I have had a rough week so I guess I’ll do a Saturday Evening, oops -- make that a Very Early Sunday Morning in the Heartland Post to help me get back on track.
The Lord God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:22,23)
Eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an act of rebellion. It did not set man free. Instead, it left him in bondage to sin. I am always intrigued by how often sin is depicted in the Bible, not as an action, but almost as an entity. A little further on in Genesis, God speaks to Cain and says, “If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:7)
Paul echoes this, saying, “And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good [the ‘not wanting to do’ it is what agrees with the law rather than the doing of wrong, of course -- me]. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” (Romans 7:16-18a)
Like our Dear Leader, my wife is a Type 1 diabetic, completely dependent upon insulin injections to survive. Diabetes is pervasive and unforgiving. The excess sugar does damage throughout the body, from the retina to the nerve endings in the feet. Those injections of insulin, if executed faithfully and carefully, can minimize the damage, but they can’t undo it. Every time a diabetic gets lax they suffer what amounts to an incremental amount of permanent damage to their bodies. A diabetic understands on a very personal level that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. My wife’s aunt and her cousin have both suffered multiple amputations because of a lack of such vigilance.
The sin principle is a lot like that. “You must master it.” Yes, it can be done, but it is like having diabetes or, perhaps, like keeping a tiger for a pet. That’s why when people talk about the extension of human life or some form of immortality, I get a little skeptical. You might overcome the physical diseases that plague us – some of the research for curing diabetes looks promising – but what about the soul disease? Imagine a thousand year old Hitler or a near-immortal Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao. Or, if you’re a liberal, imagine Nixon living for centuries. If Bill Clinton has gotten this twisted in sixty-some years, what would he be like in two hundred? For Clinton to have immortality in his present state would be hell – for him and for everybody around him. Even if he tried to be better, over the course of time, with no threat of death, he would be progressive indeed -- progressively more lecherous, devious, and vile.
Science fiction, in general, seemed to assume that wisdom and benevolence increased with age, that very long life meant, for the most part, better people. I might have believed that thirty years ago, but I know better now. Vampire literature -- in particular Bram Stoker's Dracula -- comes closer to reality. In the end, when Dracula is dispatched, there is a flash of peace upon his countenance as he recognizes a release from the horrors of his living death.
But, you say, what about Mother Theresa? What if you made her immortal? It’s already been done. If you had tried to give her a magic pill to make her forever young and keep her on this earth, she might have suggested you use it as a suppository yourself. In other words, the only people who are interested in living forever in their current condition are the ones you wouldn't want around. Sure, they might get better at hiding it, more cultured, more mannered, more suave, but they would still be getting uglier internally. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray comes to mind.
Personally I need a major transformation to be fit for eternity. To reference another Alan Jackson song (I can’t help it – my wife has control of the music when we’re driving around), I am in need of “a full body-off restoration”. Exactly. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom.
When the Lord drove man from the Tree of Life, it was not part of the curse. It was the beginning of our deliverance.
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2 comments:
Interesting post, Mushroom. I've known a few people who, in their old age and poor health, did acquire a benevolence and wisdom that they had lacked in their younger days. But it wasn't their age per se that had bestowed this upon them; rather it was the frailty and dependence on others that was forced upon them as a result of their health issues.
My grandmother was one such, a true tyrant in her younger days. Due to a variety of factors as she aged (and also lost limbs to diabetes, because she refused to exercise vigilance and self-control), she became much kinder, more loving, and more pained I think at how her children's lives were playing out. But this didn't happen until good health was inexorably taken from her.
Of course, I've also seen the flipside. People who with decreasing health and/ or declining years become more and more angry and bitter, utterly wretched to be around. Living vampires, for whom death is a blessing.
I'm with some of the other commenters, in that if I could live out a thousand years in the same way I've lived the past few, it would likely be no punishment. But there's the rub; life changes, sometimes in the blink of an eye, sometimes so gradually you can't pinpoint the day that sweetness becomes bitterness or vice-versa. I don't even try to guess where or who I'll be in five years, much less a thousand. I don't want to live for ever, not in this body at least. But I wouldn't mind living a good long stretch, if I could do it in reasonably good health.
Like Mother Theresa, the transformation has already begun in your case. If you had a thousand years, you would be a thousand years better.
I didn't state that very well to make it generally applicable. I should have said something like "in the flesh" rather than "in their current condition".
However, speaking for myself, I'm tired of this world. The idea of being able to go "where the wicked cease from troubling and with weary are at rest" has a great appeal to me. I think I let that color my statements too much. I didn't mean to disparage anyone walking in the Spirit, like yourself, who enjoys living, but it kind of came off that way.
Thank you for pushing my thinking back toward center.
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