Digitus Paternae Dexterae (Or Why Adam never Quite Touched God's Finger)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. - John 3:16, King James Version

We who are about to die, salute you - old saying, attributed to gladiators in the arenas of Imperial Rome

you're only getting one picture so let's make it a good one, ey?
source

I recently saw a movie called King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Surprisingly, despite it being Guy-Ritchie-does-medieval-fantasy, this was actually a damn good movie. Good enough that I won't even have to do a Skeleton of a Better Movie teardown on it, just a proper review.

Sorry, digressing again. Let's start over.

NOPICTURES ONLY SPOILERS

In that movie, there is an tyrant sorcerer-king whose biggest boosts to his power came from sacrificing people he loved. His wife and eventually their daughter, to be exact. Much is made of the pain he suffers from committing these heinous acts.

He is opposed by a young rebel known as "The Born King." The young man too is haunted by sacrifices of life and limb that his followers/fellow rebels make in his name. Much too is made of his pain regarding these weights on his conscience.

NOPICTURES WHERE AM I GOING WITH THIS? HUMOR ME A TAD LONGER

The contrasts are interesting, the similarities more so. The sorcerer-king in particular gets to a point where he seems to not even remember why he started on this path in the first place, just that the only way he can get through another day without blowing his own brains out or falling on his sword is to hope that, if he commits enough new atrocities to get to the end of his life-path, he just might redeem the ones he's already done. Sunk Cost Fallacy: burn the future to justify the past.

I mention this because I (also recently) read a post by a writer I respect greatly that attempts to explains the story of Adam and Eve and original sin through the lens of God having to let us fall that we may rise.

I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS EXPLANATION - NOT THE PROBLEM OF EVIL BUT THE PROBLEM OF OMNI

You see, the trouble -- hahaha, okay, a trouble with monotheistic religions is all those damn omnis. You know, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. They all come with implications that a great many writers of apologetics have either ignored, dismissed or outright never considered.

God, you see, does not labour under the same constraints as the rest of us mortal animals. Said constraints being, as we know, space, time, not-living-forever, eyes that can only see so far, brains that can only contain so much -- these are the bounds of mortal existence. The ambit of our senses, the reach of our hands, the range of our voices and the length of our lives.

Therefore, the difference between mortal action and God's action? Sacrifice. The giving of something you have for something you want to have or need to have or must have.

Sacrifice, to my mind, is unavoidably transactional: give of yourself and gain your desire. We as humans have to sacrifice to get what we want: time for knowledge, money for power, pain for strength, your life for glory, the world for your soul.

God doesn't.

Consider the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve. The serpent. The apple. Original Sin. What in the name of sanity was the point of all that?! You cannot build the maze, build the rats and then punish the rats for eating the wrong piece of cheese. That's not how fairness works. You're not supposed to do that. You can't do that.

Well, you can. If you're omnipotent.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

@edumurphy