Genesis on a Tangent

“Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read black where I read white.”
William Blake

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Genesis on a Tangent

While we are enjoying The Fifteen Days of Alunaria and a partridge in a pear tree, I thought it might be fun to take a big tangent; all the way back to the Book of Genesis.

Lets look at the First Lesson in the Bible. If it is the very first lesson in this huge tome, it must be important.

Here is the set up: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

So, the rule is don’t eat it.

Here is the First Lesson we are to learn.

The Serpent has asked Eve a question to which she replies: And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Eve added “neither shall ye touch it” which is simply not true. She could have juggled with it or played baseball, maybe it would have been a good stain remover or deodorant. We’ll never know because she added to the rule.

The is the First Lesson in the Bible, don’t be adding rules that don’t belong! She may have been trying to make it more important or special or sacred or evil or any number of things but the mistake sits there like a diamond. In fact, she lies about what God said to get her point across.

The First Lesson is a big statement on our human behavior. We can’t help ourselves and keep adding and adding more crap on top of the original good rules. It got so bad in the Old Testament that God said, “stop it, here are ten commandments; no more” and then it got out of hand again and Jesus reduced it to two upon which hang all the laws and prophets.

The rules, and there are so many in our lives, have become so everywhere and everything that we can’t stop to question why we are doing these things that we do. Thank heavens, God’s first lesson was a warning to not do just that. Keep it simple, right?

I have two words that scream as warning signs: correct and proper. If you hop into a LFR or a pug raid or a battleground, you are sure to be lectured by someone about the proper way to play the World of Warcraft. Ding! Ding! Ding! A-woooga! Get away from that limiting narrow-minded rule-adding son-of-a-gun.

One of the best experiences with WoW happen outside of WoW and that is reading the bloggers who play all kinds of ways. They have their own solutions to find the fun in the game; some traditional and some not. They candidly reject any nuance of proper and correct.

I can feel it myself when I level an Alt with the Pet Tamers. It is as lazy as electricity, taking the path of least resistance. But, I know there is someone who thinks that it isn’t the right way to play.

All of those rules and laws and traditions that are in our lives and are rarely questioned. I think that we should remember the Bible’s First Lesson and try to dig down to that first good rule and stick to that.

Radical, no?

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