We all know the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the subsequent banishment from the garden where the Tree of Life is found, is the seminal story of the Bible.   It is the primary and original archetype of the Bible, and hence points us to the core of human experience.  After thousands of years of human history, we humans, are now at a point where we have attained vast amounts of knowledge, both scientific and experiential.  Our knowledge is expanding rapidly, more rapidly than we could ever imagine.  None of us can master all of human knowledge because it is so vast.  But now we have this amazing tool called the internet, where all of human knowledge, for good and for evil, is documented, stored and updated constantly.  Human Life and Human Knowledge is like a vast Tree with roots, branches and fruit, nourished by what we feed it.  And our very human drive to attain knowledge, where is it heading?  What does it seek?  Well, according the story, we tend to fall into a pathological relationship with our knowledge and our experience, whereas, what we really want is to connect to the source of life.  In these modern times, as the ancients knew, we are faced with a darkness that comes from eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a loneliness, a sadness, and a disconnection from the Source of Life, from Ourselves, and from each other.  Nihilism, despair, and a lack of meaning are at the root of all of our ills, both personal and societal.  We are entering, however, a post-secular era, as the cultural anthropologists have called it.  It is a time when the wholly secular and material approach to life has reached its limits and people seek something deeper and clearer about how to approach life.  It is no longer enough to pursue purely material pursuits.  As important as physical sustenance, abundance, and stability are to human success, they are only a rung in the ladder upwards on our journey.

 

There has been an assault on the Bible for several hundred years in the West.  Biblical criticism and scientific explanations for the origin of life were just a part of the distancing and rejection of Western Culture from the Bible, and this rejection is peaking in our generation where even the ideas of male and female and the value of family are openly questioned.  Nietzsche famously stated over 150 years ago that G-d is dead, meaning that he is no longer alive for people in the West.  To do this I would offer the famous joke that G-d might say, ‘rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated’!