I’ve seen that one meme post previously and it pushed me to rethink a little about the topic of the apple and the snake.
It’s obviously a story about becoming an adult. Just like Buddha escaped his temple to see the hungry, the sick and the dead, Adam and Eve exhausted their little isolated paradise and were curious enough to eat the apple (all blame is on woman, obviously).
And someone dropped a comparison to how it tracks with kids - the moment you say one thing on the table isn’t for them, be sure they’d take it. Then was this omnipotent, omniparent stupid, or irresponsible? Or didn’t they find a way to communicate complicated stuff to their children, like we don’t always have power in us to talk to our kids about sex and drugs? It seems like the case here. In their mind they could do so forever. And we all know how it’s bad.
For a long stretch of time god bought them all candies and toys, so their pockets seemed bottomless, but it’s so happens they aren’t. God produced this illusion around them, so they never knew what’s catching a cold is, what feeling a need is. But why it’s bad to know the truth? It sure hurts, but timely discovery makes one prepared. You know, prepared like an adult.
Let’s look at how Harry Potter was cool before we started to see a certain pattern in it’s awkward little details. Or how sunday school’s or choir’s kids looked so innocent and cute before we learnt more about religious indocrination and what track record pastors have with not abusing kids. How our one day delivery is possible due to drivers pissing in the bottles. Nestlé, Amazon, big oil, big pharma, cops, overseas operations, financial pyramids, influencers, tech visionaires, self-made billionaires, medievil knights.
It hurts to know the truth, but in the end it made us more conscious and prepared to reality. Like, we can avoid investing into dogecoin after the hype is long gone and we won’t collect anything on currency speculation.
It takes an adult to survive here. Satan in a shape of a snake was this cool aunt who fed you apple, showed you how god cared about you to defend from reality, equiped you with some actusl knowledge. They could’ve got their internal fight, but in the end, you wasn’t fit anymore to live in a lie.
Like you can’t watch and support that streamer who also doubles as a child groomer.
And the question I struggle to answer, why is it bad? Was it inescapable or god thought it is while it isn’t? Seeing it as a bad parenting issue adds some context. And I don’t feel like Satan giving an apple could become that influential if god himself wasn’t shy to share what he knows, it only became a problem because he didn’t. He built the Gardens of Eden on lies and when it became obvious, he just dropped their children into adult life miserably unpepared.
God sucks at parenting.
I’m guessing it was me that pressed that comment? I like to use the argument to show that the whole point of the garden was to kick humanity (that is, adam and eve) out.
There are, however some points that need to be made. The serpent in genesis is (probably) not Satan. The conflation comes from revelations, (12:9, 20;2), where Satan is described as ‘the serpent of old’. or as a dragon or serpent. This is more… symbolic. linking the two is a bit of a stretch, especially considering that the serpent was cursed to be legless- which is a physical curse and Satan is not a physical being. (and also to be always crushed under our heel… which is something we do to snakes.)
Secondly, there’s two issues as to why it was bad according to scripture. the first is that it was disobedient. god told them not to eat the apple they did. this is the original sin because it was the first time somebody disobeyed. keep in mind, sin is defined as ‘anything that separates man from god’. There’s a lot of things that piss god off, and like an abusive spouse, it’s always our fault.
As to why he didn’t want them eating it, some clues are given in the only other tree they were forbidden from snacking on: the tree of life. he justifies banishing them from the garden, fearing that if they eat from the tree of life, they’ll “become like us.”- presumably immortal.
Remember, that humanity was special in that we were made “in his image”. There’s a lot of questions as to what that actually means- the general consensus was that it was the gift of intellect, reasoning and possibly language (though this is steadily being eroded.); regardless, having obtained understanding of right from wrong… it was deemed imperative that humanity gets yeeted from the garden.
In any case, it’s important to note that the behavior of god in this story is the kind of behavior of an abuser. Blaming the kid/dog/whatever for eating the pizza rather than accepting that it was left where they could get to it. and it gets worse.
We were created with the intention that we have free will. So that we could chose to worship him. and chose to be obedient to him. We could not make a moral choice without knowledge of good and evil. we couldn’t fulfill the purpose given us- to chose to be with him- without it. So it was always going to be necessary that we eat of the fruit.
In fact, it’s very likely that god sent the serpent himself; and not satan. you know. To plant the idea. remember, god is also omniscient- that is all-knowing. including the future. (which is how, they’ll insist, there can be prophecy.) So, we have a god who knew what was going down- has always known it would go down- not intervening before they fuck up, placing them in a garden with two trees they can’t touch, with a serpent that god knows will tell them to try it. and he lets it happen and then, just as that LSD trip is wearing off, comes in wagging his finger and rubbing their nose in it.