Dan Popp
Fixing the fall
By Dan Popp
So [God] drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24 NASB)
Bad things happen to good people, leftists remind us. And it's our job through government to – but wait, what? What was that first part? Bad things happen to good people? Well, sure, everybody understands that "through no fault of their own" many people fall into difficulty. Perhaps hardly in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, but hurricanes have been known to happen. Crops fail. Manufacturing plants close. Meteors and locusts and epidemics have been known to smite folk from time to time – not to mention wars and gangs and terrorists.
But why?
The Jewish and Christian explanation of why the world is full of tragedy is that, long ago, the original humans sinned. They rebelled against God. They lost their free communion with Him in what theologians call The Fall of Man. Because of the Fall, evil and death are running loose on our planet. You may dismiss this as a myth, but it's a perfectly coherent and adequate explanation – and one of the core doctrines of Christianity.
Now, what to do about the unfortunate effects of the Fall? Believers say that we should – voluntarily – try to alleviate misery; but we cannot eliminate human unhappiness here and now. To try to make everyone whole in this life would be unspeakably foolish. It would be an assault on Eden. It would be to commit the sin of pride and unbelief, and to doom ourselves to failure and shame.
There were some people who tried to bring heaven down to earth once, in Babylon. They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name...." (Genesis 11:3,4)
Eric Hoffer wrote:
Welcome to Washington-Over-The-Rainbow, where we cure catastrophes, we mend misfortunes, we fix the Fall. (We don't do very well at actually punishing criminals, but we are very busy doing good, after all.) Whether using other people's money to rebuild homes after the devastation of a wildfire or to treat erectile dysfunction, Godvernment will make sure that you won't suffer any ill effects from the late unpleasantness in a certain Garden.
I'm not just indicting Democrats and "liberals" here. There are many so-called conservatives who apparently believe that the purpose of government is to give me the kind of life I would have had if Eve had never tasted that fruit.
This blasphemous faith intentionally opposes human brawn and brainpower to YHWH. He pronounced a curse; they promise a blessing. Jesus said the poor would always be with us; LBJ said he would end poverty. Babylonians don't have to depend on stones, you see; they've developed these newfangled bricks. And something called mortar, too. They've progressed far beyond outmoded notions of what is possible "when we all work together." The old rules no longer apply. Their hubris is breathtaking. Frankly Delusional Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address, "We are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world."
Yes, and such a "morally better world" it has become! If we want to kill our children and "marry" two sodomites to each other and plunder our neighbors in the name of "fairness" and turn those old-fashioned Commandments on their head, we will. We have the technology. We are simply better and smarter than that old Hebrew deity.
The problem is, you can't actually break God's Law. It breaks you. The first Babylonian building program didn't work. None since has worked. None of them will ever work. It remains a fallen world, despite Godvernment "opportunities" and "investments" and "relief." What's becoming clearer to me as we get closer to the biggest crash of all, the end of the United States of America, is that it's all motivated not by love for man, but by hatred for God. The cornerstone of the Babylonian temple to themselves is their puerile wish to poke their stubby little finger in God's eye.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.... (Galatians 6:7)
© Dan Popp
February 24, 2013
So [God] drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24 NASB)
Bad things happen to good people, leftists remind us. And it's our job through government to – but wait, what? What was that first part? Bad things happen to good people? Well, sure, everybody understands that "through no fault of their own" many people fall into difficulty. Perhaps hardly in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, but hurricanes have been known to happen. Crops fail. Manufacturing plants close. Meteors and locusts and epidemics have been known to smite folk from time to time – not to mention wars and gangs and terrorists.
But why?
The Jewish and Christian explanation of why the world is full of tragedy is that, long ago, the original humans sinned. They rebelled against God. They lost their free communion with Him in what theologians call The Fall of Man. Because of the Fall, evil and death are running loose on our planet. You may dismiss this as a myth, but it's a perfectly coherent and adequate explanation – and one of the core doctrines of Christianity.
Now, what to do about the unfortunate effects of the Fall? Believers say that we should – voluntarily – try to alleviate misery; but we cannot eliminate human unhappiness here and now. To try to make everyone whole in this life would be unspeakably foolish. It would be an assault on Eden. It would be to commit the sin of pride and unbelief, and to doom ourselves to failure and shame.
There were some people who tried to bring heaven down to earth once, in Babylon. They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name...." (Genesis 11:3,4)
Eric Hoffer wrote:
-
Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith – faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build "a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."
Welcome to Washington-Over-The-Rainbow, where we cure catastrophes, we mend misfortunes, we fix the Fall. (We don't do very well at actually punishing criminals, but we are very busy doing good, after all.) Whether using other people's money to rebuild homes after the devastation of a wildfire or to treat erectile dysfunction, Godvernment will make sure that you won't suffer any ill effects from the late unpleasantness in a certain Garden.
I'm not just indicting Democrats and "liberals" here. There are many so-called conservatives who apparently believe that the purpose of government is to give me the kind of life I would have had if Eve had never tasted that fruit.
This blasphemous faith intentionally opposes human brawn and brainpower to YHWH. He pronounced a curse; they promise a blessing. Jesus said the poor would always be with us; LBJ said he would end poverty. Babylonians don't have to depend on stones, you see; they've developed these newfangled bricks. And something called mortar, too. They've progressed far beyond outmoded notions of what is possible "when we all work together." The old rules no longer apply. Their hubris is breathtaking. Frankly Delusional Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address, "We are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world."
Yes, and such a "morally better world" it has become! If we want to kill our children and "marry" two sodomites to each other and plunder our neighbors in the name of "fairness" and turn those old-fashioned Commandments on their head, we will. We have the technology. We are simply better and smarter than that old Hebrew deity.
The problem is, you can't actually break God's Law. It breaks you. The first Babylonian building program didn't work. None since has worked. None of them will ever work. It remains a fallen world, despite Godvernment "opportunities" and "investments" and "relief." What's becoming clearer to me as we get closer to the biggest crash of all, the end of the United States of America, is that it's all motivated not by love for man, but by hatred for God. The cornerstone of the Babylonian temple to themselves is their puerile wish to poke their stubby little finger in God's eye.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.... (Galatians 6:7)
© Dan Popp
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