Transcription
The story is going to blow your mind. I'm ready.
Before Adam and Eve are created into the physical world, they are two souls in heaven, and God says to them, "I need you to go down to the lowest world and make it into the godliest of all worlds." They open their eyes, and they're in the Garden of Eden. God says to them, "The tree of knowledge of Good and Evil do not eat from it, for the day you eat from it, you will die." Adam is puzzled; he doesn't understand something. It doesn't make sense.
We were discussing yesterday, among some other things, among some other pretty large topics, freedom of choice. I was struck by how often you kept referring to human beings' freedom of choice, and this is something that plagues me. Because in addition to our need to understand why we are here, which is what we discussed yesterday, we also need to contemplate why evil exists. I often wonder: Is the evil in the world because of our free will to make good or bad choices, or is there, in addition to that, a conscious animate force of evil, what Christians would call Satan or the devil, that is goading us towards bad decisions?
Before I hear your response to this, Rabbi, I would like to bring up and root this in scripture—the Adam and Eve story. From my perspective, the Adam and Eve story tells us that evil is a combination of our free will to do bad things and a conscious animate force that's goading us to do those bad things. If we look at that story, God created Adam and Eve and gave Adam and Eve the proclivity to succumb to temptation— that's their free will. But also, the serpent was there, goading Adam and Eve. The scripture says that the serpent was the shrewdest of all of the wild beasts that the Lord God created. Genesis says that God created the serpent; in other words, God created evil.
So what is your perspective on this? Do we have full freedom of choice, or is there also a goader, if you will?
Can we talk about Adam and Eve for a minute?
We can talk about anything for many minutes.
Okay, um, let's take a closer look at the story. If it's a story in the Bible, if it's a story in the Torah, a story that God is telling us, there's got to be so much meaning to it that we would never know what it's telling us if God didn't reveal it to us.
If a story sounds a little too simple, a little too pedantic, we're not understanding it correctly. Not to change the subject, but there was Joseph and his brothers, and they were jealous of his coat, and it turned really negative. Moral of the story: Jacob showed favoritism to Joseph, and that's what caused all the problems. So we now know that we shouldn't show favoritism. That is not a biblical story—Dr. Phil can tell you that you shouldn't show favoritism; you don't need God to tell you that. There's got to be so much more to the story; it's too plain, it's too ordinary to be coming from heaven.
So let's look at Adam and Eve. The story needs so much commentary because no part of it is understandable. God speaks to Adam up close and personal and says, "Don't eat from that tree," and an hour later, he eats from the tree. That is not possible. You cannot talk to God face to face and then ignore him an hour later.
Why not? Because he's God.
Fair enough. If your landlord told you not to do something, you would wait at least a weekend. You don't know who you're talking to.
I may not. Point taken.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. When God spoke at Mount Sinai, everyone was fainting from awe and fear. I like to joke about this; can you imagine God speaking to Adam, and Adam says, "You mean me?"
That's right.
So why is it that Adam didn't say that, but Moses did? Because Adam was first in line.
What did Moses say?
Well, didn't Moses challenge God by saying, "Why me? Why have you tasked me with revealing your word?"
Why didn't Adam challenge God in a similar way? God told Moses that he was going to redeem the Jewish people. Moses said, "Yeah, for a while. Why don't you just send the Messiah and do it for keeps?"
But God wasn't asking Adam to redeem the people from slavery or exile, and there was nobody else. So it's up close and personal; there's no one else to talk to.
So God obviously is talking to you and you can ignore Him an hour later. What is wrong with God?
And then, of course, what is wrong with Adam an hour later?
It really, it's not a good story. So forgive me; I just want to reorient ourselves, because when I'm on my show with Dennis, Dennis and Julie, we call it the tangent hour, and I love tangents, and this one was worthy. But I just want to bring us back to this very important question: Did God create evil?
So please continue with what you were saying about Adam; I just wanted to reorient us.
Yeah, and it is an answer to that question as well. Anyway, so the story is full of mysteries. How is it that a perfect human being, who had no traumas at birth—because he wasn't born—who didn't live in a bad neighborhood and had no bad friends and had no evil inclination until after he ate from the tree, how is it that he could become so corrupt and so embarrassingly immature that when God says, "Did you eat from the tree I told you not to eat from?" he says, "She made me do it."
This is not believable. And then God asks Eve, "Why did you do this?" and she said, "The snake tricked me." No self-respect whatsoever! Yes, the snake was the most clever animal, but you're a human being; the snake tricked you.
The story just keeps getting worse and worse. God says, "Of all the trees in the garden, you may eat, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil do not eat from it, for the day you eat from it, you will die." Two problems with that:
Number one: Was death really a threat to someone who was just created? Did he even know what death meant?
And number two: What a confusing message! "Don't eat from this tree; the day you eat from it, you will die," not "If you eat from it, the day you eat from it, you will die." Oh, so someday I should eat from it? Confusing.
Then when they eat from the tree, God says, "Because you did this, you will suffer pain in childbirth; by the sweat of your brow, you will make bread; you will have a miserable life." Now that is completely unacceptable because that was not part of the warning. The warning was, "The day you eat from it, you'll die."
Now God is saying, "Oh no, no, no, not just die. First you’ll suffer, then you'll die." This is not right; it's not justice.
The ultimate question is: What is the point of this story? Are you really trying to discourage me? You want me to serve God, and you tell me that the first human being created by God's hand, who had no issues, no problems, and only one commandment, couldn't last an hour, and you want me? I do have traumas; I do have issues; I do have bad friends; I do live in a bad neighborhood, and I have 63 ways to mess up. I don't have a chance. This is a very discouraging story.
So do you believe it's a—what is the word I'm looking for?—an allegory, or do you think it's literal, but you need a little background?
This story is gonna blow your mind.
I'm ready!
Let's back up a little bit.
Before Adam and Eve are created into the physical world, they are two souls in heaven, and God says to them, "I need you to go down to the lowest world and elevate it and refine it and make it into the godliest of all worlds." They didn't like the idea, but if God wants, then that's what they do.
They open their eyes, and they're in the Garden of Eden. God says to them, "Of all the trees in the garden, you may eat, but the tree in the center of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, do not eat from it, for the day you eat from it, you will die."
Now Adam and Eve were the smartest people ever; they knew everything. They didn't have the restrictions that we have because they were not born; they were created. So they were created in a perfect state. They were not created as fetuses or infants like the rest of the world; they were created mature. The trees were mature, the Earth was mature, they were mature.
So they're sitting there, and Adam is puzzled; he doesn't understand something. It doesn't make sense. All the trees you may eat from means that they're all fine; they don't need elevation or repair. There's one tree that needs repair because there's something wrong with it, but we're not allowed to eat from it.
What happened to our job? We were sent here to elevate the world and repair it and make it the highest world instead of the lowest world. How do we do that with the one thing that is bad in this world? We're not allowed to eat, so how do we fix it?
He didn't understand. The other problem he had was: What is this mixed message— "Don't eat from it. The day you eat from it, you’ll die."
So Eve said, "It is not a mixed message; it's not confusing. It's choice. God is saying I'm giving you a choice: Don't eat from the tree and live forever, or eat from the tree and die. He wants us to choose."
So Adam said, "Okay, then let's not eat from it."
Eve said, "He wants us to eat from it. God is giving us a choice, but he wants us to eat from it."
Adam said, "How in the world do you know that?"
She said, "Our job is in the lowest world. This isn't the lowest world. In this world, no one dies. This is not the lowest world; there's a world in which people die. If we eat from the tree; we will go down to that world, and that's where our job is waiting for us. So he wants us to eat from it."
Adam said, "Wow, that's insightful."
So they ate.
Now God comes and says to Adam, "You ate from the tree I told you not to eat from." We all imagine God is angry; we think God is always angry. God wasn't angry; God was impressed and marveling. "How did you know to eat from it?"
He said, "I didn't know; she knew; she told me."
So God says to Eve, "How did you know?"
She says, "I heard what the snake said, and it made sense."
What did the snake say? "You're not just gonna die; you're going to become like God, and you will know the difference between good and evil."
Well, that sounds like a job. There's good, and there's evil; well, you got to clean it up; you got to make it all good. That's where our job is.
So bottom line: Adam and Eve did not sin; they were not tempted; they were not overcome with passion. They were there to serve God properly, and they did. It was magnificent.
So our grandmother Eve understood the whole plan and had the confidence that if we go down into the lowest world, we will be able to fix it.
The lowest world is a world of mortality. Now once they ate from the tree, God comes and says, "Thank you! That was so good! Let me tell you more about this world that you volunteered to elevate and to fix. There's pain, there's struggle, there's resistance. The earth will not produce food easily—not in the world outside the Garden of Eden. And the snakes, you know, snakes outside the Garden of Eden don't speak, and they're not that clever. Outside the Garden of Eden, you do not give birth within an hour of conception; it'll take nine months. Everything will be different down there in this lowest world."
So what makes this world so low? Not sin; it was created to be the lowest world—a world in which God is not evident.
In a world where God is not evident, you have the freedom to ignore Him, to hate Him, to remain completely unaware of Him.
Now why would God do that? Why give us freedom of choice? We'll only get ourselves into trouble.
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