The controversy over whether or not the primordial stories of Genesis are historical or allegorical reveals a basic fault-line in American evangelicalism between fundamentalists who need for the gospel to be hard for others to swallow (perhaps because they’re trying to “earn” their salvation through anti-intellectualism) and true evangelicals whose genuine interest in sharing the gospel makes them yearn for a way of explaining the Bible that will not get laughed out of the room by herpetologists and others whose life vocations make it impossible for them to treat a divinely-inspired ancient Hebrew poem like a biology textbook. In any case, the latest controversy in this sad waste of God’s time called the evolution/creationism debate is that some conservative evangelical biologists are “coming out” as legitimate scientists and ruling out the possibility of a single original homo sapien couple named Adam and Eve based on their genomic research.
Oh, dear, the Bible says things that are hard to believe. Who knew?
So, we have to tailor/butcher the Bible, the unchanging Word of God, to fit the ever-changing claims of other people. God did not give His message so that man might be changed, but man gives his theories and insists that God change His message to fit them.
The latest fundamentalist to weigh in on this topic is Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Seminary. Mohler writes that without a historical Adam and Eve, “we will have to come up with an entirely new understanding of the Gospel metanarrative and the Bible’s storyline.” I agree. It’s time to jettison forever from Christian doctrine the abominably stupid idea that God blames people today for the actions of some random historical figure named Adam. There is a more Biblically accurate and compelling way of explaining original sin.
Really? More biblically accurate? You mean, more biblically accurate than when Paul tells us that in Adam all died? More biblically accurate than all even the account of the Fall itself?
So, what does this "...more Biblically accurate and compelling way of explaining original sin" amount to?
All of us together as man and woman have participated in eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has left us with the curse of self-awareness that means we are no longer part of an un-individualized immortality in which animals’ bodies cycle through birth and death within a species that lives on forever according to the Earth’s natural equilibrium. We are under the curse of mortality and sin because we have been individualized and are no longer just part of a collective herd. It makes sense for the beginning of sin to be associated with the moment that “the eyes of [the man and woman] were opened, and they realized they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). Sin can only exist in the context of self-awareness. Once we gain self-awareness as a species, then we become self-centered people who quarrel with one another, squander the resources of creation God has given us, and generate an enormous residue of pain and guilt that no human being can avoid being tainted by. It is a curse for which we did not ask, but it does no good to blame God, since humanity has entered into this curse through our combined actions as a species.
OOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH.
So, instead of 'original sin' meaning an act of rebellion against the one, plainly state rule that God implemented, it was an accident of Evolution. Silly Evolution, giving us self-awareness and individuality, how cruel of it.
So, instead of God blaming us for a conscious act of rebellion committed by two people long ago, we're all victims of the fiat of Evolution, which for some reason gave us self-awareness and individuality. Heck, if God's directing Evolution, we go beyond blaming Evolution and blame God.
At the least, it's no longer our fault. WE didn't ask for this. WE didn't ask for individuality. WE didn't ask for self-awareness. WE didn't ask to not be part of the collective herd. We are just innocent victims, we can't help ourselves.
Ok, everyone, join with now...
AH-HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Yes, it is that hilarious.
Seriously, this Oozey article is an absolute train wreck.
If individuality and self-awareness are 'original sin', then we can get an idea of the cure--communism and losing ourselves in the collective herd. We lose our individuality into the group-think that postmodernism is so proud of, subsume our individual good in the collective good that social ideas like communism espouse, we do not fight against the dictates put out by the pomo overlords but give all due praise to them like the people whose letters McLaren responds to in his blog.
Also, personal responsiblity at the least gets reduced. We don't really sin against God, we're just accidents of nature. Did Christ die so that we can be forgiven of our sins by repentence and confessions? Or did he die so that we can simply rejoin the collective herd?
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