Felix Culpa

 You really need to read this. The return to nature is a bad move. The original sin is not what you think. Read it on our SubStack.

On the Impatience of Eve

A Catholic friend, whom I could characterize as a Bergoglian, that is, a follower of Pope Francis, asserts that the original sin was impatience and a failure to appreciate the full depth of God’s love. Had Eve only waited, God would have given her and Adam the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. She simply jumped the gun.

I asked at the time if he could give any scriptural support for this claim that God would have given them the fruit later. He demurred.

It makes no sense to me. If God intended all along to give them this fruit, what was the point of first withholding it? Was he training them for obedience, as you would a dog? Does God love us like a pet? Isn’t that rather insulting? It is certainly manipulative.

And what about the pronouncement by Bergoglio himself that God does not, and would never, lead us into temptation, would never tempt us? Surely prohibiting this one tree, for no particular reason but to teach obedience, would be exactly that?

Not an entirely good and loving God, then. Eve would have reason to be suspicious.

Why then did God reserve the fruit of the tree? It cannot have been so arbitrary. It must not have been only to tempt. It must somehow have been necessary.

And it was. God cannot give us free choice, cannot give us free will, without allowing wrong choices to exist. If we cannot make a wrong choice, we cannot make choices. We would indeed be no more than pets or AI bots. Not full persons.

Therefore, in the Garden, there had to be one wrong choice available. It was inevitable, and it is inevitable in the case of each of us, that we will sooner or later make a wrong choice. Eve in this was each of us. Given the ability to think of ourselves as gods in our freedom, it was inevitable, and it is inevitable to each of us, that we sooner or later turn away from God and elevate our ego instead.

It was all inevitable and in the plan.

“O Happy Fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer!”

Billy

 

I have been binging on the British series “Call the Midwife.” A recent episode was about a Mongoloid man whose mother suddenly dies. Having always been taken care of, he is unable to look after himself. He is therefore taken in temporarily by the caretaker of the nearby convent, and his shopkeeper wife, until a permanent placement can be found. 

After a few weeks, they begin to love having him around, and now do not want to let him go. 

This sounds heartwarming, doesn’t it?

But the series is wise. This would not be happily ever after. He would only be trapped in childhood and dependency for longer. The young man himself points out that, living with this elderly couple, he has no friends. 

So they, more generously, consent to send him off to an institution, where he can socialize with other retarded adults.

This hit close to where I live, because my own family was faced long ago with a similar issue, and made the wrong choice.

My Uncle Billy was born retarded, reputedly due to brain damage at birth. And my grandparents would not hear of sending him off to some institution. No, he was going to be raised at home, not shut away somewhere.

It seemed no doubt like kindness, but it was cruel and selfish. He lived his life as a family pet. All his life, Billy never had any friends, never held down a job and made his own money, never met a girl, never learned how to act around people. And, not coincidentally, he developed a difficult, sour disposition. He was an angry man. As well as seeking troublesome sexual outlets.

I have known other mentally retarded people who led good lives; who went to work every day, if at a “sheltered workshop.” They managed their own affairs, with some supervision; even married and set up household. 

They had human dignity; the dignity God allowed us by giving us free will. We are not meant to be pets, and we are not happy in a cage. Even if it looks like a garden.

Billy had none of that. He was denied a life.

It is wrong to try to possess other people. It is if anything more wrong when you mask this as caring.

The Right to Choose

 

In her Internet explorations, my fifteen-year-old daughter has come up with another existential question. She was talking to a chat bot and pointed out to it that, unlike her, it had no free will. It simply followed its programming.

And the chat bot responded that she, too, simply followed her programming, her natural urges.

So, daughter wanted to know: do humans have free will, or not?

It is an open question, philosophically. Many Calvinists would say the latter: we merely follow our programming. Many behaviourist psychologists and philosophers would say the same.

I believe this is immediately untenable in our daily experience. If we really thought this, we would be unable to function. You wake up in the morning. There are Rice Crispies on the shelf. There is a toaster on the counter. Do you decide which you want for breakfast, or do you stand there and wait to see what you do?

You make a choice. You are aware of making a choice. You are aware that you could have chosen differently. You can also conclude that you made the wrong choice.

The “lower” animals, reptiles, insects, fish and so forth, seem to operate only on instinct, which is like programming. We too have instincts, natural urges, but are able to choose not to follow them. We can look at that beautiful woman, yet conclude that we have no right to have sex with her. We can refuse that piece of cake because we are on a diet. We exercise free will.

You could say that we have several levels of programming, which are often in conflict. One is our natural urges, our selfishness; another is our conscience, our innate sense of right and wrong. We can also have aesthetic concerns, social pressures, loyalties, obsessions. We choose among them as an exercise of will.

And our will grows stronger with this exercise.