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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 selfcentered, 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 egocentered
consciousness is the very problem.
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