Genesis 6

 Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

I'm writing this first part before I read Genesis Chapter 6. I wanted to add further thoughts on Genesis Chapter 3. As I wrote in my essay "The Bible and Mind Control:"

What I gather from the chapter is that the desire to know good from evil is the only evil. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." In their pursuit of wisdom, Adam and Eve found their nakedness to be a problem, a source of shame (i.e., evil), when it wasn't before.

Perhaps this chapter's lesson for us is that we don't need to bite from that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. We don't have to look for problems to solve. We don't need to look for wrongs to be righted. We don't have to go out looking for monsters to destroy. We're better off letting them be, or else we only create more work for ourselves, leading to our deaths. 

Lesson 6 of a Course in Miracles says: I am upset because I see something that is not there.

In my Course in Miracles diary that I'm writing concurrently with this Bible Diary, I wrote:

I noticed that in Genesis Chapter 2 that the man and woman in the Garden of Eden were naked and not ashamed. But in Genesis Chapter 3 they partook of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, saw that they were naked, and tried to hide from God because they were afraid.

In their nakedness, they saw an evil that was not there. 

This was after they tried to "improve themselves" by seeking wisdom.They just created problems for themselves, problems that weren't really there.

Another way to say it is that evil is an illusion. Maybe that's what Jehovah God was trying to tell them the whole time: the Tree of Knowledge is an illusion that creates illusions; ignore it.

While Jehovah God is somewhat anthropomorphized in Genesis, a character in the story, Jehovah God might just be our own intuition, and the law of cause and effect. Eve and Adam tried to solve their own problems through their own "wisdom" or reason, instead of relying on God for their provision. 

But I also won't dismiss accounts in which Jehovah God seems wrathful.

Now on to Genesis 6.

The first couple of verses seem to affirm how I'm interpreting the early chapters. Adam and Eve were created by spirit, independently from the human race created by God in Chapter 1. Their sons, the "bad" Cain, and the "good" Seth could, it seems, be reasonably called "sons of God," right? They married what might be called "Chapter 1" daughters.

But then things get weird.

I've been reading Young's Literal Translation but sometimes I use the NRSV for greater clarity, although it's hard to know how clear this is. In verse 4 Young's refers to "the fallen ones" which the NRSV calls the Nephilim. Neither translation is clear whether these are the same as the "sons of God" of Adam's lineage, or some other race that are neither Chapter 1 humans nor from Adam. But they also fathered children from the "daughters of men."

In any case, it seems the "earth" (again, I don't think this means the entire planet, but "dry ground" or ``place of human habitation") was corrupt. I don't think this was about business travelers abusing their expense accounts. I'm imagining a world of psychopaths, where even the victims of psychopaths are themselves psychopaths.

It would seem "reasonable" that in a world of psychopaths, the best thing is to flee. But it doesn't sound like there was anywhere to go. Another option would be to arm oneself in self-defense and try to survive. But what kind of existence is that? Or, one could go out and kill the psychopaths. But how do you do that without falling to their level?

Noah seemed to turn away from the "wisdom of the world." He didn't eat from the "knowledge of good and evil" or take matters into his own hands to stamp out evil He didn't stay in survival mode. He followed the inner voice (intuition, Jehovah)  and, probably from the perspective of neighbors, "did his own thing."

It wasn't Noah's job to punish the world. Or to save it either.

But there may be more to this story. When you get dirty, water can wash it away. Water is also the cheapest and handiest way to clean out toxins in your body. Likewise, when you're overwhelmed by worry, anger, or other emotions that bring you down, the thoughts in your mind must be washed away. Wiped out. 

It's probably a daily process. Every day, like Adam, we pick from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and every day, like Noah, we must turn our minds back to what is pure and, just as a flood would cleanse the earth, let our souls be cleansed. 

James Leroy Wilson writes Daily Miracles, The Daily Bible Chapter, JL Cells, and The MVP Chase. Thanks for your subscriptions and support!

(Photo credit: TyshkunVictor)