052 "Ye Shall Be As Gods..."

"Ye shall be as gods." A promise that would change the course of history of mankind drastically, and affect each man, woman and child's life ever since the very beginning. One simple choice - perhaps carelessly made on a whim - turned creation from a heavenly state into something a lot more like hell for most of us, while enabling some to create their own, artificial little "heaven on earth," where they would be able to play god themselves.

Are you one of them? Let's find out. In what way does Satan's temptation, offer and promise to us mortals, "Ye shall be as god's," manifest itself in our lives? In more ways than one, and a lot closer to home than some dare think.

First of all, one aspect in which probably most of us have fallen prey to it, is the urge to provide for ourselves, instead of letting God be the Provider. Before the Fall, man did have to work and look after the garden, name the animals, etc., but it was obvious that everything around him was a gift from his heavenly Creator. Only after the Fall was man doomed to till the ground in order to bring forth from it his own sustenance, and we've all been plodding away at that doom ever since. And that in spite of the fact that Jesus came to liberate us from that slavery to the treadmill of existing merely for our own survival, in fact, challenging us that we would not be able to serve God and the false god of wealth at the same time, but that He would supply all our needs, if we were determined to put His cause first in our lives and serve Him. How many Christians doyou know who really believe that?

Next, being "gods" has enabled us to create our own "reality." Before the Fall, man already had the knowledge of that which was good. Thus, when he chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the added factor was, in fact, the knowledge of evil, the stuff he didn't know before, and that made him so curious & fascinated them to a point where they would disobey God. The first piece of "knowledge" (or let's call it perception) that Satan gave them, apart from the fact that God was a liar ("ye shall not surely die") and the divine status (ye shall be as gods") that was awaiting them in exchange for the forbidden snack, was that it was wrong to be naked. While God obviously didn't see anything wrong with it, but even told them to have sex when He uttered His first commandment, "Be fruitful and multiply," the Devil obviously didn't agree (so, contrary to what we tend to think, the Devil hates sex, and he sure hates us producing offspring!), and helped Adam and Eve to see things his way, which made them ashamed of their nudity and gave them the urge to hide and cover up. "Welcome to your new reality, folks!"

Of course, this was a sad, but one of the more harmless lies that have pervaded our perception of things ever since, compared to the notion that it's perfectly alright to kill in order to further our own interests, all the way to our more recent dogmas putting us on one level with our "relatives," the monkeys and reducing us from our former, more glorious position of potential "gods" to mere "monkey-gods."

This also touches on a third aspect in which our "god-hood" influences us every day, because what enables us to kill and annihilate entire nations, races or peoples, is the ability to judge. We judge others and look down on them because they are different than we are, thus putting ourselves above them ("gods," after all), and thus condemning them, as the ruling and reigning authority over them, to the loss of their freedoms, their homes, their limbs, their lives, whatever we can get away with.

We have also become the masters of creation, doing the same kind of stuff we do to our fellow-humans to our lesser brethren, the animals, the trees, the rivers, the sky, the earth.

What else do gods do? Oh, yeah, they celebrate - mostly themselves, with wine, women and song, and that's certainly one thing we're great at: celebrating our own greatness and drowning ourselves in any kind of excess while we're at it.

Maybe I'm forgetting some aspect of our fake divinity, and if you happen to know another, feel free to let me know, or just add a comment to this train of thought.

One thing we must not forget, though, is the contrast true divinity constitutes to our momentary enjoyment of our status as the "masters of the universe." If God were like us, He would probably hate us and despise us for being so dumb, so short-sighted and superficial, to fall into any kind of trap the Devil puts before us. Thankfully, He's different, and although in some senses like us (since we were made in His image), yet highly superior. We may not think so, because in our superficial judgment we figure He must be kind of dumb to let us get away with all this, but what we mistake for dumbness is in reality an ability to love and pardon that is as superior to our limited capacities to do anything but wreak havoc and be proud of it, as is the vastness of the universe to the fake space we watch on Star Trek.

He cannot quit half-way through the show, though, before the end has been revealed and the lesson is obvious, of where all of this will lead. There is one final chapter yet to be written and added to this epos of "the god called man," one which Papa Bush already eagerly announced in the late 80s as the "New World Order" (and others of his likes did before him), and which will reveal the perfection of man's "divinity" and all he's really capable of without God. Now we're all curious to find out how that's going to end, aren't we? I give you a clue, though: Don't put your expectations and hopes up too high. Chances are, you will be disappointed. Just have a look at history. Is there anything we learn from history apart from the fact that we never learn from history?

In the end, it will turn out that we simply failed to read the small print in the deal: that little word "as" makes all the difference in the world. While the true God promises true divinity for those who hear Him, all you really get from ol' Lucy is a fake. All you did was swap the God of truth and love for the god of lies and hate. For the mere "advantage" of not having to recognize your Creator's authority, you'll get an appearance of freedom, but will always be bound to the slavery of the flesh, sin, and the head honcho of the same old "new world order" scheme that has been in charge ever since Adam and Eve let him...

When it all comes down to it, the only One Who can guarantee a happy ending for this mess we've gotten ouselves into, is the One we should have listened to in the first place.