its view of the arbitrary, vindictive God. God is "just" (CUG # 3). He required, therefore, obedience for its own sake. Thus the command not to touch the one Tree. Adam disobeyed (CUG #6) out of stubborn, sinful rebellion. God punished Adam for having done this, casting him from the Garden of Eden, destined to lifelong suffering until dying a death of eternal separation from God (CUG # 8 & 9).

God was angry. His perfect righteousness was offended, and he absolutely would not want to have His disgusting, sinful children around to mar His heavenly beneficence and glory. Since the test of obedience was arbitrary, "God" could have simply forgotten or forgiven the transgression. Such a vast amount of suffering from such a small, meaningless test. Like a spoiled child who has been offended, "God" gets mad that Adam and Eve failed this arbitrary test. He has one really nice toy that He will only let His friends play with: the Tree of Life. And since Adam and Eve made Him mad, "God" won't let them touch His nice Tree. So out they had to go. "Get out of my sight! I never want to see you again! And for good measure, I'll be sure you never enjoy another day as long as you live!!"

Some "god", huh? A selfish, arbitrary parent, who vindictively punishes his children eternally for offending his capricious whims, multiplying pain and suffering to vent his all-powerful anger.

This is not right! This is a manifestation of the very evil that came into the world when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is a vision of a God as evil as the minds that conceived it. It is, in fact, evil itself. It is not real.

Yet this is the conception we have had drilled into us.

Once Adam and Eve began to know good and evil, everything became polluted. Especially their knowledge of God.

The Real God

The real God, the creator of heaven and earth, our heavenly father:

	God is love. (I John 4:7)
	God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all (I John 1:5)
	Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is *good*; for His loving kindness is everlasting! (Psalms 106:1)

Why, then, would a good, loving God "increase pain...curse...and cast out?" Strange as it may seem to our darkened hearts and minds, He was trying to help. To heal. "What??!?" That's right. You see, after Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, a disease was born in their soul; the knowledge of good and evil may not have been toxic to God, but it was absolutely deadly (!) to Adam and Eve, who were created to be manifestations of pure good. Just like little Adam in the example of the poison under the sink, they have eaten something very harmful to them.

Now, what is a loving parent to do? If you saw your child convulsing from ingesting poison, after you had warned/ordered him/her to stay away from the kitchen sink, how would you respond? Would you slap your child for disobeying you? Would you throw him/her out on the street, vowing to never speak to them again? If you had an antidote for the poison, would you deny it to them in anger? Of course not!! It is only the most vile and loathsome so-called parents who would act in such a horrible manner.

Yet again, this is exactly the behavior the common understanding of the Gospel ascribes to God!!!

At the point that your child is writhing in pain, slapping him/her has no value. No meaning. You are willing to forgive any trespass. The fact of your child's disobedience is absolutely meaningless in the light of the life threatening situation he/she now faces. You must deal with the poison!

It is exactly the same with God. Adam's transgression, the fact that he disobeyed, was and is insignificant. God is love. God is forgiving. "For Thou, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in loving kindness to all who call upon Thee." (Psalm 86:5) God was not punishing Adam. Forgiveness, if it was needed, was already his. All he had to do was ask. No problem. Paradise never lost.

The problem, however, was Adam's sickness. Knowledge of good and evil was eating him alive. Killing him. Causing him to be ego centered, out of harmony with his mate, hiding from his God.

What Adam needed was an antidote! But God didn't have one on hand. Not quite yet. It would take a few thousand years to make one.

But God got to working on it right away.

And when it was ready, He made it available to everyone.

In another Garden.

Called Gethsemane.

To The Hospital

But in the mean time, God still had a little problem. What to do with Adam? If your child was convulsing from poison, and you didn't have an antidote at hand, what would you do? In all probability you would take him/her to the hospital. Which is exactly what God did to Adam!

God sent Adam out of the Garden of Eden, into the cold world, to till the soil by the sweat of his brow until he returned to the ground. This world is a hospital for souls sick with the knowledge of good and evil. But why did Adam and Eve have to suffer? Why did God say He was going to "greatly multiply" their pain?

It was a blessing that God added pain to Adam and Eve's lives. Pain, albeit unpleasant, serves a very good and useful purpose: to indicate what is wrong, and to steer us toward what is right. Without it, we could destroy ourselves utterly without the slightest indication that anything is wrong.

In fact, this condition exists. It is a disease medical science calls neuropathy. People with this disease have nerve endings that are incapable of transmitting pain signals. People with this condition can actually amputate one of their own limbs and not feel a thing. They simply die from blood loss. It is a very deadly disease, in that children afflicted with it must be carefully supervised and taught how to avoid situations that seem harmless to them.

This was precisely the situation with Adam and Eve. Yes, they had caught the sickness of good and evil knowledge. Yet it did not control them utterly; there was still much life within them. God gave them pain to be their guide. Life out of balance would yield suffering, as a constant tutor to lead us back to the truth. But, thanks to the fact that God kept them from the Tree of Life, the suffering would not be everlasting.

Barred From The Tree Of Life

One nagging issue remains: the Tree of Life. Why did God make it impossible for Adam and Eve to have access to it? If the Tree of Life could give everlasting life to Adam and Eve, why didn't God allow them to eat from it? In other words, since the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil brought death to them, wouldn't the Tree of Life heal them? Wasn't this, in fact, the antidote for the poison in their soul that we referred to earlier? It seems incredibly cruel for God to deny them this Tree, if it could have solved their problem.

The Tree of Life is life itself. Ever growing. The source of all living things. It is rooted in the spiritual world, in that life is much more than a collection of chemical processes. Being a spiritual reality, not bound by its manifestation within time or space, it is eternal. Whatever touches or "eats" from this Tree becomes immortal.

Therefore, if God had allowed Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Life, their knowledge of good and evil, and all the suffering it begat, would have become immortal and everlasting!

To use the illustration of the poison once again, this would be like little Adam convulsing and retching in pain forever and ever and ever and...... But God is love, and He would never let such a thing happen to His children. He loved them, and wanted to protect them from harm. Remember, that in His act of creation God manifested only goodness. Through the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve gained knowledge of evil, all those potentials God sought to avoid. (Hopefully this point has been well made by now.) Had these non-manifest potentialities been touched by the Tree of Life, they would have been given manifest, positive reality. At which point evil, instead of being a knowledge of what is not, a delusion, would have become a created/manifest existence of equal status with the rest of the universe.

So He sent them from Eden, placing an angel to "guard the way to the Tree of Life", to certify that they could not accidentally stumble upon it and immortalize their knowledge of evil. Paradise lost. But not forever.

On Sin And Death

"The wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23) "The soul who sins will die." (Ezekiel 18:4) Knowledge of good and evil is deadly. Souls sickened with this disease have been barred from the Tree of Life. Hopefully it is clear by this time that God has set things up this way as a manifestation of his love and concern. Life is good. Knowledge of evil brings pain and suffering. If sin could touch the Tree of Life then the suffering would be everlasting. In his goodness God saw to it that all suffering from sin would be limited and temporal.

So, all sin must die. Will die. Not as a punishment or retribution, but as a natural result (wage). For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. For every sin there is death. We see this in two important ways:

1) Directly, death of the sin. Hatred must die. Enmity must stop. Strife will end. Darkness will give way to light.

2) Indirectly, death of the part of the soul that is attached to the sin.

This last idea is quite important and must be expanded. I'll use an example. Let's say that little Adam is perfect in every way except one: he hates the x!@. It has plagued him throughout this entire writing, and by now he is sick of it. He hates, loathes and despises it. This hatred, with all of its ugly and unpleasant feelings, cannot be allowed to continue forever. It must stop. Adam must cease his hatred. This sin must die. So, that part of Adam's soul which is attached to the idea of hating the x!@, those thoughts and feelings, must die. That part of Adam's soul must repent, turning away from this sin.

All of our thoughts, feelings and desires are a part of us, of our soul. That part of us that is polluted must be healed. The cancer must be killed. The part of our soul that is diseased with sin must die. Not the whole soul, just the part that is sick! The CUG (#11) would have us believe that due to one sin, one time, Adam eternally lost communion with God; that this one act of disobedience so angered God's sense of justice that he could never, ever tolerate to see his children again.

This belief is a manifestation of evil. It is wrong. Once again it ascribes to God the most atrocious of acts and motivations. Back to the example of the x!@ again. Adam's parent said "don't touch it." But Adam did. What kind of human filth would be so angered that he/she would never, ever speak to Adam again? In fact, is there anything at all that your child could do that would cause you to disown them forever? For a loving parent the answer is "no!" Though the parent may rightly renounce the act, the parent will always care for the child. "Hate the sin but love the sinner."

So too with God! Any sinful act must simply be repented of; it is not necessary for the entire soul to die.

However, there is a deeper problem: the knowledge of good and evil still remains. This is the state of sin, which will continue to generate acts of suffering. The state of sin can be likened to cancer, which in turn attacks different organs in the body. We can eradicate the cancer from each organ, but until the body stops producing new cancer cells, it is not really healthy.

Repentance

Turning from sin in the Bible is called repentance. We have stated that evil is a knowledge, a mode of perception. It is therefore not so surprising, now that we are beginning to really understand this whole business of evil / sin / punishment / repentance, that the Greek word we translate into English as "repent" is "metanoia". It literally means "To change the mind". To "repent" means to think differently!

So here are a few passages with the word "repent" replaced with "Think differently":

	Job 36:10 He makes them listen to correction and commands them to think differently of their evil.
	Matt 4:17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Think differently, for the kingdom of heaven is near."
	Acts 8:22 "Think differently of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart."
	Acts 17:30 "In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to think differently."

Astounding, yes?

Though it should be obvious, I will nevertheless state that repentance doesn't consist simply in stopping what you are doing or feeling sorry for past acts. It's essence is to have a different attitude (thinking) all together.

Conclusions

So we see that God is very willing and eager to forgive. He does not need or want to punish anyone eternally for anything. Each act of sin must stop. This is called repentance. That part of the soul which is attached to the sin will die, for God has seen to it that all evil and suffering is temporal and limited. But the fundamental problem remains: knowledge of good and evil. That is the root of sin, the state of sin. Individual sins are the branches and flowers (fruit!) from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Mankind will not be healthy until the state of sin is eliminated, until we no longer know good and evil, but only life. God was preparing the cure.

Chapter 7: Summary Of The Garden Of Eden

Here, in summary form, are the cardinal points we have seen in our examination of the Garden of Eden. They are presented in parallel with the first 12 points of the common understanding of the Gospel I've outlined earlier.

1) CUG: In the beginning God created the universe.

Truth: In the beginning God created the universe.

2) CUG: Everything in the creation was good, including humanity.

Truth: Everything in the creation was good, including humanity.

3) CUG: While God has many attributes, two are of primary importance as it pertains to the Gospel: He is perfectly loving and He is perfectly just (righteous).

Truth: God is love. God is perfectly just (righteous) in that He always works perfectly in accordance with His loving nature.

4) CUG: The creation was a manifestation of His love.

Truth: The creation was a manifestation of His love.

5) CUG: In order to assure that His justice might be known, and that we might remember that He is God and to be obeyed, He set one Tree in the Garden that Adam was forbidden to touch, as a test of Adam's obedience.

Truth: In order to try to keep Adam from great harm, God commanded (warned) Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

6) CUG: Adam, however, did partake from this Tree.

Truth: Adam, however, did partake from this Tree.

7) CUG: This act of disobedience angered God, and offended His sense of perfect righteousness. It missed the mark of proper obedience. This is called sin.

Truth: This Tree changed Adam's perception from a unity of the glorious goodness of life, making him know good and evil. It made him aware of both what was and was not. What was (created), was good. What was not (uncreated), was evil.

8) CUG: God therefore punished Adam by casting him out of the Garden of Eden, cursing him with a life full of suffering.

Truth: God set immediately to try to heal his poisoned children, preventing them from eating from the Tree of Life, which would have immortalized their pain. Their pain was to be only temporal, guiding them back to the paths of goodness.

9) CUG: This brought death and suffering into the world. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God.

Truth: In his goodness and love God saw to it that all suffering and evil would be limited and temporal. All evil, all sin, will die.

10) CUG: God's perfect righteousness cannot abide the presence of disobedience, otherwise known as sin.

Truth: Though God was willing to forgive Adam's transgression, Adam sought to hide from God. Adam did not want fellowship with the creator.

11) CUG: Therefore, due to this sin, Adam was destined to spend the rest of eternity apart or away from God.

Truth: Therefore, all Adam had to do was repent, turn from his sinful ways, and return to the goodness that was intended. Unfortunately, in his fallen condition, he had no way to do this. He simply could not heal himself. Clinging to his delusions and filth, man was lost.

12) CUG: However, God's loving heart could not tolerate such a thing. Though Adam justly deserved God's temporal and eternal punishment, God nevertheless wanted Adam to have everlasting fellowship with Him. But Adam's sin made fellowship with the perfectly righteous creator impossible.

Truth: However, while humanity wandered struggling, God set out to create a surefire cure for man's spiritual sickness.

Chapter 8: Life Between The Gardens

The time between the gardens of Eden and Gethsemane was spent by God preparing the antidote for Adam's poison, the knowledge of good and evil. As pertaining to our purpose here, the following were the key events:

1) First God began to prepare a social order ("a people") capable of receiving the antidote. This he did through the Hebrews, becoming the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

2) God revealed His Name, the most powerful mechanism by which His people were to able to learn His nature and attributes. The personal Name by which his people would remember Him and learn about Him. This is the subject of "God is not God's Name".

3) God revealed the law.

The law has received a lot of bad press the last few thousand years. While some of the Jews imagined it was a means of salvation, it was never intended as such. It was simply a guide for life, showing people how to live in order to maximize love, joy, peace, patience, etc. It is fashionable to see the law as an impossible standard by which God would condemn people, but it was never intended to be so:

Deut 30:11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.

Deut 30:12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"

Deut 30:13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"

Deut 30:14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

Deut 30:15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.

Deut 30:16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

Deut 30:17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them,

Deut 30:18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

Deut 30:19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live

Deut 30:20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land He swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (NIV)

Once you understand God's loving nature, this becomes easy to understand. The law was not an impossible standard. It was simply a guide to prosperity and healthy living. Yet it was never intended as a mechanism for salvation. God does not love us more or less depending on our performance. God is love.

Let us be very clear on this. Righteousness can never come from performance. Even absolute "perfection", whatever that might be, is incapable of generating righteousness. Perfection consists in returning to the pure egoless state, wherein God is the only reality. Only God, only life, is good, perfect, and therefore righteous. Any performance, if it is self-centered, is a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

4) For all life outside of the Garden: the world is still good. Evil is only a knowledge, given animation by our limited life form, but not eternal. There are no problems at all, save those inside our own heads.

Evil must die; the wages of sin is death. We must have a new way of thinking, a way to overcome the knowledge of good and evil, and return to the Tree of Life; know life, as in the beginning! We still need the antidote! Grace is the only reality. All life and breath is a gift/manifestation of God. It is part of the problem that we imagine that we are capable of any act apart from God. That ego centered consciousness is the very problem.

Chapter 9: In The Garden Of Gethsemane

Jesus: Fully God And Fully Man

Well, dear reader, at this point God has the human race able to receive the antidote for sin. God has prepared the Jewish people, they have a social order. They have a government, they have a history. They have a religious life in which to begin to comprehend God's proclamations. They have the law, the guide post to understanding of how God wants us all to live on this earth. You could say that God now has all of the different ingredients for the antidote for sin to be placed within the world.

And He does that, of course, through Jesus.

Now the mystery of the incarnation is a truly deep and profound one which has occupied the hearts and minds of Christians throughout the centuries. Who exactly was Jesus and what was he doing? And the different answers that have come up through the years go all the way from God in the flesh, (who from the day he was born, knew that he could whirl galaxies) all the way to on the other extreme, just a man who was never anything more than a man, but who had placed upon him the mythology of Godhood by overly eager disciples.

It will be important, in one form or another, for each Christian to decide for him and her self, who Jesus was and what he means to them.

When he was a four year old child walking around, did he know that he was the infinite, limitless creator of the universe? Did he know that he could unthink all manifest reality simply by blinking his eyes? Could he, as the Apocrypha says, raise little animals from the dead when he was a baby? Was he in any sense divine at all? Or was he just some guy, hardly even a prophet, walking through the deserts of Galilee, teaching, giving little tidbits of wisdom to whomever would be interested in listening? Was he something in between?

I will give you my answer, based upon the Biblical record. Jesus was completely God and completely man. But, no, he was not aware of that from the day he was born. In as much as he was a human being he had to go through a process of learning, growth and maturity as we all do. The notion that this little three year old boy walking around knows that he is God, I find simply to be silly and without any value whatsoever. Over the course of his life Jesus enters into a deeper and deeper understanding of who and what he really is.

But there is always a tension here. A tension between the godly side of him and the human side. The tension revolves between Jesus recognizing his special unique relationship with God, and portraying to all of his disciples and fellow believers the fact that there is no difference between he and the father. For example Jesus says very clearly, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. Before Abraham was I am." These are very bold, very powerful, very provocative statements for a Jewish rabbi to make.

At the same time while those statements indicate a special unique relationship between Jesus and God, he also goes out of his way to talk to his disciples in such a way that they know that they are brothers and sisters. Luke 6:40, for example says, "A pupil is not above his teacher but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher." That is truly astounding! And it is a verse which most of Christianity seeks to ignore.

Jesus is indicating that we are ultimately going to be like he is. We will learn, we will grow, we will finally become fully instructed, our minds will be opened, which is what instruction is all about. And we will be like him. In the Gospel of John 20:17, Jesus says to Mary, "Stop clinging to me for I have not yet ascended to the father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I ascend to my father and your father, and my God and your God.' That could not possibly be any clearer. Here Jesus is indicating that all barriers between himself and his brothers are gone. That the relationship he has with God is the same relationship which the disciples have with God. Jesus, God in the flesh, ascended to his God. Jesus the only son of God, told his brothers that he was ascending to their father.

When one puts all of the Biblical accounts together, I believe you are inexorably pushed to the following conclusions:

Jesus had a unique one to one relationship with his father which none of us share.
Every single one of us has a unique one to one relationship with our heavenly father which no one else shares.
Since we all stand in a unique relationship as individuals with God, we all share a common brotherhood and fellowship as equal brothers under our joint fatherhood of God.
All of us, after we have been properly instructed, shall be as Jesus is.

This is a key point, which is reiterated constantly in different ways and different manners throughout the Bible. The very name Christian means to be like Christ, Christ like. And we will see other verses that show how intimate that relationship is to be.

Jesus As Subject Or Object?

We have within Christianity, and in fact within all religions, a tension between Jesus as religious subject and religious object. In the early days of his life, as he walked and talked and ministered, Jesus was a subject. He was a fellow traveler, he was a brother, he was a teacher. And his words were to be listened to. His teaching was to be followed. We were to learn from him, walk with him, be one with him. If you read through the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, for example in Matthew 7, "Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven." We see here the dynamic tension between Jesus as subject and object. Jesus is in the Bible a subject to be listened to, learned from and followed.

Over the course of history, Christians have tended to spend less and less and less time on this, and more and more time venerating Jesus as an object to be worshipped. This comes in many forms. We sing songs and recite our creeds, and place him up on the pedestal that he is the son of God, and we are not. He is perfect and we are not. He is wonderful and we are not. This is, in a certain sense, a valuable tool, but only if it's purpose is to elevate ourselves.

Let me explain. If we are worshipping Jesus as the son of God, that is wonderful if it is done with a heart that recognizes that we, too, can be as he is. Then we are actually recognizing and venerating the highest calling of God upon our hearts. If, however, we are worshipping Jesus for purposes of self depreciation, then the worship of Jesus actually becomes a negative influence in our lives.

This is so often the case. We ignore the statements about "my father and your father, my God and your God," and we only pay attention to those statements which will place Jesus up on the pedestal. As a result, we do not follow the true calling. We do not walk the pathway that Jesus walked. We only worship him as being the great God.

The subject/object tension becomes very crucial as we return to our central thesis. The salvation of mankind is seen by most, by the common understanding of the Gospel, as something that we have to believe in. That Jesus did something we have to worship, that we have to be thankful for and acknowledge. The common understanding of the Gospel has placed Jesus into the realm of religious object, for veneration and devotion. It has failed to make him a religious subject to be followed.

The proper understanding of the Gospel returns to Christianity's roots, and attempts to follow the pathway that Jesus laid out.

Now, specifically, what we are talking about here is the antidote for sin. Adam and Eve have been cast from the Garden. The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil has poisoned them and they are dying. God then sends Jesus, part God, part man, fully God, fully man.

According to the common understanding of the Gospel what happened? Through the hands of evil people, Jesus was put upon the cross to be a propitiation for God's wrath. A propitiation for our sin. This works it's way into our translations of the Bible. For example, Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith."

Methods Of Atonement

At this point we must discuss methods of atonement. Let's say that I have done something wrong, I have stolen your watch. It is a lovely watch, it is a good watch, and I have stolen it from you. That is the sin, that is the crime, that is the problem. There are different ways that you can deal with this problem, all of them fall under the classification of atonement.

Atonement Type 1: Ignore It. You can simply ignore the problem. For some people this is a form of forgiveness. You say that the watch doesn't matter, you do not care, and you will forgive me for having stolen your watch. The problem with this is, if the watch represents something essential, like the soul of man, then to simply forget about it is not going to be sufficient. Adam and Eve partook from the Tree and the poison is going to kill them. God cannot simply forget about it, or else Adam and Eve will partake from that Tree of everlasting life and their suffering will be immortal.

Atonement Type 2: Retribution. You can pass along my sin to someone else. You can have some form of retribution. Retribution is from the words "re-distribution." You take my sin of stealing your watch and you go out and you steal someone else's watch. This obviously does not fix the fundamental problem, it simply passes it along.

Atonement Type 3: Vengeance. Vengeance it where you go after me and either hit me, kill me, find something of mine to steal. You take vengeance upon me. This is also known as revenge.

Atonement Type 4: Propitiation. When we propitiate your pain, you come to me and say, "You stole my watch and I'm very mad." And I say, "How about if I buy you dinner?" I take you to dinner, you get all fat and happy, you forget about the watch and everything is fine. There is only one problem with propitiation: you still do not have a watch! You still have not taken care of the fundamental problem.

So as it comes to the fall of man, if we are not going to forget about it, if we are not going to pass it along to someone else, if we are not going to seek revenge, and propitiation is insufficient, what is left?

Atonement Type 5: Expiation. To expiate means to expire, to put out. When I expiate my sin of stealing your watch, I actually give you a watch back! I either buy you a new one, or, if I still have it, I get you the original one. Through this method and only this method is the original problem fixed!

So these words which most people have never even heard, propitiation and expiation, happen to be absolutely crucial in the proper understanding of God's redemption. Now the translators of the New American Standard Bible, among others, talk about what God did through Jesus as a propitiation. This is at least consistent with the common understanding of the Gospel, that God poured out his wrath upon Jesus.

According to the CUG, what was the problem in the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve sinned, this angered God, and He had to vent His wrath somewhere. He could not vent His wrath on Adam and Eve because they would be evaporated. So He had to find somewhere else to vent His wrath. He had to find someone who was able to handle His divine punishment. This is CUG #15. God needed a sacrifice to atone for humanity's sin, a way to vent His righteous wrath in a way that would not punish all of humanity forever. So what He did was pour out His wrath upon Jesus. Perfect God and perfect man, God allowed His wrath over Adam and Eve's sin to be propitiated. He put all of His pain and all of his anger upon Jesus, watched him twitch, watched him bleed, watched him suffer, watched him die. Once this happened God said, "Well o.k., I've been propitiated. You bought me dinner and I'm going to forget about the watch. I watched Jesus die, I watched him suffer and bleed. I've gotten my divine wrath and my need for punishment, retribution and vengeance out of the way. I got it out of my system."

Perhaps you might want to read that paragraph again, ladies and gentlemen, because as abhorrent and disgusting as it is, that is exactly how the vast majority of Christians think about Jesus and God!

Notice, then, that since this a propitiation, Adam and Eve's sin is still present. It hasn't changed at all. They are still caught in their sin, they still are the same they were before. Nothing has been fixed. The watch has been stolen, nothing is right. The only thing that has happened is that this vindictive, silly, disgusting, so-called God has vented his anger and is no longer going to hold the human race's sin against us! Sick, yes?

This is absolutely, positively not right! This understanding comes from the very fallen nature that we received in the Garden of Eden. This way of thinking about God and Jesus and salvation is nothing more than a further manifestation of sin. It could not possibly be more wrong.

What, then is right? What is the truth?

If the real problem with Adam and Eve was not their disobedience but actually the poison which the Tree gave them, and if God was not seeking to have revenge or propitiate His wrath, if He was actually attempting to expiate the problem, then we find our entire view of Christ's passion to be changed.

Chapter 10: The Essence Of Christ's Passion

Can you tell me what's essential in the moment that you're living here and now? To assist your comprehension I will motion to the Passion's why and how.

The central event of the Christian Church has focus in Jesus' death and his resurrection. Neither of those events, however, required active participation on Jesus' behalf. He did not do anything. He was hammered and nailed to the cross, he hung there until he died. God resurrected him from the dead.

What did Jesus actually do?

This is a crucial event. Why does it matter? How can there be any salvation in someone being hung from a cross? Tens upon thousands of people were crucified by the Romans. None of their crucifixions mattered. And there have been many people who have been resurrected from the dead. In modern days we have many people who have died and have come back to talk about it. In Jesus' day he resurrected Lazarus, Tabatha. Why wasn't resurrection simply enough? In other words, death alone upon a cross is not sufficient for salvation. Resurrection from the dead is also not sufficient for salvation. As crucial and important as these events are, they do not constitute the salvation of the human race.

No. The active events, what Jesus actually participated in, what he really did for you, he did not do on Golgotha and he did not do on Easter morning.

What he did, he did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The central, most important event in all of Christendom happened in the Garden. In the Garden of Eden we find the problem, and that problem is actually fixed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

You will find the Garden of Gethsemane in three chapters: Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22. It is also in the last part of the Gospel of John, but he, John, portrays Jesus' last days in a very different manner, from a very different perspective. And we do not actually see the Garden of Gethsemane, per se, in the Gospel of John.

Matt 26:39, Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:44 account the most significant event in Christianity and the most significant event in the life of any human being.

Let us set the stage. It is the last night of Jesus' life, he has just had his final meal with his disciples. It is the holy Passover, one of the two highest, holiest days in all of Israel, where they are commemorating God's freeing of the Jews from Egypt. He has just had the bread and the wine with his disciples, and he knows that his time is up, that the roman authorities are coming to arrest him.

He goes out after supper, into a Garden. Starting in Matt 26:36, we see that Jesus goes into Gethsemane. He asks his disciples to sit and pray with him, to sit while he goes over to pray. Verse 38:

Jesus said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. Remain here and keep watch with me." And he went a little beyond them and fell on his face and prayed, saying, "My father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

Later in verse 42, "He went away again a second time and prayed saying, 'My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done.'"

First this tells us something very important about the nature of Jesus. Those who see Jesus as a religious object, those who wish to put him upon the high pedestal only for purposes of praise and worship, are unable to deal with this passage. Because this passage flies in the face of their philosophy. The idea that Jesus was from the beginning absolutely, perfectly God in the flesh, never had a temptation, never had a desire, never had a personal thought, is all given lie to right here.

You can worship Jesus all you want, but the Bible makes it clear, at least right here in the Garden of Gethsemane, that there was something in Jesus which was against God's will! You can call that sin or not, depending upon your comfort level. But Jesus wanted something that God did not want. Jesus was a person, and he was fully man. And this constitutes what scholars have come to call as Jesus' fourth temptation. Also, known as the last temptation.

The first three were at the beginning of his ministry, where he faced the devil in the desert. There

	He had to overcome the temptation to use his spiritual gifts to feed himself instead of others.
	He had to overcome the temptation to make a spectacle of himself and turn himself into a religious object.
	And he had to overcome the temptation to fall down and worship the devil (materialism), and in so doing control and own the whole world.

THE TOUGHEST TEMPTATION

This temptation in Gethsemane was the hardest one. It is the only one where the Bible accounts that he sweat drops of blood. Sweating drops of blood is extremely rare, but it is biologically and medically possible, for a person can become so upset that actual drops of blood will form at the surface of the skin as the different capillaries and vessels break. The Bible indicates that Jesus had no problem what so ever with the first three temptations; or, if he had any real difficulties, it is certainly not accounted for us.

However, this fourth temptation brought him to immense distress. The temptation here is two-fold: what you are running away from and what you are running toward. Jesus at this point was running away from a very bitter, a very unpleasant death. No one enjoys being crucified; it is not a pleasant experience. However, there was the flipside. Jesus could have run toward a normal life, he could have left ministry, he could have left the disciples, he could have found himself a lovely home somewhere, settled down and had children. He had seen many other people lead normal lives. Certainly there was a great temptation to leave this bitter cup behind, and not have to partake of it's pain, and move from this tragic world of ministry into a simple, calm home life. The contradictory desires between the calling of God and his human desires created such a tension, such a pain that he, as the record states, sweat drops of blood.

No one can fault Jesus for this. But at the same time we have to be honest and recognize that this is not some non-corporeal God who's floating through the heavens and walking around on the earth playing some kind of game. No, this is an actual human being, and that human being at this point stands at the crossroads. He can look up and see the pathway of God, the call of the spirit, the religious duties and obligations. Or he can turn from the creator to the creation, to the comforts of his body, his emotions, his desires.

In the Garden of Gethsemane he stood at the nexus of all human existence. For each of us are, everyday, sitting at this crossroad. Every moment of every day we can serve God or serve ourselves. We can turn from ourselves to worship God and we can turn from God to worship ourselves. One way is the Tree of Life, the other is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the central hub of the universe. This is the temptation of ego.

At this point Jesus is experiencing the fullness of the tension which was created by Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you recall from previous chapters, ego is the separation of the self from God, to seek not God's ways but it's own way. To turn from the creator to worship the creation. To turn from the light and block the light with shadows and darkness.

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane wages war with the very problem of the human race.

That problem is ego.

Notice please, that Jesus is not doing something which is separate and apart from what happened in the Garden of Eden. But, what happened in the Garden of Eden is about to be reversed. Adam and Eve were created in oneness with God, fell from that and started living according to their egos and their own self will. Jesus here in the Garden of Gethsemane has the temptations to live according to his ego and his own self will, and just the fact that he says, "not my will" indicates that his ego and his own self will existed.

But the glorious victory, the beautiful miraculous proclamation is in that verse. "Not as I will but as thou will. Not my will but thy will be done." Jesus, fully God, fully man, turns from his lower vehicles. He turns from his personal comforts, his bodily comforts, his desire for warmth and happiness in the home life. He turns from himself and turns over to God. This is the absolute reverse of partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

The separation, the sundering, the broken relationship which began through Eden is healed and repaired through Gethsemane. The watch that was stolen in Eden is given back in Gethsemane. And the two actions are absolutely opposite. In the Garden mankind fell, and in the Garden mankind through Jesus was redeemed.

Dying To The Self

At that point the Biblical record is clear. Jesus did nothing else. What did he do? He died to himself. And in so doing created the antidote for the poison in mans soul. The events of the passion that followed are very straight forward. Jesus is immediately arrested, he's taken before a court. And he is taken before Pilate, he is sentenced to death. He is taken to Golgotha, crucified on a cross and is buried. Three days later God resurrects him from the dead.

Notice, several things.

Jesus dying to himself led to resurrection. This is part of the glorious plan of God. The eternal life which Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden before they partook of the forbidden fruit, they lost through the fall. Because God could not allow them in their sin to become immortal, or else their pain would be forever. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus takes that ego and that self will and he lets it die. He voluntarily sacrifices it for the purpose of serving God's kingdom and God's larger plan. As he does so he then returns to the state of eternal life which Adam and Eve had before the fall. So we see here a perfect cycle, where eternal life leads to ego, leads to separation, leads to death. Which leads to Jesus dying to himself, eliminating the separation, dying to the ego and returning to everlasting life!
What is happening here through this passion is not arbitrary, it is not fickle, it is not silly, it is not stupid. It is not disassociated from the real problem. The real problem is sin. The real problem is ego. The real problem is an incorrect way of understanding, it is a improper focus of the consciousness away from God and upon self. The redemption of mankind, then, does not go through any secondary or artificial means. It does not propitiate anything. It does not seek revenge, it is not a form of punishment. It is a perfect divine expiation of the problem.
It is astounding, at least to me, that such a perfect plan could have become so polluted and misunderstood over the years. To see how gloriously and how magnificently God deals with the problem of ego, to see the exact way that the original problem is taken care of is such a magnificent revelation, such a magnificent gift, that it is truly sad to see how the Gospel has become polluted and fallen over the years.

Here we have, finally, an organic, wholesome understanding of God. We understand that God loves Adam and Eve and is not trying to seek revenge on them. We see that God is trying to help heal them, and is not trying to vent His wrath on anyone. We see that God is actually, factually, fixing a problem, not merely wanting some form of silly sacrifice in order to appease His capricious anger.

Believing Is Not Enough!

At this point Jesus' passion becomes the antidote. By that I mean this substance, this holy nectar, this divine revelation releases to the entire human race a power, which all people have access to. 49 days after Jesus' resurrection he pours out the Holy Spirit through Pentecost, so that the very power by which he lived his life becomes available to all human beings.

This is where the issue of Jesus as religious subject and religious object becomes of crucial, paramount importance. According to the common understanding of the Gospel, part 23, God now offers forgiveness to all those who will trust in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. If you believe Jesus died for you, then God will not hold your sins against you (Cug 25.) Our only hope for everlasting life is to have faith in the all-availing power of Christ's bloodshed on the cross.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible itself says that that is not the entire story! It is absolutely and positively simply not enough to worship Jesus, simply to believe that he died for your sins. No.

Why not? Because such a thing is arbitrary, it is artificial, and it does not deal with the real problem. What is the real problem? At this point we are no longer talking about Adam, at this point we are no longer talking about Eve. At this point we are no longer talking about Jesus.

We are talking about YOU!

Because you, too, are caught in sin. You, too, live according to your ego. You, too, are a slave to your incorrect knowledge of the world. You fail to see God everywhere. You fail to live according to God's higher plan. You have the poison running through your veins and you are going to die! You too must have the antidote.

Once Jonas Saulk created his vaccine for polio, creating the vaccine was not enough. Nor was it enough that people believed that he had the vaccine. Nor would it have been enough for people to have started to sing songs of worship and praise to Jonas Saulk, because he made an antidote. No. What was necessary? Every single man, woman and child needed the vaccine! Every person, individually and collectively, needed the cure.

In exactly the same way, it is not sufficient for you to simply sing songs to Jesus. It is not sufficient for you to worship him or believe that what he did was true or good.

But you must receive the antidote yourself!

That means that your ego must die. That means that your thinking must become transformed. And you must be able to return to the unity and the goodness and the oneness that we had with God in the Garden of Eden.

And you can only do that by following Gethsemane.

The Bible is clear, and the truth of God is clear, that unless you make the events of Jesus' passion alive in your life, those events that he underwent will do you no good whatsoever. In other words, unless Jesus' death to himself and his resurrection becomes your death and your resurrection, then his death and resurrection is absolutely useless to you. As Jesus says, "If anyone wishes to come after me, then let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me unto life everlasting." Again, notice the language of being a religious subject - someone to be followed, not only worshiped.

The cross, ladies and gentlemen, is not a sore back or a bunion or a rainy day. The cross is the vehicle by which your ego will be slain. The cross is the vehicle upon which your separation from God will disappear.

Notice that Jesus commands you, clearly, "If you want to be a follower of mine, don't just sit there and sing songs about my death and resurrection. Don't sit there and worship me for what I did. You get busy! You take up your cross, and you follow me. You deny yourself and you will find everlasting life!"

Here again we see the natural form of God's true religion. There is nothing strange or mystical or weird about it. It is very available to all people. It is very organic. The problem which Adam and Eve had, the poison which affects all of us, Jesus created the antidote for. And we must all imbibe from that antidote.

We must all come to the point where we die to ourselves, and live to God. "Not my will, but Thy will be done."

Repent - Think Differently

Just as through Adam and Eve we all became sinners, so too, through Jesus we all became saints. This is perhaps to many a very strange idea, but it is quite clearly written once again in the Bible. Romans 5:12 says, "Through the one man sin entered into the world and death spread to all men." Verse 17, "If by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who received the abundance and grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men."

What does that mean? It means that in exactly the same way that Adam's sin cast all people into sin, Christ's salvation cast all people into salvation!

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, that everything is good. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, but everything is still good. Everything that God created is good, and very good. Remember that everything is inside of God, a part of God.

What then has to happen? We must follow the voice of John the Baptist, we must follow the voice of Jesus and we must repent, which, as we have seen, means to think differently. We have to change our way of thinking and recognize that we are not fallen sinful creatures, but we are, in fact, children of God. As long as we think that we are fallen, disgusting sinners, that is how we will live. Once we begin to recognize that we are, in fact, children of the living God, and that we are all brothers and sisters under Him, then we will recognize this living out in ourselves and begin to participate in it.

That is why the Bible tells us that we must not be conformed to this world, but we have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (repentance), so that we may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Notice, the only truth is God. Adam and Eve pretended that they were clothed, but behind our silly little clothes we still remain completely naked. The universe is God's creation, and He still is in control. And the breath which we breath we do so only by the power of God. It is only a simple, stupid, little trick that makes us think, through our egos, that we are self-willed and self-powered. If God ceased to grant us the ability to profane Him, we would not exist.

So, Romans 12:2 has all the key ingredients that we need. "Do not be conformed to this world," means that we are not to orient ourselves toward this world. As Jesus said, "Not my will, but Thy will be done." To not focus on this world and the creation but to turn from the creation to the creator. "Rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind." We have the mind of Christ. We have God's consciousness living inside of us. This has been poured out to all people. This is the great and glorious truth of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit who will lead us to all truth. We need truth because we are in error. And error means that we are ignorant.

There is nothing that has to go on except for a renewal of our minds.

Ladies and gentlemen, this could not be more perfect, under any circumstances.

What is the problem? As we've stated so many times before in previous chapters, everything is still good, but the problem is Adam and Eve have a poison. What is that poison? They are thinking wrong. They have partaken from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Sin is a knowledge. Evil is a way of thinking. Therefore if that is going to be fixed, what do we have to do? We have to have our thinking renewed, we have our thinking healed. We have to turn from thinking about this world and ourselves as being separate from God (ego). And we must become reunited with him (salvation). Knowledge of good and evil becomes transformed into knowledge of God and his perfect divine will.

So as we follow along this pathway in Romans 12, we are not conformed to this world. We turn from it, we have our minds renewed, and then we can prove what the will of God is. That which is good and acceptable and perfect. We turn from this world and through the metanoia of repentance we then see that all is good. All is life and all is good. This then enables us to overcome the true problem in the Garden of Eden. We have our minds transformed; the way of thinking that was so evil and so poisonous is no more. And we are then able to see what the world is and always has been, good, good and good.

Jesus Is The Antidote

As I've said so many times before, Jesus then is the antidote, he is part subject and he is part object. Through focusing on Jesus and his death and resurrection our souls can become united with him and pulled along with him to our own resurrection. This is the power of Christ's life. You see, Jesus' passion carved the pathway for us. He showed us the way, "I am the way, the truth and the light." And as he shows us the way to live, through Gethsemane we learn of the necessity of overcoming ego. We see our minds being transformed, but he does not merely, as a religious subject would, pose himself as someone to learn from and follow. But he also pours out his power and makes it available to us. This is through the essential element of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost.

We see in Romans 6, that there is a oneness that we can have through Jesus. Romans 6:3, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?" What does baptism mean? Baptism means to wash. "John the washer" was there to cleanse people, to have them repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. To change their way of thinking, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

We have been washed in Christ Jesus and have been washed into his death, therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death. In order that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Notice that we are not simply talking about a religious object to be worshipped, nor are we talking about a religious subject that we are to learn from. We are talking about a totality, both subject and object. A subject who teaches and an object who pours out his very power. We then become one with him, united with him.

As it says in Romans 6:5, "If we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly, certainly we shall also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing that our old self was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. If we have died with Christ we shall also live with him."

This is the clearest language possible, to indicate that Jesus' death and resurrection can and must become your death and resurrection!

Paul then continues with another verse, which most of Christianity's ignorance will not allow them to see. Romans 6:10,

"For the death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus."

The Bible is telling you, then to transform your thinking, to repent. It is telling you to stop thinking about yourself like you are a sinner. Consider yourself, think about yourself, as though you are dead to sin. Think about yourself as being 100% totally and utterly alive to God. Change your thinking.

We blaspheme the Holy Name of God, we blaspheme ourselves, every Sunday when we wake up to say that "We are by nature sinful and unclean," because we are not. We are by nature holy and perfect, we are by nature good, good and very good. We have adopted for ourselves a sinful "un-nature", but this is very unnatural and completely against what God would have us be. When we then continue to say that "we justly deserve God's present and eternal punishment," it is obvious we don't understand anything about God or time or eternity or punishment.

And when we call ourselves "poor, wretched, sinful beings" we are, in the name of God and in the name of truth and in the name of the Church and in the name of Christianity, disobeying and blaspheming God's holy word, which orders us to stop thinking about ourselves as sinners, to stop thinking about ourselves as alive to sin, but to start thinking about ourselves as alive to God in Christ!

We must be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And we cannot do that if we continually hold on to the same old ways of thinking. When Adam and Eve were created they were good, they were perfect, they lived in total harmony with themselves, with each other and with God. We are to return to that state. And we will return to that state. But we cannot do that if we are constantly thinking of ourselves as disgusting, miserable, wretched sinners. If we are going to change, if we are going to be united with Christ in his resurrection, then it must begin by changing our way of thinking. God passes over our ignorance and makes available to us a transformation.

We see, then, the miracle of Jesus, as part religious subject, part religious object. Teaching us and guiding us and empowering us. We actually, metaphysically unite with him and become one with all he is. He pours out through his passion the antidote for all sin. And we become re-united with him. Our minds become pure and we recognize the truth that has always been there, that all is good, that God is good and God is forever.

Chapter 11: The Proper Understanding Of The Gospel

We are now in a situation to complete our transformation of the common understanding of the Gospel, to the proper understanding of the Gospel.

In the beginning God created the universe.
Everything in the creation was good, including humanity.
God is love. God is perfectly just (righteous) in that He always works perfectly in accordance with His loving nature.
The creation was a manifestation of His love.
In order to try to keep Adam from great harm, God commanded (warned) Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Adam, however, did partake from this Tree.
This Tree changed Adam's perception from a unity of the glorious goodness of life, making him know good and evil. It made him aware of both what was and was not. What was (created), was good. What was not (uncreated), was evil.
God set immediately to try to heal his poisoned children, preventing them from eating from the Tree of Life, which would have immortalized their pain. Their pain was to be only temporal, guiding them back to the paths of goodness.
In his goodness and love God saw to it that all suffering and evil would be limited and temporal. All evil, all sin, will die.
Though God was willing to forgive Adam's transgression, Adam sought to hide from God. Adam did not want fellowship with the creator.
Therefore, all Adam had to do was repent, turn from his sinful ways, and return to the goodness that was intended. Unfortunately, in his fallen condition, he had no way to do this. He simply could not heal himself. Clinging to his delusions and filth, man was lost.
However, while humanity wandered struggling, God set out to create a surefire cure for man's spiritual sickness.
God began to create the antidote for Adams poison.
He did this through Jesus Christ.
He needed a pathway to show humanity the problem of ego and how to overcome it.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus died to his small self, died to his human will, and was reborn to his perfect, divine will. His ego died.
So God, through this suffering, showed us all that we too must die to ourselves.
Through what he suffered Jesus became perfect.
Christ embodied all the sins of the world. And through his death all sins can now be atoned.
God was punishing nothing. He was providing a means for health and salvation to be given to everyone.
Having died to ego and self, Jesus fixed the problem which began in Eden.
Jesus was then resurrected.
He now stands as a perfect religious subject and object, ready to help all people who will unite with him in his death and his resurrection. To drink deeply of his antidote and return to the pure, perfect, egoless state.
Grace is the all-consuming truth. God is all good and the entire universe is a gift of Him. As our minds become transformed we recognize this and see God's hand as being the only active agent in the universe.
Our only personal hope for everlasting life then is to drink of Jesus' antidote. To have our minds transformed and stop thinking of the world as evil, to stop thinking in an evil way and stop seeing ourselves as sinners. Our hope lies in tapping into the power which Jesus made available to all people.
Having overcome ego, having died to ourselves, we too dance in the glorious resurrected body made available to all people. We now recognize that we do have that fellowship with God. Which he has always wanted us to have.
We are now free to partake from the Tree of Everlasting Life.
This is the good news. This is truly the Gospel.

Conclusion

I stated many pages ago that the good news is much better then any of us can conceive. Hopefully, the case has been made.

We have seen that:

	God is not despotically trying to punish his children for something He knew they would do.
	He was trying to warn them away from something that could hurt them.
	God was not trying to vent His wrath upon His holy and good son, but that His holy and good son voluntarily laid down his lower life, turned from the realm of ego and the realm of false knowledge of good and evil, to return to knowledge only of life, only of goodness.
	This power is available to all human beings.
	We are all able to follow the same pathway that Jesus followed.
	He is not just calling us, but empowering us to make the journey.
	All people are right now saved, though most do not know this, and continue to live in the pain of ego.
	What must happen is that we must proclaim the word so that they may hear the word, so that they may understand the goodness and glory which is forever.

We have seen that the good news is so very, very good. In the Garden of Eden, mankind stopped looking at the perfect glory of God's creation and started looking at himself. Through Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane we gain power to stop looking at ourselves and return to the knowledge of life. Beyond good and evil, beyond duality. Delighting only in the all-consuming presence of God.

Gloria-hallelujah!

I seek your comments.

Pastor Ahyh, The Church of Yahweh, TFFTN@YHWH.COM