(Gen 2:7-9 KJV) And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
So the Lord God planted a garden, put man in it and provided every tree that is pleasant to look at and every fruit that is good for food….. but we ‘lost’ the plot. So where is the paradise you seek? Is it that absent mental state of denial, that little piece of ‘promised land’, that house in the country, that holiday, that other pristine garden undamaged by the hands of men?
Yet we drink to it, slave for it, architects plan for it, engineers engineer for it, Politicians promise it, lawyers pass laws for it and the Religious leaders pray for it… the perfect world, an end to poverty, violence and war… yet it still eludes us. Despite all our money, work, scheming, technology, drugs, policies, laws and religious behaviour… the world is still full of poverty, dysfunction, disease, dangers, damage, disasters and death. Seems to me that we all seek some kind of paradise, that idyllic state where everything is provided and toil and trouble are no more…. Yet it seems that all we really need to do, to return to this idyllic state, is to STOP the world.
How many layers of skin and houses does a man need, anyway?
Paradise is not really lost, it just remains hidden or obscured by the business of human existence driven by the human terrorists of ignorance, fear and greed… but despite civilizations coming and going….
Life goes on and real life grows over our empty bottles and empty houses - everything we slave, architect, engineer, politicize, legalise and pray about. If we compress the ‘time-line’ of humanities existence we see a number of compromises that have occurred since our origins:
1. Paradise - provision of God, we faithfully pick fruit, eat, sow our seed & poop.
2. Hunter gatherers - scarcity of life, forced to fearfully scavenge, kill & eat.
3. Small holdings - provision by man, forced to manage land & raise food
4. City living - scarcity of land, forced to live in citadel confinement, transport food from growers which is bought and sold with local currency.
5. Global Metropolis - despoiling of natural environment by industry, forced to eat manufactured chemical food, bought & sold on-line with digital currency.
The end game for this ‘new world’ is the replacement of all God given natural things with technological substitutes, but this is delusional and unsustainable for real life…When do we say enough is enough and deplore the promotion, marketing and selling of useless, frivolous and dangerous produce for profit? Do we have to replace all trees with oxygen tanks, all fruit with vitamin pills and Omega fish oil capsules, all women with silicone, all legs with wheels, all insects with nano-bots to fertilise the flowers, all life with man made electro-mechanical substitutes…. What kind of paradise are we creating for our seed?
By the economy of God, if a man carries more than a handful, he is witholding from his neighbour. Jesus never died and went to "paradise", he lived... for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.. and by our hands, it could be gone tomorrow.
(Rev 2:7 KJV) He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
PARADISE