The Unclad Soul

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: 1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others. 2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected. 3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it. 4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences. 5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind. 6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Philosopher/Statesman

What would we be like if the Garden of Eden story had ended differently? What if there was no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to stay away from? Or, what if it had been perfectly fine to eat the fruit of that tree so that the first humans could learn all of the good stuff? The author of Genesis, supposedly Moses, was apparently doing his best to explain evil and suffering in the world. It's a shame he couldn't just say we aren't finished yet. The idea that we are born to be bad, to do evil, to sin, is so limiting to the human spirit. Do we do bad things because we learned from the beginning that we are bad? What if we had been told how beautiful we are, how gifted and intelligent, and how capable we are of doing good? Whatever else was going on in the author's world or life at the time of writing Genesis, surely it wasn't all horror and depravity and calamity. And if it wasn't, then where did that goodness come from? And how did telling us we a