Today’s Man: Recreating the Garden of Eden

We had it all in the Garden of Eden.

Everything we relentlessly seek today was ours then, and we lost it. We lost it through one act of disobedience. One tree, one rule, one empty promise, one bite, and an eternal fall.  We lost it by seeking to change the status quo, hungry for more than what we had already been given. We lost it by pursuing things reserved for the creator alone. Somehow, despite living in paradise, the allure of being “like God” was too much to resist.

For our extraordinary pride, we were cast out of Eden, and we’ve been trying to find our way back ever since. This is a good thing; for, by our nature, we seek apparent goods.  With proper guidance, support, and a life of grace, we can readily choose true goods. Inherent in our immortal souls is the need to ever search for that eternal Eden, that never-ending paradise, the windows of which we gaze into from here on earth. Seeking peace and harmony with the whole of nature allows us to walk with God in the garden of grace even now.  When we act in accordance with natural law (which is written upon the heart of every man) and when we obey God’s commands, the power of our restless hearts is properly reined, and quieted.  What we have already been given is satisfying.

Despite the great difficulties of life on earth, man has enjoyed many blessings. Modern advancements are ultimately products of man’s never ending search for the state of paradise we enjoyed in Eden. We seek to ease the effects of original sin upon our flesh by making our work more efficient, our lives longer, our bodies healthier and more comfortable, and our hearts less lonely. Our efforts pay off fairly well most of the time. There’s no end to the supply of material goods and conveniences available in this modern, post-Eden world. There’s also no end to the dissatisfaction and restlessness of the human heart apart from God.

Repeating the Fall

In Eden, we had every comfort and suffered nothing. Man ruled over the beasts, naming and commanding them. Yet Adam was sad and lonely. God saw Adam’s loneliness despite all the creature companions, and thus created a human companion perfectly suited for him. Adam rejoiced to see Eve, saying, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called, ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23) There is no doubt that within Eden, all was well between male and female, between man and nature, between God and man, and it was truly a paradise.

What happened in Eden to cause dissatisfaction? Why did Eve listen to the wiles of the serpent? Where was Adam? What was so appealing about the promise of being “like God?” Was it curiosity? Boredom? Desire for power? Was she simply hungry for the taste of a new fruit — that ever-reaching appetite like a spoiled child, never happy with what he has and always wanting the next new thing?

Whatever the cause, today we see the same fateful choices being made in greater number — choices where man exchanges what he’s been given by the Omniscient God, who created him intricately and intimately as he is, for something forbidden. Today, man is exchanging his near proximity to eternal paradise for something else, something beyond the walls of nature, reaching for the proverbial fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.  Today, he listens to the wiles of the serpent either through some disordered craving or the unstoppable pride of an unnatural new “non serviam.”

We have given up on searching for eternal paradise. Following our restless hearts swollen with pride and plagued by a hunger for something else, we’ve decided instead to recreate Eden, and rather than walk with him, to play God.

Gender Chains

Perhaps it’s curiosity, or boredom with all the comforts and conveniences we already have, but changing one’s sex indulges the Imp of the Perverse. It’s not only an attempt to be “like God” but to be God. Sex-changing procedures are beyond the realm of what we may, as human creatures, even consider doing. It is not a furthering of medicine or health. It is not an act in harmony with the whole of nature, but a violation of everything natural.  It is not a liberation of some gender-confused, body-bound suffering soul, but a violation of everything sacred.  It is not an act freeing a man, but an abomination of everything humane — it does not free him; it further binds his spirit to the endless noise of his dissatisfied heart.

Sex change is the tangible evidence of the cacophony inside the restless heart, ever groaning under the weight of a graceless life, reverberating across millennia in rebellion against the commands of God. It is mixed with the serpentine whispers of evil and a perverse choir of demons drowns out the gentle calling of the creator.  Sex change is not an art or expression of beauty, but a thievery — a reaching across the garden wall to take for himself what only God can give — a sacred rib of blessing, a sexual identity ordained to each of us from the moment He knit us in our mother’s womb.

The allure of doing something simply because one can never makes it wise, natural, or permissible.  Only God can make a woman out of a man.