Free by Creation

These days in the first readings for Mass, we are reading the Genesis stories of creation. Humans are created -- male and female they are created. They are created in the image of God. We also read about the entry of sin into the world. God did not create sin. Human beings by their disobedience and acceptance of the Evil One permit sin to enter into their lives. Evil comes from the outside of the human person, but it also comes from within them.

Evil comes from the outside: the Evil One propagates lies and misunderstanding about God. False ideas of God given to the human person. False ideas that God is jealous of the human person, that God is an enemy of freedom, that He is an enemy of knowledge and that He limits our freedom. That is not the case. I am reminded of Thomas Merton's words in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain: "Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born."

So, more properly, evil comes from within the human person. Adam and Eve, the first human beings, accept the lies of the Evil One. They believe that God is against human freedom, against human joys. Human temptation is nothing but accepting false ideas about God.

Human beings fall into sin by rationalizing, that is, they don't use true reason. Instead of accepting limitaions to their knowledge and to their freedom, they try to become God. Temptations, therefore, are also an occasion to play God, and to forget our limitations.

Moreover, Adam and Eve become conscious after having eaten the forbidden fruit; they also become self-conscious. We can also say that they become ashamed of themselves. Scott Peck in his Further Along the Road Less Travelled says: "It is human to be shy, and we became shy in the Garden of Eden when we became self-conscious. When this happened to us, we became conscious of ourselves as separate entities. We lost the sense of oneness with nature, with the rest of the universe. And this loss of sense of oneness with the rest of creation is symbolized by our banishment from Paradise."