The Great Sin is in NOT Wanting to Be Like God

Adam. Eve. Freedom.

God presumably likes being God. What's wrong with our vertical parents wanting the same for themselves? Doesn't his injunction against their rightful ambitions amount to hypocrisy? Maybe he just doesn't want the competition.

Not exactly. "In a word," writes Shindler, "Adam's sin did not consist in wanting to be like God," for "rightly understood, that is the calling of every human being." Rather, the sin "consisted in his wanting to be like God on his own terms..." (emphasis mine).

As such, Adam is a little like our contemporary atheists, who prove with ironyclad logic the non-existence of a god who has never existed to begin with.

In Adam's case, he wants to be the god who doesn't exist. Therefore, it is not true that Lucifer is the first liberal. Rather, it is Adam himself, who "institutes the original absence of God resulting in the first culture of death."

To put it conversely, there is no real issue with Adam wanting to "be like God," so long as it is God he is wanting to be like. Indeed, that is called theosis, and it is orthodox right down to the ground. As if the Imitation of Christ is a bad thing!

Schindler quotes J Rat in a footnote: "In the account of the Fall one sees what it looks like when one accepts Satan's offer of power. Power appears as the opposite of obedience" while freedom appears "as the opposite of responsibility."

In other words, as we have discussed in the past, in order for freedom to be meaningful instead of absurd or destructive, it must rest upon a prior responsibility. Which is why we don't give freedom to irresponsible people -- babies, mental retards, Palestinians, etc.

For the same reason, we are not supposed to give power to naughty and disobedient adultolescents such as, say, Obama. To be precise, we will grant you the power, but not until you swear before God and man to be faithful -- obedient -- to the Constitution.

How's that working out?

The notion that a liberal will be faithful to anything but his own agenda represents willfully culpable stupidity. You probably deserve to go to hell for that, and if God were a leftist he'd send you there faster than the NAACP will lynch a conservative negro.

But God's cosmic mercy is prior to his social justice, so there's a good chance that you'll get off on some kind of technicality.

J Rat continues with this zinger: "Jesus' entire existence is a translation of power into humility... Obedience is not secondary for Jesus, but forms the core of his being..."

I suspect that in America, "obedience" has troublesome connotations, as it implies conformity, loss of individuality, and erosion of freedom. But every sane person wants to obey truth and wants others to do so as well.

The most obtuse deconstructionist would never tolerate deconstruction from his physician: "You don't have cancer. It's just a local rebellion against the unjust hegemony and imperialism of your body." Or, "It's not an infection, just powerless bacteria unionizing in the face of your oppressive immune system."

Our liberal media has tremendous power, but it is divorced from obedience to truth. Think of the film Truth, a title which could hardly be more appropriate in the Orwellian sense we are discussing. It's really about a rare failure of liberal media power to vanquish the truth.

In other words, as much power as they have, it is still possible for liberals to go too far -- as we saw with the hateful CNBC debate moderators last week.

We call them the "media." So, what are they supposed to mediate?

Well, if they aren't mediating truth, then what are they mediating?

Correct: power.

In order to consolidate and maintain their own power, they must dissipate and scatter yours: they "promote inattentiveness, an incapacity for the patient attentiveness and memory necessary for the self in its integrity to relate to the other in its integrity." Schindler suggests that "one can almost define liberalism as massive Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)."

How does that work, exactly? To paraphrase Schindler, it works through a combination of externalization and dispersal, which redounds to a relentless superficiality, a "bad infinity of endless successive surfaces, as distinct from gathering into the good infinity of depths and heights..."

It's the same fatal choice Adam makes when he wants to be the god that doesn't exist. If Hollywood ever turns man's Fall into a movie, they can call it Truth, the Prequel.

... I am truly myself only when I form relationships.... Worship means [reaching beyond finite goals] into being inwardly at one with him who wished me to exist as a partner in a relationship with him and who has given me freedom precisely in this. --Josef Ratzinger