Start at the beginning

I have just been lent a copy of 'The courage to create' by Rollo May. The came about because I mentioned that I wanted to write a book entitled 'Made in the image of (a creative) God'. Maybe I still will, but Rollo's book got me thinking about where it all started. In what we call the 'garden of Eden'.

At the centre of the garden there were two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and even and the tree of everlasting life. God said 'Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. He said nothing about the tree of everlasting life.

When the first man and woman ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God was upset with them for disobedience. He said that they had now become 'like one of us, knowing good and evil' and kicked them out of the garden so that they wouldn't eat from the tree of eternal life and also become like God living for eternity.

OK, so some questions: Why did God not want us to know the difference between good and evil? Why was He happy for mankind to live forever if they didn't know good and evil? And not when they did? If mankind didn't know the difference between good and evil what kind of relationship would have been between God and mankind? Would God have become bored with that relationship?

What I am really thinking is that there is a paradox here. Without the knowledge of good and evil there is no real free will, because without that knowledge you cannot know to chose. Now God created man with free will, but without the knowledge of good and evil. So... if Adam and Eve didn't have the knowledge of good and evil how did they know not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Answer because God told them... but... before they ate it they didn't have the knowledge that it was wrong. So it was inevitable they would eat it. Hmmm... a paradox maybe.

So what was God looking for in the relationship with Adam and Eve if they didn't know what was good and what was evil?

Here's where I'm at from this: I am coming to believe that a true understanding of God is about paradox and symmetry and that is what separates followers of the one true God from all others. That we don't need a neat packaged system with all the bugs worked out we follow a living God with all the paradoxes there are in Him.

OK, if that's true, that's why I am seeing so many problems with some parts of the church: Evangelicalim being a big part of that. Modernist Evangelicalism wants to worship a God with all the bugs worked out. They are thus demeaning Him to the level of other gods, and in reality not worshiping the one true God. 'In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised' [P31, The courage to create, Rollo May]

Interested I got led from Rollo May to Kester Brewin who hosts a site/blog called 'The complex Christ' which is the name of the book he has written. In review of 'The courage to create' Kester writes this:

Perhaps we need a churchless Church.
The body of Christ is a given - we have to belong to the Church [macro]. But perhaps we should give up calling the things we are involved in church [micro]. It is just such an unhelpful and loaded word to use. "Do you want to come to church?" To be honest, no I don't. And by the numbers and temper of those in the debate, there's plenty others who don't either. Church can be something I am a part of. But it's not something I want to 'go to'. [The Complex Christ]

Hmmm... now this is interesting. Is the problem with going to church really that it packages things up too neatly and creates a paradox free sycophantic religion that Jesus came to abolish? Back to Rollo May again:

Those we call saints rebelled against an outmoded and inadequate form of God on the basis of their new insights into divinity... Their rebellion was motivated by new insights into the meaning of godliness. They rebelled, as Paul Tillich has so beautifully stated, against God in the name of the God beyond God. The continuous emergence of the God beyond God is the mark of creative courage in the religious sphere.[P32,The courage to create, Rollo May]