Here’s one from five years ago that you might enjoy today. Do we, as Christians, really believe that Eve had a conversation with a serpent? ‘Cause atheists believe we’re schmoes for believing what’s published in the Bible.
But boy howdy, the stuff that they believe in! “Progress” (don’t make me laugh). Here’s a good one–Big Government. And how about “You can change your gender”? Good grief, a talking snake seems like pretty small potatoes compared to those crapola vessels. By all that’s preposterous, several million people voted last month to make Kamalalala Harris president! Anybody home up there?
You make a very important point. We are bound to the material realm and incapable of fully understanding the spirit realm. I am organized in such a way as to be dependent upon a physical body. My thoughts can only be communicated via my body, whether by voice, or by the keystrokes I am entering into my iPad.
I wouldn’t claim to know how the spirit realm is organized. This is something to which I have given considerable thought, and have concluded that it is incomprehensible. I have not a notion of how a spirit creature operates.
My thoughts and knowledge are, ostensibly, contained within my nervous system. Notice that I didn’t say my brain, because the brain is connected to much more than that which resides within my head. Our intestines have the second largest collection of neurons in the body, and indeed, it is quite possible for a person to feel certain emotions, all the way to the gut.
But what organizes the mind of a spirit creature. What are its limitations? Can an angel be in more than one place at the same time. When Michael the archangel was delayed in answering Daniel’s prayer by interference from the “Prince of Persia”, what actually happened? If travel was involved, it apparently was not travel in the terrestrial sense.
Many years ago, I had morning coffee with a friend whom was blind, and when we met, he had invited along several elderly gentlemen from the congregation he belonged to. One old man, who was seated nearest to me, could not speak, but he started drawing on a paper napkin, bearing his testimony to me. He drew a point and labeled it the Sun, then drew another point and labeled it “our near sun”, meaning Alpha Centauri. He then wrote in the distance between these bodies and asked the question; “who can travel these immense distances?”
While I was a believer at the time, his testimony still struck me like a bolt of lightning. I knew that the Universe was vast, and that it would take billions of years to traverse at the speed of light, but to God, this was surmountable. We humans have never even approached the speed of light in our travels, and we are far from attaining even 1% of that velocity with our fastest manned spacecraft, but God doesn’t need to worry about material limitations.
The Spirit is said, in scripture, to indwell in believers. We know from the Gospels that demonic spirit creatures can possess humans, and in one case, they were cast out of a human, and asked to be allowed to enter a herd of swine, whom subsequently stampeded off of a cliff. How does this work? I don’t know and I wouldn’t trust any human explanation to be accurate.
So, if a spirit creature chose to rebel, and attempted to undermine God’s authority by spreading a lie, I would imagine that it would be possible for such a creature to use an animal as a ventriloquist’s dummy. There are instances recorded in scripture where angels apparently materialized as men, so it’s not beyond the pale to imagine that Satan could havńde materialized into some sort of serpent, in order to mislead Eve.
Over the years, I have heard a number of theories regarding just what that serpent was. Some have suggested that the serpent wasn’t a literal snake. I’ve even heard suggestions that the serpent was more like a human and that Satan had taken on human form, eventually seducing Eve, and even a theory that there were two lineages which sprang from Eve, one from Adam ańend one from the serpent. Let me clarify, I don’t believe this myself, but it goes to show just how confused the situation is in the minds of some. My inclination is to take the scriptures at face value and not budge from that position unless there are other scriptural references which would prove the passage to be symbolic.
When discussing scripture with non Christians, I have noted that it’s not uncommon for them to cherry pick what parts of scripture to believe and to cast aside belief in areas they find inconvenient. For example, a former co-worker couldn’t understand listening to Moses words regarding taking the Promised Land, conveniently forgetting that Moses had parted the Red Sea, allowing the sons of Israel to escape certain annihilation at the hands of Pharaoh’s armies, and then watching that same army, the most powerful on earth, being themselves annihilated by the hand of God.
The Bible is the record of Gods dealings with mankind, especially as these dealings related to His provision of a Messiah. The Bible exists at the very intersection between the material world and the spirit realm. Some of what happens in scripture is very relatable to our human existence, while other parts of scripture go beyond anything possible in the material realm. If we choose to accept scripture as God’s message to us, we must be prepared to accept all of scripture, even if parts of it go beyond the imaginings of mere mortal man, confined to the material realm.
As I see it, the bottom line is that Eve was deceived into believing that a serpent was talking to her, and that its words were worthy of being believed. She acted upon these lies, and troubles have multiplied ever since.
Fascinating! How did I miss this the other day?
In “Paradise Lost,” Satan (who has taken over the body of a serpent) uses the very fact of the serpent’s speech to “show” Eve what marvels the forbidden fruit can accomplish.
But again, God has created the laws of the physical universe, and he can suspend them if he wishes. Even aside from the virgin birth, how about the sun “standing still” during a battle (I’ve often wondered whether instead of slowing down the whole solar system God sped up the metabolisms of the fighting men)? Or not only raising Lazarus from the dead but reversing the decomposition that must have taken place in the days beforehand? Or for that matter, how about creating something out of nothing?
*Sigh* The old sales pitch still works (Science will give you everything!).
And we believe a donkey spoke to the crazy prophet. We also believe if you die in faith of the Lord Jesus Christ you only die to the physical body and a fallen world, but your soul and spirit shuffle the mortal coil as it shoots to heaven like a rocket accompanied by an angel.
I don’t think Thomas Aquinas would’ve put it quite that way.