Essay by Joran Slane Oppelt
June 21, 2018
 

The biblical creation story — Adam, Eve, the garden, the serpent, the tree, the fall — contains the seeds of many of life’s greatest mysteries.

Why are we here? How did we come to be? What is our relationship to the force that created us? What is our relationship to the environment and to the other creatures on Earth? Does man exercise free will? Why is life full of suffering? Where is the line between right and wrong, guilt and innocence, damnation and salvation? For Jews and Christians, these questions (and more) are first posed in that short, simple story.

In this story, we find God creating man and woman and giving them dominion over all living creatures, Adam (the first man) giving names to those creatures, God forbidding them to eat from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Eve (the first woman) being teased and tempted by a serpent, Eve eating of the fruit of the Tree, sharing the fruit with Adam, Adam and Eve realizing their nakedness and being exiled from the garden paradise known as Eden. The story has long been used to justify man’s separateness or falling away from God.

This violation of God’s command has come to be known as “original sin.” But, the idea of “original sin” isn’t mentioned anywhere in The Bible. In fact, the word “sin” isn’t mentioned until the fourth chapter of Genesis.

According to Thomas Matus, it was St. Augustine of Hippo that in the 3rd century “conceived of original sin as original guilt, transmitted at conception to each human individual. Hence, all of humanity is a massa damnata, an accursed mass, redeemed by Christ but still subject to sin.”*

Original sin is not a theme found anywhere in the origins of Christianity. It was invented by the church (as early as the 2nd century) as a mechanism toward salvation through Christ — or more specifically, through the church.

Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox famously called for the eradication of “original sin” in his pioneering work, Original Blessing (1983). This book represented his effort to “deconstruct and reconstruct our inherited religious tradition of the West: to deconstruct the woefully anthropocentric and pessimistic Fall/Redemption religion that begins with ‘original sin’ and to reconstruct religion with the more ancient and empowering tradition of creation spirituality that begins with ‘original goodness.’”

Modern contemplative, Brother David Steindl-Rast explains it this way: “When an educated person in the West asks me, ‘What is original sin?’ I answer that it is the Christian term for the universal phenomenon the Buddhists call dukkha. The original meaning of that term refers to a wheel that grinds on its axle: Something is out of order.”

Even the word “sin” in the West has commonly meant “evil” or “wickedness” (again, Augustine), but the translation of the original words in Hebrew (hata) and Greek (hamartia) find their origins in archery and actually mean something closer to “missing the mark.”

So, if the creation story doesn’t instruct us (or give us a concrete lesson) in “original sin,” what does it tell us?

In his new book, Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today, Bishop John Shelby Spong takes a discerning look at twelve aspects (or theses) of the Christian faith. One of these is the concept of “original sin” and the story of the Garden of Eden found in Genesis 2-3.

Spong reads the story of the fall through the lens of reason to sometimes comical effect.

The scene where Adam is wearing his newly crafted “fig leaf apron” — playing the first-ever game of “hide and seek” while cowering in the bushes from an omniscient God — is particularly ridiculous.

God metes out punishment to these conspiring parties as a parent would discipline his children.

Man’s punishment for his transgression is a destiny of “painful toil” and working on the earth, a lifetime of “thorns and thistles” in order that he may eat the “food and plants from the field.”

Woman’s punishment is to endure “painful labor” during childbirth.

The serpent’s punishment is to crawl on its belly and “eat dust” all the days of its life.

Spong paints this scene with all the projection, scapegoating and finger-pointing of a family dinner gone awry. He skewers and deconstructs the elements of this tale until there’s hardly anything left worth examining or redeeming.

And, this is one of the criticisms of Spong’s recent book. That it’s not “prescriptive.”

If we’re not to read this myth literally — this story that contains the seeds of so many unanswered and contested questions — then how are we to read it?

In The Power of Myth (1991), Joseph Campbell writes that these stories (creation tales and other tales from folklore) are “clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.”

Here are some of the many lenses through which we might read the biblical creation story:

What meaning can be found in the characters and their journey out of the garden? Does their nakedness come from a sense of shame or a feeling of other-ness? Does the garden represent the sacred time before creation or the border between sacred time and world time — the cycle of birth and death?

Campbell once spoke of an Indonesian legend of a tribe that danced around a fire. All was paradise until one of the dancers was trampled and died. He was buried and from where he was buried, a plant grew. The tribe then had to split their time between dancing and farming, thus moving from sacred time into the cycle of time, birth and death.

What are the origins of man and our world? Is the moment when God breathes life and light into the world (Genesis 1) what we now know as the Big Bang? Does the creation of man represent his appearance (or evolution) on Earth? Does his exit from the garden paradise (Genesis 2) represent the moment that humanity became self-conscious (homo sapiens)?

What is the secret wisdom (fruit) that is hidden (hanging) in plain sight? What is the knowledge of good and evil, and why would the serpent encourage Eve to choose this fruit rather than that of eternal life? Who is this angel (the first, we are to presume) with the flaming sword that guards the eastern gate of Eden? Is the flaming (illuminated) sword a symbol for the understanding (illumination) that we seek beyond the garden wall?

Is it a coincidence that the snake — a phallic creature who sheds its skin and is a long-held symbol of mystery and rebirth — is the one that tempts and confronts Eve about partaking in the fruit of the tree? Is it a coincidence, then, that her punishment has to do with birth itself and foreshadows her own fruitfulness?

If Eden is the garden and man the gardener, then what is our role in caring for the planet? What does it mean to have dominion over all living creatures? Where is the cycle of reaping and harvesting to be found in the 21st century? What is our relationship (degree of freedom and responsibility) to creation?

Joni Mitchell said, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” Is this drive to return necessary because we have placed ourselves above nature?

Who is the Adam in us — the sometimes naive and altruistic hard worker? Who is the Eve — the curious and bold explorer of her own backyard? Who is the serpent — the sly trickster shouting “YOLO!” and encouraging his friends to taste the forbidden fruit? Who is God — the equalizing and balancing force who is forced to referee the game?

What is the animal medicine found in the snake’s advice to Eve? What role do the trees play in this garden cosmology? Can they be likened to the World Tree in shamanic/indigenous traditions (the Axis Mundi or “Immovable Spot”)? In punishing the serpent, what animal medicine might Grandfather/Creator be denying man?

These are but a few of the various ways we may read and re-read the creation stories found in The Bible. And, as an integralist, I encourage you to generously apply all of these lenses to the reading.

Now, I ask you: How else might you (and your family) read this scripture? What meaning might we have to unpack 2,000 years later from these mere 2,000 words found in Genesis 1-3?

How is our future understanding of our origin story different from the story we’ve been telling each other for centuries? And, is it a story that we can find ourselves (and each other) inside of?

~ Joran Slane Oppelt

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About the Author
Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion.

He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary.

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* Belonging to the Universe, Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast with Thomas Matus (HarperCollins, 1991)
** Photos by R. Crumb

Q: By Glenda Poole

I was raised in the Bible Belt as a Southern Baptist (shudder). I have attended may different types of churches in my life and have always likened myself to being spiritual instead of religious. I recently discovered John Shelby Spong, and have been devouring his books which have answered many of the questions and doubts that have come to my mind over the years. This web site has opened my mind and made me realize I am not alone in my beliefs and doubts. Now having come this far, I realize because of my strict religious upbringing my viewpoints would fall on deaf ears with my family and friends here in the south. This is how they were raised and they would not dare step out of that box.

While everything I am reading rings true, I am having a deep personal crisis moving forward from a life of dependent prayer on a God in Heaven. Does that make sense?

I have always struggled with the judgement of so called Christians, the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust, and the fact that people believe that because they are special God favors them. So, why am I going through withdrawal from something that I have suspected for a long time?

Dear Glenda

One of our deepest fears as human beings is that of being alone. Even if what matters most to our hearts falls upon “deaf ears,” if those ears belong to family and friends, our attachment runs deep – to the quick, really. Even if we suspect that something is no longer true we can find ourselves clinging to it deep within, because we feel it keeps us connected and that without it, however much pain it might bring us, we would be alone.

I acknowledge and respect the courage to question, to wonder, and to follow the truth as you experience it in your own life. In reality, if we love the truth (not truth in an abstract sense, but the in the sense of what is authentic in our personal experience) it has its costs.
And yet there is nothing quite as sweet as coming to dwell freely and solidly, without defense, in in the land of our own soul. There is nothing quite as sacred as tending to the questions that matter most to your heart, mind, and body.

“Withdrawal” is such an exquisitely accurate description, because there is an addictive quality to our desire, our need, for the approval of others, especially when those others are family, friends, church and society. Be kind to yourself, for you are on the only journey that truly matters – the journey of becoming an authentic human being and it is “the road less travelled.” Find others who share your passion for discovery and questioning. And, perhaps the “crisis” is an invitation to greater intimacy with yourself, your longings, your desires, your unique journey. What a tremendous gift to be at rest when alone with your own soul, regardless of what others think or feel or, especially, judge as best.

~Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.

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About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“.

A new book co-authored by Dr. Qazi Rahman, a lecturer in psychobiology at the University of East London and Dr. Glenn Wilson, a member of the faculty of the University of London, has just been published in the United . It was reviewed in The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom’s four major daily newspapers last month. Entitled, “Born Gay,” this book lays out in a quite public way the consensus today of both the scientific and the medical communities in their attempt to understand homosexuality.

In a nutshell, these authors state the widely accepted conclusions that homosexuality is not something “that can be caught, like ‘flu’,” it cannot be “learned from people who make it look really cool and fun like those chaps on ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘ (a British sitcom) and it has nothing to do with smothering mothers and distant fathers.” All of that, they assert, has now fallen by the wayside. Those ideas are now completely dismissed in intellectual circles.

Drs. Rahman and Wilson write: “It is quite clear now that homosexuality in gay men and lesbians is caused by biological factors.” This conclusion, they assert, is “so widely accepted” in academic circles that many colleagues asked why they had bothered to write this book at all. “They tell us,” they said in the Guardian interview, “that all we are doing is pointing out what everyone already knows.” Everyone, that is, who is not homophobic and therefore not open to the data that so deeply and significantly challenges this ancient, deeply held emotional prejudice.

I welcome this book precisely because it is not written for the academic world of science and medicine, where this issue is no longer debated. Rather, it is written specifically for those people who still operate out of an uninformed definition of homosexuality as either a sickness for a deviant, sinful, unnatural and depraved choice. More importantly, it is written for those who somehow think that this issue was settled when the Book of Leviticus was written in the sixth century before the Common Era or by St. Paul, who wrote between 50 and 64 C.E. It is written to resource the churches of the world that are increasingly seen as the bastions of an undying homophobia, which causes them to be at war over an issue that outside those churches has largely been settled. It is written to place in the clear relief of its own ongoing ignorance the embarrassing rhetoric that still emanates from people like Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their passionate acolytes of the Religious Right in America. Negative words also come from Christian leaders in the third world who try to cover their obviously uninformed opinions with the charge of racism when those opinions are rejected as simply ignorant. The evidence is so clear. Homosexuality, just like heterosexuality, is morally neutral. Both can be lived out in holiness or in degradation. Both are ‘givens’ not ‘chosens.’ The only “sin” of homosexual people is that they are born with a sexual orientation different from the majority.

Dr. Rahman says that the impetus for this book was that “over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of work on this subject and we felt that no one had reviewed it all or laid it down in a way that was accessible to non-academics.” Noting that although the scientific community is convinced about the biological causes of homosexuality, some parts of the wider world still seem to have doubts. Perhaps the fact is that this knowledge has simply not been made accessible to them. This book then addresses the need to educate the masses, revealing with clear and credible evidence that homosexuality is a natural minority expression of the spectrum of human sexuality. That insight alone has huge ramifications for social policy.

This book exposes the claim that religious conversion and religious counseling can ‘cure’ people of homosexuality. Without equivocation, these authors state that the data offered to support such claims have been debunked and dismissed as the medical fraud that it has always been. We need to embrace the fact that fraud perpetrated in the name of religion is still fraud and should be treated as such. Those who attempt to practice medicine without a license should be charged, convicted and jailed.

Rahman and Wilson believe that the reason for lingering confusion over this issue in our society comes not from the lack of scientific consensus that biology is the root of homosexuality, but rather because within that biological data, the determining factors are still debated. It is not genetic in the usual sense of being an inherited characteristic. Homosexual persons presumably have straight parents, and the children of homosexual couples are no more prone to be gay or lesbian than the children of anyone else. Dr. Rahman’s best guess at this moment is what he calls “the sponge model,” which he defines as the presence of genes that predispose a fetus toward an orientation different from the majority. These genes, he suggests, affect receptors in the brain causing the brain “to soak up testosterone like a sponge.” Admitting that this is just one hypothesis, Rahman believes, nonetheless, that it has promise and can be tested. This is why, he concludes, that “developmental biology and neurogenetics are so important in this field.”

In the late 1980s, realizing that I knew almost nothing about sexual orientation except the unchallenged prejudices with which I had grown up, I looked for a place I could go to gain the necessary intellectual and medical background on this human phenomenon. I knew only that my ignorance and prejudice would make it all but impossible to be an effective bishop in the metropolitan New York area. My search led me to a member of the faculty of The Cornell School of Medicine in New York City. This man, whose name was Robert Lahita, had both a PhD and an MD degree. At that time he was working on the differences in the immune systems of men and women, an interest that had led him deeply into the science of the brain. What impressed me most then, and it is now verified by this new book, is that the idea that homosexuality could be adopted as a lifestyle of choice or that it was caused by some factor or experience in early childhood was totally and universally dismissed. No one on the medical faculty at Cornell saluted this idea. That fact alone changed for me the whole dynamic in the debate going on in the Church. For if sexual orientation is part of what we are rather than something some choose to do, then it must be related to in the same way that we have learned to relate to skin color, gender, left handedness and ethnicity. These things are neither good or bad, they simply are.

To discriminate against a person because of who that person is, is the essence of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I was now coming to the awareness that it is also the essence of homophobia. It was the ‘given-ness’ of sexual orientation that produced in me the sea change in my own attitude. That is also what is happening in both church and society at this moment. A new understanding of homosexuality is colliding with a definition that is uninformed, prejudiced and dying. Dying prejudices are never revived and they are never re-installed. Indeed the fact that a prejudice is being debated is a sure sign that it is dying. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will be hurt before this prejudice takes its place in the graveyards of human history alongside other discarded discriminatory practices that have marked the human journey through history.

The fact is that heterosexual people cannot recall the moment when they chose their sexual orientation. I, for one, can only remember that in my very early adolescence, I decided that girls were not obnoxious and that I desired their attention. This awakening was accompanied by behavioral changes that were thought of by my parents as both remarkable and noteworthy. I took baths more frequently, combed my hair, dressed better and even used deodorant! My mother observing this behavior said: “the sap has risen!” I had no idea what that meant either. Now I wonder why those of us who did not choose to be heterosexual have always assumed that homosexuals in fact did choose to be gay!

I learned many things from my Cornell contacts. I learned that scientists believe that the percentage of homosexual persons in the general population is stable among all people, in all cultures and throughout all history. I learned that homosexual behavior is well documented in the animal kingdom today. I learned that the origin of all sexual orientation is believed to be connected with the presence or absence of the same realities described in Rahman and Wilson’s book. Somehow both the levels of testosterone and brain formation are factors. I learned that the division between male and female in nature is not nearly as well differentiated as we have always thought. All human life appears to start as female and it only develops masculine identity if and when the “y” chromosome kicks in, reshaping the developing fetus.

Following my work with Dr. Lahita and the others at Cornell my mind has been clear on this issue. Discrimination against homosexual persons is as wrong as discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender or ethnicity. It has no place in the life of the Christian Church. I no longer even want to debate this issue in the various councils of the Church. It is for me a settled issue. It is time for people to adjust their ancient prejudices to new realities. This debate, for me is in the same category as the debate between evolution and creationism, whether the earth is flat or round and whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa. Some issues are simply settled. If the Church and its leaders from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope to the evangelicals across the world don’t understand this, they reveal Christianity’s irrelevance. Church unity is a bogus smokescreen. A Church united in prejudice is not worthy of continued life. Politicians who do not understand this are either ignorant or irresponsible. There is no other choice. It is time to move both Church and State into the 21st century.

~  John Shelby Spong

Why Christianity Is No Longer Believable – And How We Can Change That

Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future.