Rabbi Friedman proposes that we were each in God’s imagination. The retelling of the story, with my own touches added, goes a little like this: God imagined us and loved us and wanted us to not just be in His creativity but in His reality. As God is entirely of Good, He seeks to further Good. So He found the lowliest, most untouched-by-Good place and He placed Adam and Eve there to begin the work of bringing Good there.
Eve was tempted by the Serpent and she recognized the temptation and did not want to submit to the Serpent, but she said “yes” because she knew Good needed to battle Evil in order to overcome. If she just enjoyed herself in the Garden, she would never know war but never know victory either. Because of what Eve did, each of us is born in order to do the Good work of continuing to transform a place of pain and suffering into the Heart of God, what Jesus would call the Kingdom of God.
“I know it’s true
It’s all because of you
And if I make it through
It’s all because of you.”
- “Now and Then” by the Beatles
I am quite excited by this story of love and purpose and Good and victory and union with God to make things better. I think conceptually this origin brings an encouragement to stand for what is right and know that doing what is right will never be done in isolation – you will always have God and all those who went before you with you and supporting you. You will always shun selfishness for the love of others. You will know that each pain in your heart could teach you how to overcome evil with love.
I think a lot of us hunger for things that the modern world is just not delivering on. So many things are so convenient and so accessible but our relationships with ourselves, one another, and God appear more distant than ever.
Me: “I get the concept that Jesus was fully God and fully man but I don’t understand what that would look like in His daily life.”
My Friend: “…You don’t think Jesus had to learn things?”
According to the Bible, Jesus would often go off by Himself alone and pray. As Christians believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, perhaps part of what Jesus was doing alone was, as a man, learning how to heal His own heart so that He could continue to grow in awareness of how to fully heal each of us where we are at. As much as God knows everything, there are things He does not just want to “know,” but to be present in reality. When we each know ourselves more, it can help to know others and even God more. What happens within our heart can bring great joy to others and to the reality we live in. You don’t learn about yourself at the expense of others; you learn about yourself in order to help others. You’ve got this!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
