Falsehood: The Path that Leads to the Labyrinth of Sin
My interpretation of the Genesis metaphor about the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, the Forbidden Fruit, the Serpent, and the end of the relationship that a human being can have with God and residence in Heaven is really a study in the topic of the word "Falsehood" and or "Truthfulness" or "Righteousness".
When you look at the directive given by God to not eat from the forbidden fruit of the tree you have to ask why does it even exist at all?
If there was no such thing then there would be no problem. If you are not given something to avoid then you would not ever have reason to avoid it and therefore never have to be confronted with it.
It gives you a rule to break when you hadn't considered breaking any rules before. If there are no rules to break, then you would never have the problem.
But, we have been given the problem and forever we are cursed with the ramifications of it.
The truth is that human nature is burdened with a mind that has at its central purpose to serve the physical body carrying it. The brain is designed to find every advantage in life for the good of the host and it must defend it and serve it at all costs because if the host dies so does the brain, and it is gone forever.
What is Heaven?
The definition of Heaven is a place where you have all of your needs met without having to do anything to receive them. It is a place of complete contentment and void of all discomfort and requirements.
So, when looking at the Garden of Eden, the Bible's metaphor for the Kingdom of God, or Heaven, you have an existence where you have everything you could ever ask for in abundance and harmony. No pain, no suffering, no problems.
So, what does God do? He places one thing in the Kingdom of Heaven, a tree that bears a fruit, which is like all of the other fruits and trees, but tells the human with the powerful brain not to have any part of that tree. There is a Serpent that lives in the tree for some reason. The serpent whispers small suggestions into the brains of the human that it is perfectly fine to eat of this delicious fruit and that the only reason why God forbids it, is because God doesn't want the human brain to have all of the knowledge that "It" has.
The problem is that this little tease set up in the middle of the garden is there to test the choice between right and wrong. God simply commands that this choice will determine the course of life on earth every day for the rest of time. Yes or No. Do it or don't do it. True or False.
Thus begins the eternal circus of falsehood and righteousness. Once that path has been opened there is no going back. Humans will forever be cursed by the choices of falsehood and righteousness.
The human brain is going to take everything it decides to do and defend it, guard it, protect it, justify it, forgive, forget, remember, judge, just to make it okay for itself.
The thing is that we are powerless against our own mind. We make decisions everyday based on what WE believe is right and wrong based on OUR reasoning.
What is the most dangerous characteristic of a human being?
It is a human being that purposefully knows they are being untruthful and believes that they are doing the right thing by doing it. People who lie with a sense of righteousness are the most dangerous people on earth. When these people become powerful, then they are capable of doing anything and everything because their justification is that they are in complete control of the truth because they are in complete control of their lies. The only chance for the human race going forward is if at some point all people will realize the seduction and give it up.
Probably the most evil man in history was Adolf Hitler. He consciously lied and convinced others to lie to the point of bringing an entire country to destruction. The only thing that could stop it was killing it.
This is falsehood on a scale far beyond what we do in our private lives on a daily basis, but it is all still a part of the same insanity.
The point is, "Bad things happen when lies are acceptable ways of behaving."
In Christianity the basic idea is that in order to stop the spiraling down of this false way of living is to stop it, kill it (the sacrifice) forgive the past, ordain ourselves anew so that we can start over with a fresh slate. More importantly, it isn't a single fix, but a constant confession in acknowledging the truth about our nature, which is one of falsehood and deception and to try and combat that every day.
There comes a time when you have to give up the ship. There comes a time when you have to make everything right. There comes a time when the accounting has to work and you have to be right about things. There comes a time when you have to clean the slate and start over from the beginning.
I guess there comes a time when you have to realize that you aren't being honest with yourself and a lot of that is because you want to make yourself right for others. You don't want your mistakes to hurt others. However, the damage has already been done. It was done long ago way before you even realized it was happening to you.
I think it has something to do with achieving the impossible. Living up to expectations. Living up to the expectations that we never agreed to, but have been expected to live by.
There is a picture in my Mom's room, where the mother and father are holding up a baby in the air, looking at it with love and admiration. You can see the joy in their eyes and inside that all of their hopes and dreams for that baby to be the answer to their happiness, the perfect child, the one who always lives up to their expectations.
The child of course has no say in it. The child is just trying to figure out who these people are and why they are holding them up like that. You are strapped with vast responsibility as a child before you ever take your first step. The major expectation is to be perfect for everyone. As long as you do what everyone expects of them, they get what they want.
All through life we barter for our existence. We make deals with people, verbal, non-verbal, agreed and un-agreed, exchanging the bounties of the transactions and keeping count of the profits.
This conditioning is pounded into us regardless of who is doing it, or why. The bottom line is, everyone is programmed, and thus everyone is living according to their programming and that program must be followed at all costs.
It doesn't matter if you are born an orphan and grow up in the hood, or have both parents well to do and in a community of order. Both babies are programmed, and to equal extents.
I have always fought my programming, because I always knew that I was being manipulated. Not that people realized they were doing it, but the fact is, you are being manipulated by society from day one and it starts with your parents, your environment, your city, country, religion, sex, ethnicity, and the list goes on and on. We are nothing but animals with a complicated profile, and we live according to that profile.
So, here is what happens.
We wake up one day in the middle of nowhere and realize that we are alone on this earth and there is nobody there who is anything even remotely like you. You are alone. You stand there and look at the world around you and you want to survive, no, you want to thrive, so you enter the fray to try and find out what you are made of.
Every situation has to be handled. Every question answered, either with truth or falsehood. Everyone has to figure out where they stand with you. You have to figure out who you stand with. You dance with many partners and over time you find the ones who match your step, who agree with your tempo and want to be in rhythm with you. For, every human on earth, there is a dance they are doing that they fit into and it gets easier and easier the longer you do the dance.
So, we do the dance and maintain the status quo by little truths and lies that will be maintained at all costs so we can get what we want and not look greedy.
The people who lie and live by lying, are probably going to win because as long as they know they are lying they have an advantage over everyone else who is doing good just to keep their own house in order.
Falsehood, is not necessarily a lie, it is also telling the truth for an untrue end. Falsehood will lead you down a path of eternal confusion. So while we will never be rid of it in our lives, we can do what is possible to be as righteous as we can. Hopefully, the condition will be contagious.