New Souls
I was feeling a bit bold today so I brought up the subject of embryonic stem cell research. I thought that maybe before Tuesday’s election I could get a definitive answer of some kind that might help me vote.
It turns out that the start of life isn’t the start of being human. God told me that what makes us human is our souls, that that’s what actually sets us apart from the other animals. He went on to explain that two souls can’t exist in the same body, so we don’t get our own souls until after we’re born. Not until we’re separated from our mothers, and are able to survive on our own, do we have a chance for our own souls to attach.
So it turns out that embryos don’t have souls yet, and that leaves us free to do with them what we want. Then I asked God how a soul and a newborn get together? Is it like a game of pin the tail on the donkey? Do the angels get together and pull on blindfolds and spin around? Does God take a turn?
God told me it’s not like that. Besides, he pointed out, angels are more famous for dancing on pins than for sticking them into things.
If that aswer about two souls not being able to share one body didn’t come from God, I’d be a little sceptical. After all, I’m a man, and the best that I can do is speculate on what it must be like to have another living being growing inside of me. I’ve wondered if we men just don’t see somethings that women do ( mercy me, I’m sounding like Ursula LeGuin! ), because we tend to see things from such a different perspective. I’m generalizing, I know, but still…
This subject is making me wonder why God set things up the way he did. I mean, even though a woman was responsible for humankinds fall from grace ( mmm, apples ), God felt it was right to bestow on her the larger gift of creation. So, women seem to be a finer reflection of God then men. Even though men do sow the seed for this to happen, most of the work of creating a new person falls on the female side of the fence. Men, for their part, get to watch on with reverence and awe, which I suppose is a gift to women as well as God.
Just a thought.
It seems to me that a woman was an instrument in humanity’s fall from grace, but I’d hardly put them as “responsible.” Man ate the apple, so why put the blame on Eve? You could just as easily blame the serpent that tempted her, or God himself for putting the tree there in the first place.
Well, perhaps ‘responsible’ was an ill chosen word; let’s replace it with ‘catalytic agent’. I was only attempting to illustrate that Eve’s been given a bad name from the get-go, and, by-and-large, most Christians DO blame her for our downfall. I actually don’t think the apple was the real problem. Adam and Eve went against God’s will, in equal shares; I’m not trying to pin all the blame on Eve. Evil presented inself in that snake, the personafication of Lucifer. Being that he’s the Great Deceiver, off the top of my head I’d say that he bamboozled Eve. After all, deception was definately not part of the fabric of Eden. Had Satan encountered Adam first, it would have ended the same.
I think this quote is germane : “It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.” Thomas Hardy
If you think Eve’s been given a bad rap over the centuries, you should give Lilith, the first feminist, a phone call. I’m sure she’d have a few salty comments about being set up. C.f., Genesis 1:27 (generally taken to be Lilith directly created in the image of G-d) and Genesis 2:21-23 (generally taken to be Eve created from the rib of man). Note that in Hebrew, ‘adam’ means ‘man’ or ‘mankind’.
One other thing. No entity named “Lucifer”, “Satan” or any such name that the Devil goes by appears in the Torah. Those names are of Christian invention, transforming Semetic mysticism into Greek dualism.