.

.

The Tree of Life v The Tree of Knowledge.  You can have one but not the other – choose wisely! 

And so it begins.  Guardians of the Gate.  Keepers of the Counting (or religion by another name).

I think – if I am to take anything from “The Garden” (fact or fiction) – it is this …
a) I Am The Tree of Life (if I allow)
b) I can eat from the Tree of Knowledge
c) And that is NOT “having both”
d) For I AM One – but only “eat” from the other

But teaching-believing I must be (one or the other) is maybe where religion has moved us from “The Way” to (our preferred) “I Did It My Way” (a great song!).

And sticking for a moment with The Garden (as written) – we are “made in God’s likeness”.  And yet God managed to combine Life AND Knowledge without any stress at all (that I read of).

So why not his creations?

Perhaps “Life OR Knowledge” (an allegory for Love OR Sin?) is the wrong way of reading The Garden.  For that way embeds Sin as something only God can cure.

(and creates all the earthly baggage, institutions and structure that follow … “religion”)

Perhaps God’s “PLAN A” didn’t require a “PLAN B” (as I have heard the Cross called many a time) until we decided it was either-or … EITHER Life OR Knowledge – couldn’t be both.  Whereas God handled – and still does – the two perfectly.

So why not “us”?

Perhaps this is less about Sin and Saving – and more about acknowledging how phenomenally massive our capacity for both (if we allow).

That Love (without condition) is not the remit only of a saved-life “post-death”.   It is not only “possible” (for a saintly chosen few) right now.  But it is what our DNA is.  That we can embrace the eternity of the moment in perfect Love AND have within us, at the same time, the knowledge that it is by our own choice we are choosing to enjoy everything of this moment.

Just as we have the same (phenomenal) “capacity” to reject one in favour of the other – just as we are taught that “we cannot have it all” – because we are sinners (at some point between birth as an innocent and death as not) – and insist THAT is biblically  correct (i.e. God approved)

Maybe that is why “PLAN B”.

Maybe it’s because we insist on making everything so (phenomenally) binary … saved or lost … heaven or hell … churched or unchurched … good or bad … sin or God … this belief but not that belief … this church but not that church … this faith but not that faith ..

Either this Tree or that Tree (but never ever both)

I can create life (and have).  I can love without condition (and do).  I can google (far too much).  I can internet (like right now).

And I can send these words across the entire globe with the push of one very small and plasticy button.

Why can’t we have it all?

.

.