Word to the Wise
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 - Wednesday in the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time (Our Lady of Lourdes)
[Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17 and Mark 7:14-21]The Lord God gave man this order: "You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die."
Sneaky/clever parents know that one way to get their kids to do something is to forbid them to do it! The same thing appears to be true in certain scientific endeavors as well. The attractiveness of a particular project rests not in what good it will bring but in the fact that the material has been declared off-limits to scientific investigation (surely there are no purely monetary motives!): "human cloning" being a very prominent example. To be fair, the other side of the issue, the one presented by the serpent to Eve, concerns the reason why some course of conduct or investigation is forbidden. The serpent accuses God of selfishness in that God knows the difference between good and evil and if the human finds that out, the human will be like God! So, why not? That "Why not?" is a consistent human refrain. Which illustrates why the Book of Genesis in its early chapters on the story of creation is such a profound study in human psychology and morality. It shows how certain ways in which we think and act in our own time have been around since the beginning of creation because the human person has always been able to choose between good and evil - even before eating that fruit! In short, they did not gain the freedom to choose by being disobedient. They already had that freedom. They chose to ignore the blessings they had in favor of a false promise of something that was already in them! We're still doing that! To believe in God is to accept that the gift of free will is limited. If one does not believe in God, then, as said in The Brothers Karamasov, "all things are possible." That's what scares me! AMEN
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