A Ship Heading Out to Sea that You Know is Going to Sink
A certain sage likened the journey of life to boarding a ship heading out to sea that you know is going to sink. Somehow, people must come to grips with that. Nobody would ever book a cruise knowing the ship will sink, no matter how enticing the stops on the way. Somehow humans have to come to terms with our limited lifespan.
A good start is to recognize the source of death. It wasn’t God’s idea. Instead, Romans 5:12 says, “through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned.”
I was dumbfounded when I first came across people who literally believed in Adam and Eve. They didn’t look stupid. Yet, all my life it had been drilled into me, from grade school through college, that only the dumbest of the dumbbells took those two seriously.
I didn’t acquiesce to the Adam and Eve instantly. I put them on the shelf instead, since everything else made so much sense. In time, I better integrated them with accumulating faith and Bible knowledge. Thing is, I’m not sure how many would accept that workaround today. “Critical thinking” is all the rage today. Such thinking is apt to prohibit putting that first couple aside, even temparily, for fear they may cause “cognitive dissonance.” Critical thinking prejudices one to insist that the discordance must be resolved NOW.
Is it really so that humans cannot simultaneously entertain non-dovetailing ideas without their heads exploding? Or are the ones who so insist merely proclaiming their own narrowness? One need only watch an American pharmaceutical ad to appreciate that cognitive dissonance is a vastly overrated concept, with narrator insisting you must have the drug peddled, and voiceover saying it may kill you. Somehow Americans survive those.
At any rate, I have since recommended to people of my background, who may similarly choke on mention of Adam and Eve, that they treat them as metaphor if they must. Anything is better than outright rejection, especially outright disdainful rejection—as in, “We are wise and learned adults—far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve. What’s next, Donald Duck?” They are only harming themselves with that view. One must not toss away the idea of Adam and Eve, for they are key.
To be continued.
****** The bookstore
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