BLAST FROM THE PAST 1: Fable of the Patron and the Orphans
The following was written over 40 years ago. My faith was new following over a decade of atheism. I had not yet found my place in the Christian world and its many churches and denominations. I have done a minimum of editing in order to preserve the raw and sensitive sufferer who was hungry for divine love after a long fast.
He was an orphan who was never orphaned. Literally born yesterday, he had no chance to grow up normally and learn in the rough and tumble way boys do. His innocence and naivete are beyond comprehension in today’s sophisticated, cosmopolitan society.
His inability to perform the tasks necessary for survival did not stem from physical or intellectual shortcomings. With no parents to teach him the skills required to make his way in the world, he was set adrift in a deceptively hostile paradise. This adolescent possessed no information about the place he was created into. He knew nothing of his origin, his residence, his being. He could not summon any past knowledge that would aid his journey. Unclothed, with no sense of the need for bodily protection, he appeared a natural victim of the elements, animals, plants, diseases. He was predator of none, hunted by all, destined to become an unrecorded, ahistoric statistic.
Fortunately, the Patron was on hand to oversee the young one. An enigmatic, ever-present character, the Patron immediately took responsibility for meeting the boy’s basic needs. Where this being came from, the Boy did not know. The Patron had no name, no past, and apparently no visible companions other than the Boy and the animals.
The Patron took excellent care of the boy, providing him with food and shelter, as well as finding ways to occupy the boy’s time. Useful labor, especially caring for the animals, helped give the boy a sense of purpose and build self-esteem. Wherever this lad wandered, whether he saw the Patron or not, he felt the Patron’s presence, saw the results of his work.
Exactly what the Patron taught the boy may only be speculated. He certainly communicated to the boy information about the animals, how to care for this menagerie of creatures. In a life where all is provided, there isn’t much one needs to learn. Perhaps that was the extent of the Patron’s teaching.
For beauty and an atmosphere of perfect peace, the estate had no equal. Teaming with animal and plant life, and an abundance of flora and fauna, this natural, boundless land seemed both untamed and friendly. Its climate temperate, the Boy required no clothing and traveled about unselfconsciously.
Only one tree on the Estate had fruit on it that could harm the boy. The Patron warned of that tree, and told the young one that he would die if he ate of its fruit. Why the Patron did not remove this tree is unknown.
In spite of all the beauty and ease of his life, an overwhelming loneliness settled upon the boy that the companionship of the animals or even the Patron could not assuage. The Patron realized that the boy needed a partner. This companion, also an orphan, appeared while the boy slept. She was the perfect remedy for the boy’s loneliness.
Where there is light, there is darkness; alongside peace lives struggle; good and evil often tenuously coexist. In his animal disguise, the Guest enjoyed the young couple’s hospitality and care. Apparently, the Guest had been part of the Patron’s estate from the beginning, but chose carefully his moment to speak. Disloyal to the core, the epitome of opportunistic liars, he targeted his victims, these two innocents ripe for the plucking: and pluck they did, from the tree of death.
At last, the enigmatic Patron exercises his authority, becoming judge, jury and police to all involved in this poaching incident. Though aware of everything occurring on the estate, the Patron engages in a humiliating cross-examination of the shamed pair. His first ruling is against the Guest, or rather the animal the Guest has chosen for his cover. Turning his attention to the couple, he inflicts pain and life-long subservience upon the Girl, and struggle and subsistence survival upon the Boy. As a final gesture, the Patron strips the couple of their immortality and ejects them from the estate, into the outside world.
By now you have undoubtedly recognized this story from the book of Genesis, chapters 1-3. This a condensed paraphrase of the story of two young, innocent people, overmatched by both the Creator who formed them of the dust, and then expected them to be wise to the world, and by the serpent who saw an opportunity to enslave two innocent youths with his lies. These kids never had a chance if this is the way the situation really happened. If this is mankind’s first encounter with deity, it’s no wonder we have so many spiritual problems now.
I would like to think that it didn’t happen exactly as it appears. The events as related are true, but this is not a detailed chronicle of the daily lives of our first parents. It is an attempt to explain the separation between humanity and God, and the role of free will and the struggle for good and evil that resonates throughout the ages into the present day. I’d like to think that underneath the harsher aspects of this tale, we can see a God who deeply cares for His creation and beings who are seeking to understand themselves, their Creator, and the life they have been thrust into.
Let’s probe and speculate and see where it leads us:
God created man in his own image and placed him in the Garden. Since man had free will, God made clear to him that he would encounter many choices in his life, and that it was up to man to choose and face the consequences of each choice made. The major choice facing the first representatives of humanity was the choice of paradise. Did man want to live in this utopia with no worries, no concerns for survival, never knowing the world and its hardships and struggles, or did man want to experience all of it, the good and the evil, the dark and the light, and thereby make seemingly more enlightened decisions?
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the focal point of that ultimate choice. The first man and woman were only told that if they ate from that tree, “you shall die.” Did they really know what death meant? Perhaps they encountered it among the animals in the garden, but how deeply can one understand dying by only witnessing it, with no other foundational information to help put the event into perspective? Free will without knowledge can be pretty much a crapshoot. Even we who have access to all kinds of information and the wisdom of the ages concerning the end of life, don’t truly understand it. How could, then two immortal, naive beings only witnessing death in animals even understand what losing the gift of life meant?
For that matter, discarding the doctrinal imprint that I have from my Christian upbringing, do I really understand death? Biblically, right from the first book, death is a consequence, possibly a punishment—the former for having chosen to have a knowledge of good and evil, the latter for disobeying the Creator. As a small piece of humanity, having never tasted the apple, but having feasted on forbidden fruit, do I really know about separation from God and paradise when I’ve never walked there?
I used to be really angry concerning this vignette. Angry at our first parents for being duped. Angry at God for setting the Edenites up by slipping in a snake in the grass, and then expecting the descendants of this pair of ordinary garden variety delinquents to somehow do a better job of making choices, not having walked in Paradise, and begotten of a long line of dysfunctional folks some of whose escapades are chronicled in graphic detail in the same holy book. With this “original sin” as part of my spiritual makeup, is it possible for me to heal the ancient rift between humankind and its architect as it manifests itself in my own soul?
Of course, the answer to this question is “No.” Alone I cannot heal my spiritual wounds and the damage done from the consequences of my own poor decisions. I believe that is why the Divine Author started out the scriptures with this seeming failure. In this sad tale, our Creator shows us that even if we dwell in Paradise with God walking around the precincts, we will still encounter choices between right and wrong. And when we decide to decide without consulting the Spirit who formed us and dwells within us, we are doomed to fail. Our flaw is that we don’t recognize that we are connected with the Power to defeat all evil. We need only to acknowledge and reach out to this being who is longing for us to do so.
Adam and Eve saw first-hand the power of someone who created a place for them to live and grow and thrive and they had the opportunity to be close to One who knew everything, is the source of everything. The Israelites saw the power of God overwhelm the Egyptian empire and its leader with spectacular plagues and miracles galore. Jesus’ apostles and disciples saw Him raise the dead, heal the blind and the lame, and ultimately defeat the power of death. Still the garden kids ate the apple, the freed descendants of Jacob longed to be back in slavery, and the ones who walked with God’s Son were always ready to doubt, complain, flee, and even betray.
True faith, true religion is not an intellectual exercise, it is a relationship with a being so far beyond our understanding that all we can really do is surrender. And out of that commitment to a Higher Power who was already committed to us, grows the love that changes us and ultimately changes the world. Let’s start leaving the fruit on the tree—the empty promise of knowledge that only breeds distrust and inner turmoil—and partake of the fruits of the Spirit with a deep and abiding love for the one who gave all to us and himself for us.
