Adam: starting at the very beginning

I am looking forward to being part of the launch this evening of a Spiritual Art exhibition at Silbury Gallery in MK, curated by my dear friend and brother Anouar Kassim. Last year we celebrated and explored Spirituality and Mathematics — this year Adam.

Adam, whom Muslims think of as the first prophet, is the beginning. He defines the global scope of all the Abrahamic faiths. We are all of one flesh and blood int he final analysis. This is why sectarianism is never enough.

Western Christians have so emphasised Genesis as a story about guilt, and perhaps missed the fact that it is more about shame, and flawed coming of age. Lose touch with this story and we lose touch with the tragic and paradoxical dimension of what it means to be human.

Thinking about what is distinctive about the Christian vision of Adam brings to mind a hymn from 100 Hymns for Today (1969) by a man called Richard G. Jones. The language is that of forty years ago, but I'm sorry it has consistently failed to make it into hymnbooks since — especially if it implies the English are just too Pelagian for this kind of thing. I hope not.

God who created this Eden of Earth,
Giving to Adam and Eve their fresh birth,
What have we done with that wonderful tree
Lord forgive Adam, for Adam is me.

Adam ambitious desires to be wise,
casts out obedience and lusts with his eyes,
Grasps his sweet fruit, "as God I shall be"
Lord forgive Adam, for Adam is me.

Thirst after power is the sin of my shame,
Pride's ruthless thrust after status and fame,
Turning and stealing and cowering from thee,
Lord forgive Adam, for Adam is me.

Cursed is the earth through this cancerous crime,
Symbol of man through all passage of time,
Put it all right, Lord, let Adam be free:
Lord forgive Adam, for Adam is me.

Glory to God! What is this that I see?
Man made anew, second Adam is he,
Bleeding his love on another fine tree,
Lord forgive Adam, for Adam is me.

Rises that Adam the Master of death,
Pours out his spirit in glorious new breath;
Sheer Liberation! with him I am free!
Lives Second Adam, in mercy, in me.

Human Nature — image of God?

Why is it easier to conceive of people sharing their lives and aiming for excellence in a community like a symphony orchestra than in Church? Why does religion so often seem part of the problem, not the solution? I don’t know the answer, although I'm earnestly seeking it, but I want to press the question because answering better or worse it could radically change the quality, maybe even the quantity of our future.

Let’s start with Sam Norton’s very sharp diagnosis from yesterday:

“successful orchestras recruit people who can see the beauty in submitting to a larger vision, something beyond themselves, and it is the authority of that vision, rather than the authority of any individual, that binds them together to produce something marvellously beyond the sum of their parts.

The trouble with our church is that not enough people believe in that larger vision. Ironic really, given what it says on the tin.”

Many people in Church claim to have larger visions of God, but how large is our vision of human beings, supposedly made in his image?

There is a basic Darwinian model of nature as what Woody Allen called “a huge restaurant” — dog eat dog, competition, compulsion, survival.

In the human world this is reinforced by a Freud style account of what goes on in our heads. This is seen as a competitive world of basic instincts, a darkened cellar in which a gorilla and a sex maniac are locked in mortal combat every day, slugging it out over various notionally juicy bones in ways over which they have no control.

Is this vision of humanity adequate?

How could a roiling mass of individuals like that ever produce a decent society?

Or, theologically speaking, how does it reflect the image of God?

Here’s an alternative vision of what’s going on, and the kind of community that could be built on it, from US Economist and thinker Jeremy Rifkin, delivered in visual form by the Royal Society of Arts:

So, theologians, if we want to be art of the solution, not the problem, is it time to re-visit and refresh our understanding of “the Fall of Adam?”

Would you adam and eve it?

Limbering up for a John Milton 400th anniversary celebration, I came across an excellent article about Milton and Sex , by Theo Hobson, in Saturday’s Guardian. A mystery commenter calling themselves “FromMe2U,” responded with a total gem that may be worthy of wider reflection:

a friend tells me if Adam and Eve had been Chinese they would have eaten the snake, not the apple, so stayed in Eden forever.

Discuss?