The other night, Tim Cayton along with my grandson Damian and I were lying on the soft green grass of Cove Palisade State Park gazing into the beautiful starry heavens of a Central Oregon sky, When suddenly we spotted one of our own satellites floating across the sky. I felt something of what the great English poet Keats expressed when he wrote:
Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his Ken
How wonderful to contemplate the grandeur of our generation humankind—who has found a way to place a new star into the heavens— to lace among the myriad of stars of God’s making. Soon we saw another and then a third and a fourth of our own satellites—softly floating —spinning—flashing on-and-off as they traversed the whole span of the firmament that was in our breadth of vision.
Suddenly, the words of the biblical writer came to mind: “You will be like God.” Certainly, there is a God like-ness to some creations of humankind. As I began to try to identify the biblical writer who wrote the words: “You will be like God,” Tim Cayton broke the silence, “you know, I am not so proud of all of the satellites we have up there, since the self destruction of Skylab littered Australia with its falling embers of death. Perhaps as all of this stratospheric garbage begins to fall we will be in constant danger.”
At that moment I realized my quotation“You will be like God” came from the lips of the snake in the Third chapter of Genesis. I began to realize there was something of the snake in those beautiful satellites floating through the heavens. Many of them have been thrust into the heavens to spy on our fellow Spaceship Earth travelers, because we distrust them. Our fellow travelers have also put up their satellites to spy on us, because they distrust us. We live in a world where humans are motivated—perhaps a better word is driven by—the same self-doubt and anxiety concerning that preceded the fatal nibble of the first travelers on the Spaceship Earth.
In fact, when we understand the story of Adam and Eve, we must recognize that these two characters in the first act of the Bible are the biblical Everyman and Everywoman. What was the sin of Adam and Eve—these red clay creatures God created in his image to be Everywoman and Everyman?
It was Soren Kierkegaard who taught us that the only sin of Everyman and Everywoman was “our despairing refusal to be ourselves”—the self that God wants each one of us to be. Harvey Cox suggests that this refusal to be truly human—to fulfill the call of God is due to what Medieval theologians called Sloth—which is more than laziness —it is a non-caring for the life for which we have been created—and to which God calls us.
Everyman Adam and Everywoman Eve were created by God—called into being to a life of fellowship with God—loving respect and companionship for and with each other—and dominion over the world of animals and nature. Eve’s original misdeed was not eating the forbidden fruit. Before she reached for the fruit, she had already surrendered her position of power by listening to the snake as a creature of power— rather than exercising her dominion over it. The Genesis view of humans is not the Greek view. This is not humans are exercising their Promethean will. There is nothing heroic in the story of Adam and Eve. They do not defy the gods by courageously stealing the fire from the celestial hearth, thus bringing divinity to humankind. This is the story of two people nibbling at forbidden fruit, frittering away their destiny by letting the snake tell them what to do.
How fast the story of humankind deteriorates. First, they let the snake take over and speak the word of power—against God’s Word—then they disobey God—violating their own personhood and humanness. Then, they discover their own shame—a shame of a violated personhood. In their anxiety and demise they cannot accept responsibility for their own act. Soon, they hide in shame from God—when found him, they blame each other and their estrangement is complete—estranged from God and from each other.
Modern biblical commentators have pointed out that we step two soon, if we only look at Genesis to see the demise of humankind. We must not only look at Adam and Eve, we must go on to the bludgeoning of Abel by Cain. We must also see the arrogance of the Tower of Babel, where humankind’s ultimate act of rebellion is to blot God out of their lives—and build their own tower into the heavens. Thus, the story of Everyman and Everywoman ends in chaos, confusion and despair. However, this is only the first chapter in human history.
God brings on the scene the second Adam—Christ. Here is one in whom the fullness—the matureness of humanity dwelt. This second human has highest regard for God’s will for him—for the design for him of his creator. He is not estranged from God whom he calls father. He is not estranged from humankind whom he calls friend—or again, you are my sisters and my brothers—my mother and my father. He had regard for the sparrow falling, but he could speak of the dominion of humankind. “Are you not of much more worth of sparrows?”
To summarize the story, there was really nothing wrong with the state of Adam and Eve’s life. They had their beautiful garden—they had a unique day-by-day relationship with God— they also had each other—they were two people made by God for each other and joined by God to each other. Then, the destructive word of anxiety—and mind you—anxiety about a state of being that was not what it was cracked up to be—took this all away from them.
Now, I would like to translate this into our moment of crisis. This week our President came down from the mountain—after two weeks of meditation to speak to us of our great crisis—what is the crisis that is upon us? Is it really real?
Let me put this in terms of a conversation of which I was a part of on July 4th. Our neighbors came to Our house for a picnic—Dorothy and Tom live next-door to us. Dorothy had been bugging Tom to renovate her kitchen—so she started talking about her kitchen. Finally, The women started telling Dorothy how she could solve her kitchen problem—soon they went over to the house to show her how it could be done. Someone informed Tom that he was really in for—he answered slowly—“Oh! I don’t know—she’s got running water—that’s enough.” We all laughed. Then we began to remind ourselves that none of us had running water in our houses, until we are almost adults.
Now to put it in a little more academic setting—there’s an article in the Saturday Review of October 28, 1978 by two social psychologists—David Myers and Thomas Ludwig—called “Let’s Cut Out The Poor Talk.” For them Poor Talk is a debilitating idea that afflicts American thinking. It is highly contagious, perhaps because people enjoy having it. Moreover once it starts to spread, People quickly try to one up each other to see who has it the worst. The ailment contaminates people at all levels of income and education—college faculty, union workers and business executives.
The disease of poor talk occurs when people’s spending outstrips their income. They feel and proclaim that they are underpaid. They feel defeated by inflation, taxes and the incapability of affording their families needs. Workers complain they cannot make ends meet on their inadequate salaries. Friends grouse to one another about rising costs and find bittersweet pleasure in itemizing what they cannot afford. Many even manipulate their incomes to show their eligible for food stamps. People living in lavish homes bemoan the cost of trivial items.
The fact is, according to Myers and Ludwig, their buying power is not less than it used to be. Everyone knows that consumer prices have doubled in the last 20 years—but we are less vividly conscious that our incomes have tripled. Our real disposable income corrected by inflation and taxes is 57% higher than it was 20 years ago. Our problem is not that we cannot buy more. The problem is that our appetites are out of reach of our real buying. Yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities. For example, moving from a one-holer to a two-holer is vastly different from one bathroom to two bathrooms.
The big question is why do yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities? Here Ludwig and Myers see their psychological principles at work. The first is the Adaptation Level principle. To define the principle simply—when we get something new, we soon get used to it and instead of it remaining a luxury that we can do without, it becomes a necessity we can’t do without. More than that this new thing always makes our past look dull. As we adapt, the present new thing becomes commonplace. You want something else. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the child sitting before the Christmas tree amid a rubble of torn paper and a heap of toys asking, “Is that all?” and crying because there are no more presents under the tree.
A recent study of lottery winners by Northwestern University found that people felt good about winning the lottery— but their happiness did not increase with it even though they reported it was the best thing that ever happened to them. In fact, everyday activities like eating breakfast and reading make winning the lottery seem like a high point. However, having more did not necessarily bring more happiness.
Ludwig and Myers discovered a second psychological principle at work. This is called the Relative Deprivation principle. This principle is basically that when we always compare our standard of living with those one or two steps up the ladder above us—we always feel deprived and cheated.
If our rewards are greater than those of equal education and ability, we experience happiness and contentment. If our rewards fall below some weighted average of the rewards accruing to our peers, we feel a sense of righteous indignation. A salary raise for the local police officers will temporarily increase their morale, but it will deflate the morale of the local firefighters. The Ludwig-Myers Study also shows that we generally perceive ourselves as more admirable, bright and deserving than others in our peer group. National surveys show most people see themselves as more ethical than the average business person. Most people feel that they are less prejudiced than the average person in their community. Most people feel they are underpaid in their job. When one gets an average raise in salary, most people feel they deserve more. We are always driven by “the upward bound” phenomena—and our appetites are never really satisfied.
The forbidden fruit is always ahead of us to be grasped. We generally tend to let the snakes speak to us. If you get this new thing, you will be like God—we do not master the snake—it masters us —and we end up estranged from God—estranged from our fellow humans—and a estranged ultimately from ourselves—ashamed of our spiritual depravity and nakedness.
This is where Jesus, the second Adam, comes in with his principle of love. Jesus saw the demonic in the lust for power and things that bug us and ultimately destroy us. Jesus said—Love turns his eyes downward to the poor—to those below—to those less fortunate. When you do that, you begin to count your own blessings and begin to see you have enough to spare, and you begin to share with the poor.
I think our friends the Fletcher’s who spoke to us month ago are such good examples of that. When you look at the poor, it is easy to give up a $60,000 a year job in a hospital for the rich, who are ministered to by more than one doctor per person at a cost of $400 per day, for a $15,000 a year job in Nepal where the hospital beds are $7 per day and operations cost $25.
Ludwig and Myers suggest there is a liberating perspective for us. First, we must begin to analyze the Adaptive Level principal as it works in our own life. We must analyze the changes in income, status and luxury that have really made us more happy and whole. We will probably find they have not. My friend Tim is living like a king in his little house in Eagle Creek surrounded by everybody’s castoffs.
Second, we can make a conscious effort to reduce “poor talk” and begin to count our blessings. Third, when we feel indignation, because we feel we have been treated unfairly, or we can turn ourselves from pride to humility and thankfulness.
Fourth, we can change our reference point. Begin to look at the less fortunate we can help and begin to count our blessings and share them. We can turn away from having the rich as a reference point—they have not achieved happiness!
In his Tales of Narnia, C.S. Lewis depicts Heaven as the ultimate liberation from the
relativity experience. Here creatures cannot feel deprived, depressed or anxious. We will be content with what we have. We will be delivered from what Ludwig and Myers call the “hedonistic treadmill.”
We may never be totally delivered from this treadmill here—but we can be delivered from much of it. Resurrection doesn’t deliver us from the ups and downs of life, but it gives us a new perspective about what is important and how to view change in our life. The fruit we have can become as attractive as the forbidden fruit that is out ahead. If we gain this insight as a nation— perhaps we will not have to be so threatening—and those around us will not be so threatening that we must race them to create bigger and more deadly killer bombs.
And in our personal everyday living —by becoming aware of the relativity of our appetites, by reducing our poor talk, by consciously selecting our comparison groups, and by viewing life from the perspective of Resurrection Faith, we can glimpse the radical liberation of the Psalmist: “the Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need!” We may even be saying with the Jesuits:
Though the mountains may fall And the hills turn to dust
Yet the love of the Lord will stand. As the shelter for all
Who will call on his name
Sing the praise and the glory of the Lord.
— Reverend Arthur Schwabe
Reverend Arthur Schwabe Blog 