God is beyond-improvement, yet there are three Gods: the Trinity. Religion has spent countless hours and councils honestly trying to define what "Trinity" is. Thus, the positions fostered a kind of childlike 'loyalty' test, God help us all. So, if you review Christianity's sordid history, you'll find that literally millions of people were beheaded, ostracised, tortured, and otherwise persecuted if they didn't agree with the definitions those religious bodies consensually derived, never mind that the wording in their councils' definitions was often anti-Biblical.

The big mistake in the Westminster Creed and like musings, is that those framing the ideas mistook the Voluntary Inequality of Authority for a true inequality of Essence. Granted, they asserted Co-Equality of Essence, and in fact persecuted anyone who denied that Co-Equality. Yet they didn't ever really grasp the military verb translated "proceed" to mean Love. The "Unity" table in this webpage will clear up, hopefully, why the Godhead do not choose to have Equal Authority. (DueDisclosure.htm is a longer discussion of that topic.)

So the sometimes-brilliant theological analyses over the centuries, alike suffer from an incompetent, hydra-headed shorthand moniker of "Three-in-One": as if Each Person were somehow less than totally free and independent. (The Catholic Encyclopedia's "Unicity" statement is particularly egregious on this point, for it says that if God were not "One" Godness would be "diminished"; that's exactly the same argument as the Koran repeatedly advances in its Suras.)

So, here's a proposed amendment: "Three AND One". Three Persons, AND Each of the Same Identical Essence. It's more aptly-descriptive of the correct long definition even Trinitarians know, and still conveys all the irony the original moniker meant. The amended moniker also best summarizes the Greek meaning of 2Cor13:14 (covered below), whereas the "traditional" moniker unwittingly denies that verse. "Three AND One"="4", heh: God is "complete" as Three Persons AND Same Absolute Essence. ["Three-in-One" is insulting, frankly. As if Each Person were incomplete? Or, as if God were unable to separate? Salvation would be a sham, in that case! How is it, we are ever willing to improve our environment, our technology, and we rightly don't feel disloyal to change the past; but oh! we can't improve the 'technology' of our previously-inferior theological definitions? Since when did any past theologian or religious council or "Confession" become God, that the words couldn't be improved? Since when did any past theologian (etc.) claim to be God, that the words shouldn't be improved? If it doesn't demean past inventors that we improve our technology, certainly it doesn't demean past theological effort if we improve what they came up with!

Here's one more example, which is even more egregious and maligning against God. If, like me, you told a fellow Trinitarian there are Three Gods, the person would likely look at you aghast, call you a heretic, and go fleeing from your presence: on the grounds that to say "Three Gods", is somehow "polytheism." Is this stupid, or what? The heart of polytheism is that the 'gods' do not equally have Absolute Atrributes. That's why there would be a need for many 'gods', for crying out loud. So if we say They are Three Persons, but shrink from saying Three Gods, then we are saying their Personhoods are something less than God, and thus we are stating a polytheistic definition! 2Cor13:14 doesn't shirk from saying Three Gods, but rather stresses that fact. Bible is not inscrutable, because HS wrote it, HS runs the ability to understand and live on it. So we need not complicate understanding Him with goofy monikers which contradict Bible, and we need not complicate Christian loyalties by piously naming "inscrutable" what God has revealed, so Christians feel torn about asking questions, about learning Him.]

So, God the Son made all the angels, simply by speaking them into existence! [Cf. Matt 4:3-4; John 1; Heb1:3,1:10; Col1:16-18; Isa55, Job38ff.]

In this and the following sections, you might need a Bible to follow along. In order to focus on the flow of the Trial principles and God's Epic Design, I usually can't stop to review the Bible passages themselves for the sake of refreshing the reader's memory. Of course, this 'problem' means you can instead use 1Jn1:9, and "test" the analysis here against that Gorgeously Opulent Diamond of diamonds, the Bible itself. Heh. Cry all the way to the bank, baby (grin).

God always makes sense. Therefore the story of the Garden couple is a Deposition about a real event; not some allegory, not some magic story, etc. Human nature is very well explained in the story of the Garden couple, and the more you analyze it, the wiser and happier you'll become.

If you really wish to 'see' God, then note carefully how God balances everything He does. 'For example, the 'knowing' and 'not-knowing', in man's original creation, below. Structural characteristics (like these) reveal much about God. That's why the Bible's written style is, deftly! concisely! structure-intensive (i.e., OT/Gospel narratives/poetry and NT principle-building epistles). Even every 'particle' in the (original languages of the) Bible is balanced, to emphasize His Integrity, as a Structure, a Whole. So, these websites (Parts I-V) will repeatedly portray key patterns, structures, in an attempt to convey God's Intensive Integrity "Balance", in all He is and does. [For this reason, I'm forced to make certain assumptions, i.e., what Adam and Isha knew at their initial creation. Such assumptions provide a framework on which to depict the truths the Bible actually makes known. The assumptions, I'll have to fix later, both in this subsection and the next. I may also have to spend more time proving where I 'get' what's said here, for folks less-familiar with this part of Scripture, maybe. If you've any data which you think helps, please let me know!]

As we saw in Part I, Satan &Co. rejected Him. Hence, we exist. Let's go through man's creation categorically, rather than chronologically. God the Son first fully formed each body -- Adam's from the ground; the woman, from Adam's rib, as it were (a metaphor for making her completely "fit" him, which is discussed below). Then, He made them alive: He "breathed lives" into them. 'Just as He had created the angels with the same types of "lives". As a result, analogous to the angels at creation, Adam and the woman became tripartite: body (for rapport with physical creation), soul (for rapport with other souled creation), and spirit (for rapport with God). Adam and the woman thus had three types of life, two of which were terminable: the body life, and the spiritual life. The latter's death was the only way the body life could die: "dying[spiritually], you shall die[physically]". So, as long as they did not die to God, they could not die physically, either.

Both humans, like the angels, were binged! at creation with full (balanced) knowledge of God. This, so they could choose to have unhindered association with Him. To grow up in Love, as they might desire. (Remember, knowing something isn't enough -- it's how much you want to understand of what you know or don't know, how much you value what you know or don't know.) So -- like the angels -- Adam and the woman also had daily association with God: when He would come "in the breeze of the evening". So, everything they saw and didn't see also served as a constant reminder of Him. Analogous to the angels, Adam and the woman could only 'lose' by means of one sin. That Tree of the "Knowledge Of Good And Evil" was a daily test: would they eat?

PROPERTIES-OF-SOUL KEY ==> Thus we see the soul properties required for perfection and integrity. God is a Spirit, so God is Knowledge. The finite soul is likewise immaterial, thus it can only live ON knowledge. Pain is a type knowledge. Pleasure is a type of knowledge. Whatever a body 'feels', the transmission of that data is transmuted into a form of Knowledge to the soul, so the soul can metabolize it. Knowledge is its food, so the soul 'grows' based on the kind of knowledge it gets. So, would become misshapen if it gets imbalanced knowledge, or the wrong kind of knowledge. Thus the Garden Story in Scripture shows us how Knowledge affects soul function: right knowledge, soul health/healing. Wrong knowledge, soul sickness/atrophy. Too much knowledge for the size of the soul at the time, soul fragmentation and paralysis. Satan knows these properties too. Ergo eating from his Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the worst thing Adam and the woman could do to their own souls: that kind of knowledge would shatter them. Ergo the worst thing one can do to another, i.e., Father to Son's Humanity on the Cross! is to transmit malevolent Knowledge. [This shouldn't have to be said, but the Tree itself was merely a tree. (God could have made a "paper clip of the Knowledge of Good and Evil", with the same results.) Eating from that tree meant choosing a type of knowledge which God prohibited. So, choosing to rebel, choosing to be apart. In short, one is choosing sin, to eat. The fruit itself had nothing to do with anything. So, when the woman ate, she got the knowledge of sin. Good and evil are based on sin, and attempts by a sin-tainted nature to be good or evil. So, again, the tree itself had no magical properties, etc.]

Being perfect (beyond improvement) at initial creation, just as the angels had been, Adam and the woman likewise did not know -- because they did not need to know -- "good and evil". That knowledge hung, as it were, on a tree. They thus had no conscience. They thus had no knowledge of "morality". They also had no knowledge of "salvation". Just like the angels, the pair did not need any of these types of knowledge. Thus we see that certain kinds of not-knowing are also needed in order for finite "integrity" to hold together. Just as was true for the angels. In short, the knowledge of God, to be beneficial, must be balanced with certain categories of not-knowing ("innocence"). Thus God has not influenced free will, for the creature is balanced in knowledge.

"Improvement" (as we think of the term) was gained by growing in Love for God. The non-consensual knowledge binged! into creation initially had to be afterwards chosen, decided on -- and, if more was desired, that was a choice as well. Choosing for Infinite God means an improvement, for more Knowledge of Him would be given in response to the desire. Thus free will is not coerced. Thus love can grow. Thus "improvement" is coming at all times from outside the creature, and from God alone. So the creature remains perfect or loses perfection, but doesn't become more perfect -- only bigger, if he grows in Love for God.

So, the Garden pair were perfect mature adults the very second they were made. So, like the angels, the pair also did not need 'works', since the word "perfect" means "unimprovable". Perfection can be duplicated, expanded horizontally, widened, but not "improved". For finite perfection, such expansion's 'added sphere' would be: development in Love. That is an 'added sphere' due to volition, though: not an "improvement". So, "improvement", the bane of our existence, was not in them. Just as they did not need the attribute of "conscience", so also they did not need any ability to "improve", and had none. So -- again like the angels, initially -- the pair likewise had no ability to do 'works', since the ability to do 'works' requires an ability to 'improve'. What did they do, then? They enjoyed themselves. They lounged around eating from trees, played with the animals, had sex all day. This was God's creation, remember. "Rulership" was having fun! Moreover, "they knew they were naked, and were not ashamed." Even though they knew the angels could see them. Having no conscience, they weren't embarrassed, etc. about anything.

Moreover, God did a new thing: he created two sexes. (Angels are all male.) God thus set up the male-female structure, to tip the scales in Satan's favor. What would eventually contribute to the Fall was the fact that the pair were so tied up with each other, God was less important to them. In short, their association with each other became more important to them than their individual or collective association with God. This particular weakness becomes a major Trial argument at this time, but is not answered until the "Age" of the Church.

Why? Remember in Part I, where God is explaining to Satan how one can only learn to avoid failure by growing up in Love? So, to most illustrate the intimate rapport among the Godhead, the intimate rapport God wants with His Creation, and the meaning of "competing" Loves, He creates male and female. To be united. Bodies to coalesce, as a result of soul coalescence. That would make for the greatest "competition" to God: a maximally-intensive lateral relationship with a fellow being. Thus Satan has an extra advantage (like a high golf handicap).

Even if Satan never tempted them, their being so 'wrapped up' with each other would interfere with their progress in Love toward God. They thus face the Integrity issue: how to mediate the conflicting loves? Only one answer: grow "bigger". Via Love for God. That would solve the problem, a problem Satan had also faced (His "conflicting love" was apparently pride). However, sex increased the pair's 'conflicting love' problem beyond what even the angels faced, for the angels weren't designed to have sexual pleasure with each other. So, the pair faced a category of testing FAR greater than the angels had experienced. Yet, Adam and the woman were 'smaller' creatures!

How is this condition fair to Adam and the woman? Well, shouldn't the body be maximally attuned to the soul? Shouldn't a relationship with a fellow being be as intimate as it can be? What, is God jealous, He'd deprive His creatures from being able to enjoy a maximum rapport with each other? See, sex really matters here. The prudish folks miss the whole point of it. God invented sex for pleasure in marriage. To miss this point is to miss the meaning of God's Love. (Conversely, to have non-marital sex destroys one's ability to ever know such intense love, apart from the "healing" one can get from 1Jn's Script. In short, fornication harms! Whether it's physical fornication, or spiritual. By contrast, if your soul is prepped by Bible Doctrine, you'll never need "Viagra", etc.)

God took exquisite care in preparing Adam for the woman. She wasn't made in that (so-called) 'first week'. Oh no: the Lord, ever Rich in Humor (is there anyone so Gorgeous as Him?) let Adam look around, heh. First, He had Adam run around naming the animals -- alone. Obviously he saw them copulate. Obviously, he came to associate their pairing with a wish for some mate of his own, but alas, found none. Then, when God makes the woman, He exactly matches her every attribute, both physical and soulish, to "complement" him ("helpmeet" is really "complement", in the sense of "perfect fit"). That's the pattern of how God designs a "right woman" for her God-intended spouse. So, when He brings the woman to Adam to name, Adam shouts ecstatically, "Now! At last!" (English "Now" is prudishly tame, and is not correct. Grab a Hebrew interlinear -- even they get this translation right.) He had been yearning for someone to call his own. So God married them on the spot, as the passage goes on to note. (Graphically! -- Hebrew "davaq" means "to have sex", not 'cleave'. For crying out loud: "cleave"? Can one advertise prudishness more than that? "Cleave" separates, not joins. Why do translators feel they need to cover up God? Is God naked, that they must 'cover' Him?)

Study this section intensely, for all man's instincts will reflect both Adam's and the woman's, 'fall'. Think over the corollaries, look beneath the facts to the pattern the facts demonstrate. If you do, you will find that all you see in life will be 'redefined' and Scripture will be much clearer to you, as a consequence.

• Freedom and multiple persons means there is a need for authority to MEDIATE the differences. Relationships cannot be had among persons absent authority. Intimacy requires subordination precede, but subordination cannot precede unless warranted due to a superiority or at least equality in the one who will receive the subordination.

• Hence, Authority means superiority in the one having it, no matter what other attributes the person has. Thus anyone under authority will be tempted to chafe, whether perceiving superiority vs. the one having authority, or not. Yet if one is under authority, one's own inner superiorities are of no use, because only the authority can use them. Hence, the chafing, especially if the one under authority perceives this fact. Authority is designed to fulfill both the one having it, and the one under it. Hence Love is designed to mediate the use of authority, and the use of being under authority, so that the fulfillment, occurs. It's a continuing synergistic process: intimacy of relationship.
• Clearly, knowledge isn't in fruit, so the 'forbidden fruit' was forbidden to give them a choice to rebel. So to believe that knowledge is in the fruit, indicates a mental state of rebellion, for to reject an obvious truth in favor of an obvious lie means the one so rejecting wants an excuse to rebel. The act of rebellion causes a 'knowledge' of its own -- the knowledge of rebelling. Which knowledge always rationalizes itself in terms of 'good' and 'evil', to justify rebelling.

• Clearly, rebellion was well-developed in order for the woman to believe, in Gen3, what Satan told her (covered below). So we know that even a perfect being can a) misunderstand or misuse knowledge, and b) be troubled over knowledge or ignorance. Sin, then, is what you finally choose to do about any ignorance, misunderstanding, misuse and troubling in you. So it doesn't matter that the 'only sin' in the Garden was to eat from that Tree: sin is always preceded by a lot of other error which finally 'gets' to you. So it doesn't matter that we are imperfect and sin: the essential mechanism would be the same, even if we were perfect.
• In short, sin doesn't exist until 'birthed'. Here, by eating from the tree: Jas1:13-15 seems to be making that point in double-entendre (showing how sin is not sin until born, like a fetus is not human until born). It's the rebellion against God which broke the person, as will be shown below. So the worst thing about sin is how self-destructive it is, since sin bounces against God. [Never mind if we sin against each other, then. We should make an issue of the self-destructiveness of sin, not about how upsetting group A finds group B's (alleged or real) sins.]
• Clearly, the fact that eating the fruit was 'the' sin means that it was a Trial Issue, not a sin issue per se.
• So clearly, since animals don't talk, it was obvious to the woman from the first second her pet (then four-legged) 'serpent' talked, that Satan was talking through it. She thus had to be very upset in order to be so non compus mentis that she would talk back (more on this follows below).
• Note well Satan's technique, in the following bullets -- use the original languages to see the extremely clever wordplay, for his technique continues to be played on the human race, today. Appendix is on this technique with enough examples so that you can spot the technique in everyday life.

SIN NATURE KEY ==> Notice sin's RELIGIOUS character -- "Desire For A Better 'Good'! 'In preference to God, of course. They failed because they wanted to compete with God. They did not fail due to lasciviousness. So being religious is the origin of sin, so self-righteousness is the original character of sin. So religious people are the worst sinners on the planet. Satan is MORAL, and prides himself on it. Thus Satan easily ensnares the human race the exact same way he ensnared the Eden couple. This is why the unbeliever objects to the Gospel on moral grounds: for the unbeliever, like the Eden couple, thinks he's as good as, or good enough -- for God.

Let's look at Genesis 3, to prove from Scripture what both the above text and Part I say about Satan's mindset; and, how he 'begot' that same mindset into humans, via the seduction of a better 'good', the goal of pride.

1. Satan (via the serpent, she well knew) began to talk with her. (Mere animals don't tempt people to be jealous. Satan couldn't show himself fully, either, for that would have overwhelmed her, rather than her choosing to talk to him.)
2. So, then: what does that tell you? 'That she was disquieted in her relationship with God and Adam. Else, why even want to talk to the one whom she already knew was 'the bad guy'? It's like flirting. Note further: the conversation lasted over some long time: Hebrew makes this succinctly clear, English does not. Hebrew style also summarizes the gist of the conversation, here.
3. So what Satan says in this passage had been a long conversation over some days, months, years.
4. Clearly, then, she enjoyed what he'd been saying! Oh, what a nice conversation. The devil, through the serpent, pretends to observe, to seek her knowledge. Wow. Flirt, baby, flirt. What a nice voice he has. What a nice tone to his words. Nice nice nice.
5. Ahhh, but he does a lot more than speak sweetly: he insinuates that God prohibits eating from ALL trees. Not a nice way to ask, is it? Moreover, he uses "Elohim", a plural 'last name' of God (translated simply "God" in English), rather than "Jehovah Elohim", [first-and-last-name, but no "ben" (son of), because Godness isn't begotten] -- which is extremely disrespectful. English has a similar usage: the nasty custom of using someone's last name as an epithet: as if the person were just a member of a group, not an individual. "Elohim" in God's Name stresses His Essence, not His Personhood. So Satan's making God into just a collection of properties, de-personalizing Him: "Hey, 'Cheese!" [Satan's doing much the same thing here. Really really nasty. Sotto voce, of course.]

6. So how does she reply to her Creator being so maligned? Not, "Shame on you for accusing God", but she repeats! his "Elohim" epithet! and then answers the (alleged) question about the prohibition. Well, she doesn't answer the 'question' properly, either. If you look back at Genesis 2:17, you'll notice that God never said "neither shall you touch it" about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She interprets the information incorrectly, which shows she was focused more on the prohibition's body-meaning (physical death) than on its spiritual meaning (loss of relationship with God). Aha. So again we see that the spiritual life with God wasn't as important to her as her physical life.
   What she knew she valued; what she didn't know she valued. She valued knowing her physical life as more important than her spiritual life, for she ASSOCIATED the prohibition more with physical death than with spiritual death. In short, she valued physical life more, and thus, though perfect, values an untruth; and thus, accords that untruth on par with the truth. So, is open to all untruth. Like, magic. A magic property of a fruit to physically make her as smart as God, even, what ho!

7. Satan's got her, now. To her, the Tree was some kind of physical poison. She doesn't think about the spiritual poison, and so when she recounts the prohibition, she 'spins' it. Unknowingly. Uncaringly.
8. So, all Satan needs to do is counter that she will not physically die, since that is in fact the truth (well, she won't die right away, heh).
   Satan's Continuing Legal Gaming Key ==> You really should look up Gen3:3-4 in the Hebrew, and compare it to Gen2:17's muth-tamuth. Notice how SHE misstates the Gen2 prohibition, but Satan does not. The dual dying, first spiritual then physical, of Gen2:17's Hebrew is repeated by Satan, to her face, correcting her misstatement of the prohibition. See how Satan uses God's real words, then denies their validity, so the woman has no excuse for her 'no' to God: Satan, ever the lawyer, did his own 'due diligence' and reminded her of God's Own Words. So she, not Satan, is responsible for her sin. Doesn't matter that he tempted her: he gave her blatant proof of his own intent, and blatant warning of God's real words. Satan blatantly follows the exact same procedure on us every day, 24/7, and like the woman, we say 'no' to God anyway.

9. That's why he responds as he does, with his religious pitch! Oh no, she won't 'die'. God's lying to her. Oh no -- instead this tree has a magical property of conveying KNOWLEDGE if its fruit is eaten. So, God's afraid that if she eats from that tree she'll be as smart as He is! Let's look at this heart of "religion", the valuation system Satan thus transmits to TRANSMUTE her (and us).
   • Isn't this Tree prohibited, because knowledge is power? After all, hasn't "Elohim" come to teach knowledge daily? Therefore,
   • Knowing more makes one more powerful, hence better, than knowing less. Therefore,
   • Knowing less makes one weaker, more vulnerable, worse, less beautiful. Therefore,
   • Isn't Authority for power-over, rather than love? And isn't the object of love to be power? After all, isn't that why "Elohim" should have the greater Authority, because "Elohim" would know more, and that is why everyone should love "Elohim" more than self? Therefore,
   • Isn't "Love", subservience, a weakness (her weakness), due to knowing less? Therefore,
   • Isn't the Relationship with "Elohim" really one of power-over, dominance? Therefore,
   • Isn't Power, not Love, "Elohim's" motive in being with her? Therefore,
   • Isn't it true that "Elohim" only keep power over her because "Elohim" know more than she does? Therefore,
   • Mustn't "Elohim" prohibit eating from the Tree as a test of power, not love? Therefore,
   • Isn't it true that "Elohim" prohibit eating from the Tree Of Knowledge Of Good And Evil to withhold value from her (value of knowing more)? Therefore,
   • Isn't it true that the "Elohim" are lying and cheating? Therefore,
   • Isn't it true that the "Elohim" are jealous and afraid? Therefore,
   • If she eats from that Tree (and Adam, too), then isn't it true that they will be as good as "Elohim" (and won't need Them anymore)? Isn't it true, then, that they will TRANSMUTE and become JUST LIKE GOD?

   Notice how all these arguments are patently insane. After all, if the tree really did have 'knowledge', then why did the Lord come in the 'breeze' of every day, to teach them? After all, if God really was sooooo afraid of them knowing as much as Him, why provide the tree in the first place? After all, since when did a piece of inanimate fruit, for crying out loud, convey knowledge? And especially, Divine Knowledge? What, is God no more than a piece of fruit, that divinity is so easily obtained? Then again, insanity sounds good to dissatisfaction. To iconoclasm. Satan's own thought pattern was that Tree. He himself beguiled himself through these same bullet points, killing his own love for God via his own extensive self-flattery and seduction.

   RELIGION EQUALS INSANITY KEY ==> All religious ideas are kooky and slapstick. Only a soul insanely preoccupied over authority can 'buy' them. Even, while still perfect, insane preoccupation can occur. Sin thus follows, to 'relieve' the preoccupation. Making it thus ever worse!

10. Notice how neither Isha nor Adam ever say, "Gee, how is some fruit, lol, gonna make US as smart as God! Screw you, Satan!" See how far gone they are, to even listen to the argument at all? And why are they so far gone? Ohhhh because it's attractive to compete with God. Yeah, and a set cannot contain itself, but who remembers that little ol' first law of math, that bigger/better attributes can never come from smaller/inferior ones? [Nerd note: temptation doesn't become sin until you decide "Yes" on the temptation. Here, to eat the fruit. So yes, they were far gone, crazy with temptation, even -- but still hadn't yet sinned until each one ate the fruit. That other sins may have preceded this one can be argued either yes or no -- in any event, temptation will drive one crazy, as well. Man cannot function on his own: either you use God's Power, or Satan's. No middle ground.]

11. So, Isha 'ate' Satan's arguments, too; so she ate that fruit; so she transmuted, alright! She became just like Satan, rather than just like God. So, "eating" to her had become an act of DISassociation, rather than associative fellowship with God. 'Just like Satan. Note how the 'middle', "eating", reverses its meaning in the soul. 'From fellowship, to rebellion. Same fact, but an opposite orientation now is associated with that same fact: ME-NESS. Hence is born all politics: where content is but a servant to make the 'me', great.
    Corollary to Your Real Life Key ==> Listen to conversations for the emphasis on who says what, rather than content itself. It's no longer what is true, but who says it's true that matters. This, because ego gets gratified by citing an expert, never mind whether the content makes any sense whatsoever. Self-importance is so vile a disease, due to the 'fall', that all truth is subordinated to serving ego-gratification. So, if someone tells you something, your first instinct is to bristle. That's the sin nature: it wants to claim its own authorship, lol. Just like the temptation to eat the so-called forbidden fruit, unless self gets some kind of gratification from the telling, i.e., oh, an expert says so and if I agree I too am like that expert, the actual information is deemed meaningless. Alternatively, notice how people don't want to agree with what you tell them, because if they agree, they consider that they benefit you: as if what you say, had no value apart from their approval. Never mind that a thing is good or bad of its own. Never mind that a person saying a truth is not better for having simply said it; never mind that Truth is True and Good no matter who says it, so no credentials are needed to warrant the saying. So if a drunk accurately says the Gospel, the mouth used 'makes' the true information, despised. Watch, listen, see for yourself. This is why governmental policies can never work: people are more interested in what kudos they get, than if the idea is really beneficial for the nation. So they buy or sell an idea to get kudos, not because of any innate value in the idea: any innate value is but used to get kudos. So, the policy goal is never accomplished. It's all hypocrisy. Politics is just ego-struggle, never more.

12. Adam was right there when Isha took that fruit. Adam knew what he was doing. Adam had long known of this 'pet'. Adam didn't USE his authority over the serpent, nor over the woman to warn or stop her (cf. Gen3:17). In short, he let his love get in the way of his Love for Righteousness, and thus is responsible for causing harm to her, even though she was the first one who sinned. Adam, loving her deeply, loving her even more than he loved God (in the name of husbanding her!), not wanting to lose her, ate also. So, the Garden "covenant" was also broken.
    Adam's sin was also a better 'good', and worse than the woman's: he chose the better 'good' of siding with her, over and against siding with God's Rule. Just like Satan had: in the name of "good".

• Unlike Satan&Co., the pair admitted their sin (cf 1Jn1:9,Ps32:5,Ps66:18): the "and I ate" clauses, in Gen3:12-13.
• So, (v.14ff) God the Son graciously replied with a surprise, a replacing covenant: salvation and a post-salvation spiritual life.
• Note the order: they freely 'repented' before they even knew His response. They first freely accepted a truth: that they were wrong.
• Only after that did He announce His Gracious Surprise. So, what they did not know -- any 'goodies' maybe coming from Him -- did not motivate their wanting Him.

  INTEGRITY KEY ==> Love (i.e., to have relationship with God) is always based on accepting truth. For its own sake. Irrespective of the consequences. Irrespective of what you think you know about the consequences. (That's a big reason why the not-knowings are so critical, i.e., not knowing of a salvation offer if they did sin. Many corollaries come from this not-knowing principle which are profitable to ponder. To illustrate the pattern of these corollaries, here's an important example. One who is negative to the idea that God is Absolute Righteousness will refuse the Gospel. So giving the Gospel to that person harms him, because there is no "balance" between volition and the content of the (yet unknown) Gospel. Positive volition must exist absent enticement, so that the 'good news' won't influence free will. For, Love never harms. So, Love stays silent. Yet, will be accused for its loving silence, by a negative volition. Yet, will be trusted despite what seems to be evidence against it, by a positive volition. Love and free will thus remain unenticed.)

Next, let's review sin's damage before salvation, to see key, Trial-related, 'pathological' effects of sin.

• Each 'original' sin was, in essence, a choice to disassociate from God. Eating that fruit and staying associated with God were mutually-exclusive, due to the damage which "eating" the not-needed knowledge would produce.
• So, all their God-knowledge suddenly went off-line, for they thus lost their human spirits.
• That is why they next sinned by doing good deeds -- the fig leaves.
• That was also a sin, because they did it in shame, because they did it to 'make it up to God' -- to earn something before God.
• Thus, their next sin: of fear. Fear is a sin which likewise assumes earning -- and, since one fails to have earned, one should fear the consequences. So, they hid.
• Thus, when He came as usual to see them (in the evening), He Lovingly tested them to recognize their sin, saying, "Why are you where you are?" (Hebrew doesn't say merely "where are you?")
• Only then did they realize their good deeds were no good.
• Love Principle: He knew their sin, but did not turn away from them. Rather, He gently called attention to the problem -- as He'd later do, for Jonah: "Do you do well to be angry?" As He always does, for us. Could there be a more Loving God, Who takes such pains with us? How truly blessed we are!

• Notice how sin wrecked their brains' ability to think. They had had human spirits. That was their way of relating to God. The spiritual connection passed on information to their souls. So, upon the sin, the connection was lost, because the human spirits terminated (died).
• See how that loss made their souls unable to process the previous spiritual information stored there?
• Look: why come up with the fig leaves, when they still had SOUL memory how there was no shame in nakedness? [Compare "knew" in Gen 3:7,10,11 with 2:25. 2:25 is a travesty, in English. Hebrew makes it clear in 2:25 that they DID know they were naked. Even the English poorly hides that fact: 2:25's "not ashamed". Can one be either "ashamed" or "not ashamed", if he doesn't know? "[N]ot ashamed" isn't relevant, absent knowing. Because 2:25's translation is obscured, Gen 3's humor and import are lost. The whole point of 2:25-3:11 is that they became ashamed due to "good and evil" knowledge, hence conscience, etc. That's why the Lord teases them about being naked in Gen 3: 'who told you being naked was shameful' is what He means. Even if one only knows the bad English version, he can deduce all of these facts. For, obviously, God is not the author of shame: He had made them naked, and gave them no clothes in the Garden. So, just as obviously, God was not 'hiding' a shameful truth from them, for that would make God a liar. So, again, obviously they had known they were naked, and just as obviously, they knew it wasn't shameful, which is why they were "not ashamed". Good thing God preserved 'naked' copies of the original Biblical texts, to protect us from prudish translations!]

• Next, when He calls to them, they hide? How logical is that?
• Next, when He questions them, what do they do with their sin-ruined brains? They accuse God.
• The woman accused God by saying it was the serpent's fault (God had made the serpent). She's also lying, because during the time she had full knowledge, she knew quite well it was Satan using the pet as a ventriloquist dummy.
• Adam, for his part, accused God by blaming his initial sin on the woman, who God had made.
• Why do they accuse God? Because they are thinking "earn". They thought that same "earn" arrogance when they did the fig leaves; when they feared; and, now. God is supposed to "earn" something, which makes Him accusable, of course. See how they are projecting their sin-thinking on God? It's the same thought pattern, whether applied to "good", to fear -- or to God.

Integrity means 'integrated with God'.

• That's why even the Godhead never choose to separate from Each Other, even though They "can".
• In finite, rational creation, the human spirit serves as the integrator with God.
• So, when the pair lost their human spirits, all soul knowledge completely corrupted (aka "spiritual death").
• So, too, did their love for each other corrupt: when interrogated about whether they ate from the tree, they first accused both God and something/someone He made, before they admitted their sin (misery loves company).
• So, can't lose integration with God, yet keep intra-soul integration: the ability to think instead fractures.
• So, can't lose Integrity, without losing Love.
• Moreover, their fractured thinking rendered them blind. Our fractured thinking renders us blind.

• Trashing, because the soul IS indestructible; indestructible, because the soul is designed to be Integrated With God. God, of course, is indestructible. That, because He, within Himself, is wholly integrated. If one Attribute were just a 'dot' off, then He would not be indestructible. Like the atom can become an atom BOMB if one 'dot' is changed, so also even God would not be God if even one 'dot' of Him were changed. Sovereignty, meaning Free Will, would not have the power to stay Integrated, were it not for the fact that the other Attributes are what they are.

• So, the initially-perfect soul is likewise, balanced. But, Balanced To God. So, can't well operate apart from God, even though still existing. In fact, the soul divorced from God, goes wacko.
• This, because the interface for integration with God is a separate structure, "spirit". As in, human spirit. Which Adam and the woman had, until they fell.
• For, like the Lord said in John 3, and Paul explains in 1Cor2, 2Cor5, 2Cor3, what's spiritual, is spiritual. What's soulish, is soulish.
• But man's being is soulish. So, to integrate with God, he needs a human spirit, too. [Angels have angelic spirits, so (even when fallen, to represent origin) are sometimes called "spirits" in the Bible. Well, there's more to the moniker than that: Bible is wordplaying on the fact that demons pretend to be the Holy Spirit. But that topic's beyond this webpage's focus.] So, when Adam and the woman fell, they lost the integrative faculty they needed, for their souls to work. This rendered them blind.

• Blindness doesn't mean they lost soul attributes. It means, rather, that the way the soul attributes work, became wacko.
• So, free will (aka "volition") remains; self-consciousness remains; faculties of belief and learning, remain; awareness, remains. Etc.
• What changes, is how these attributes use knowledge. And the knowledge, corrupts due to sin, for knowledge is based on Truth, which is God's Attribute.
• So, due to sin, knowledge can't be properly used. Even if there is any. Soul draws screwy conclusions from whatever data it has.
• Soul is now affected by sin desires, so 'connects' or 'interprets' whatever facts there are, in screwy ways. It's really a type of insanity (more about this follows below), but of course the soul doesn't know what insanity is, so doesn't know it is insane.

• So, due to blindness, 'good' replaces "God".
• You can see how: "good" sounds like "God". More importantly, the Tree of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil", Satan's thinking, got into their souls.
• So, the extra "o", for "opposition", gets put in God's Name.
• They had chosen what they thought was a better 'good' (knowledge, for the woman, and the woman, for Adam). However, the better 'good' choice likewise required rejecting God.
• So a rejection urge is set into the brain, replacing God.
• So 'good' is always done in God's Name.
• The person is blind to the fact he's replaced "God" with 'good'. Yet, he obviously has -- because he expects to get something, for his fig leaves.
• 'Good' thus becomes the replacing righteousness.
• God is supposed to worship 'good' also: thus, to reward it.
• Thus, 'good' becomes 'god' above even God, the replacement Love object.
• True evil thus manifests, in any me-be-good, self-works claim toward God. Blindly.

• Moreover, their 'original' sin corrupted the brain so badly, "owing", "improving" urges now bombard the soul.
• Since it was the soul which bought the lie of a 'better good' which (of course) did not materialize, the brain keeps trying to obtain it.
• The brain is obsessed, because the soul told it to do the impossible. Like a programmer's error will cause a subroutine which can't break out of a loop, the soul-programmed brain goes into a loopily-obsessive quest.
• Belief in a lie is the foundation of mental illness. This illness is manifest in obsession. Obsession is due to defense mechanisms trying -- but failing -- to resolve hidden, inadmissible truth.
  Another INTEGRITY KEY==> The truth is, apart from God, everything is empty, worthless, desolate. So, apart from God, we are empty, worthless: because, apart from God, we are alone! Unbalanced! Oh, the soul is in eternal griefstricken woe! Oy, Ouai, Ayah, separated! Not good, that God should be alone. Not good, that God should not make "sons". Not good, that man should be alone. Not good, that man should be apart from God. It's about Love! See, it has nothing to do with sin per se. Instead, it has everything to do with being alone. However, it's 'original' sin which produced our unresolvable loneliness, so the brain is trying to undo that problem. The soul keeps looking outward, like it was designed to do, for Love-completion, by and with God! Hence, the soul's irretrievable yearning constantly orders the brain to go on that quest, too: 'Find My Love! End this Loneliness!' Hence, another reason for the brain's obsessive, impossible, unquenchable, quest for 'good'. 'As a substitute for "God". A Sisyphean quest, to calm the soul.

• So original sin is followed up by the root recognition of loss.
• This, because it's dissociative (more on that term follows below), must be hidden from the conscious mind at all costs. Because the desolation of the recognition is beyond bearing.
• So the soul is constantly operating on a subconsciously-driven prime directive, oh, I must regain my beauty, so to be good enough for God, so to be with God again!
• The soul knows it's an "Elephant Man" due to sin, and cannot bear such ugliness.
• So, makes figleaves and calls itself beautiful.
• So, cannot ever bear the mirror of the Word.
• So, the Word makes love to the ugly soul, first by making it reborn, then takes that weltering-in-its-blood (Eze16) ugliness, and makes it into a princess. Fit for a King.

• Meanwhile, like Lady MacBeth, we are obsessed with removing our "damned spot": spiritual suicide. We can't get rid of it. Like bad plumbing, the overloaded defense mechanisms, headed by guilt (the fig leaves) 'back up', as it were, causing irrationality. Look: the pair felt guilty over being more pleased with each other than with God, so irrationally 'concluded' that their sexual pleasure was to blame; worse, they 'concluded' that if they 'covered' their genitals, everything's now 'okay'. But it wasn't 'okay' -- defense mechanisms always fail to 'deliver', 'save'. So, unable to cope with the continuing, unremitting guilt, they (mankind, Satan) switch to other defense mechanisms: here, the "projection" of "God owes", which is yet another viral mutation of "earn".

• So 'good', is really evil. Well, 'good' is even worse: 'good' is a lie, as well. At least "evil" is more honest. 'Good' lies to us as those advisors lied to the Emperor, in the child's story, "The Emperor's New Clothes". As you'll recall, the Emperor was vain. He had advisors who hated him. So, they pretended to make him fabulous new clothes. When the day came for the "fitting", he undressed, and they pretended to put on the new clothes. He couldn't see the clothes, of course. They appealed to his vanity that indeed the clothes were magnificently visible to them, and how all the kingdom would gasp in admiring awe, were the Emperor to visit the people in these exquisite clothes. So, he did. Of course, then all the kingdom had a good laugh at his naked body. He, of course, still didn't realize he was naked, for he trusted his advisors. Blindly.
  'Good' is just like that: fake clothes. Our brains, ever-desperate to fulfill the impossible 'original' sin directive of 'better good', makes 'new clothes', fig leaves, out of everything it can. Our souls then 'buy' that lie -- the reverse of the original sin. Now, the brain is telling the soul what to do, and the soul's volition, still-free! assents. As if it were the slave, not the master. Just as Adam gave in to the woman. So we don't realize we are still naked (Rev3:17). So, we insanely imagine that our fig leaves, our 'good' will make us clean before God. At which point, 'God owes' us something in return. What a nice, tidy fantasy world. We've now cut God down to 'good': down to our size. So, we happily start sewing away, making those fig leaves, baby. And God's to blame for everything, since "earn" is our mentality.

• All this inner torture, thanks to that 'knowledge of good and evil', which opens with our physical eyes (birth). So, like Adam and the woman at the Fall, our brains aren't capable of processing truth properly, either. Whatever truth we hear, we'll willfully cut down to size, so to make fig leaves out of it: enough to make life pretty miserable. Until we are "clothed with Christ". (Note how He covered them with animal skins, and got rid of the fig leaves.)

• So, 'good', which was born due to sin, is just like the gross sins: it is just as much a choice in preference to God.
• Oh, we'll rationalize our 'good' (another defense mechanism), due to some superficial likeness to true good. After all, we find those gross sins offensive, so use the defense mechanism of "denial" to make only the gross sins, 'evil'. Thus, we buttress our egos that we are better -- even, holy. That's why Paul, the most religious person in history, thus the worst of sinners, uses the "s" word for his own 'good', in Philippians 3:8 (which KJV English prudishly translates "dung"). In short, we can't see how evil our good is. God, though, can. That's why 'No good deed goes unpunished.'
  As unbelievers, we can't handle the idea of hell: our insane, guilt-depraved brains say "hell" must mean we are bad! We can't admit we are bad -- oh no, that's got to stay hidden! So, we assume our being bad is the reason for hell. It isn't the reason for hell, but we can't hear any more. All we can do is object, "Why should I go to Hell? I'm a good person." Over and over and over. As believers, we fare none better. We still insanely imagine we must 'do good for God' -- and in return, He'll do good for us. Satan takes full advantage of this depraved me-be-good urge, as Part I summarized.

So goes our genetically-dysfunctional 'reasoning': in psychiatry, this pattern would likely be called "dissociation". The term is reserved for mental illness diagnostics, but from the Fall forward, the genes actually possess the malady. We all have it. Just as every human being has certain proclivities to physical illness (i.e., we all have potential cancers in our genetic makeup), more fundamentally, we all inherited a dissociative predisposition at the Fall. What psychiatry classifies as "defense mechanisms" are actually the fallout urges from Adam's Original Sin: denial, projection, compensation, sublimation, rationalization/intellectualization being the five most common. They are mindless urges and target especially to "God" anywhere in the conceptual vicinity. So the weird sense of defeat or weakness or nervousness people have when believing in the Real God, thinking about the Real God or hearing about God -- is all GENETIC, a kind of 'race memory' going back to the Fall. And the behavior of this race memory is just like the classical symptoms of dissociation.

In psychiatry, an integrated personality is the key to mental health. So, if the personality fractures, it loses integration, and the person becomes (to some degree) mentally ill. "Dissociation" is a personality-fracture malady. It is characterized by a fracturing fragment operating independent of volition. This fragment is an associative/ baptising/ bonding/ 'hypostatic' reflex, often occurring totally apart from the person's awareness. What happens, is this: the dissociation occurred due to what psychiatry calls a "triggering event". Say, a parent threw an electric iron at you. You were so traumatized by the shock of your parent doing something like that, you deep-sixed the memory. Your parent and the iron are now bonded to the event. What you can't admit, though, is that your parent did this to you. Even if, you thereafter are angry/ afraid/ whatever against your parent, the iron is what bears the brunt of the 'bad' association. So, next time you see an electric iron, you have an involuntary fear or revulsion at the sight. You won't touch it. If forced to iron something, you feel terrible the whole time. You don't know why. You will invent all kinds of rationalizations/ intellectualizations, to justify not seeing, touching, being around that iron. And, will likely not know why. Even if you come to remember why, you will still feel that way. It's an Energizer Bunny, playing over and over and over in a vain attempt to rid you of the memory. [If you are under my pastor, he spent an entire series explaining "dissociation", 1991 Israel. It focused on how the Exodus generation were wacko, to explain the sin nature. "Dissociation" was a term invented by Dr. Emil Janet, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud's, though Janet was not a psychiatrist. Janet was trying to find organic causes for mental illness, and really Adam's original sin produced the organic sin nature, so Janet was essentially right as to the real cause. Technically the interaction between soul and sin nature results in a variety of mental illnesses, some chronic and severe. But we are all at least a little mentally ill at one time or another, and the essential sin nature's drives to which we succumb, makes mental illness a virus in the soul. Only getting in and staying in God's System, will properly treat the malady. GodSystem.htm explains God's System. Link is at pagetop, upper left corner.]

So, "dissociation" is a perfect description of how Adam's disassociation from God affected our genetics, our brains. For, on the topic of "God", Adam rebelled, hence dissociated, hence any "God" idea in humankind generates the exact same reflex hostility and intellectualization as is observed in Adam after his fall. Couple that with the natural genetic variation and volitional variation among humans, and you can readily see why so many goofy ideas of God prevail among Christians and non-Christians alike, since Adam's fall. For example, that's why we are so stuck on "works" (guilt reflex, need to atone). That's why we get soooo self-righteous, even about how our hair looks (compensation, denial, projection, many layered defense mechanisms). That's why we feel so queasy about "faith" (again, guilt reflex, but added to by the other defense mechanisms). Why it's such a traumatic thing to initially believe in Christ (sense of surrender, reliving the dissociating experience). Why man can even become mentally ill. Psychiatrists have long mused over genetic bases for mental illnesses. Well, here it is. ["Spiritual Pathology", link at the top of this page, explains further why this genetic urge is "dissociative".]

Spiritual illness is the basis for mental illness, and must be treated in the same way: the patient must want to be cured. In spiritual illness, only God can be the "doctor"; in many a mental illness, no human doctor's help is useful. In some mental illnesses, a human doctor can help with medication and counseling (helping the patient to see for himself what's irrational in his mis-associations). In all events, though, no progress is made except to the extent the patient is willing to be healed. For, free will is an indissoluble attribute of personhood, and the Person Who Made Creation will never allow free will to be violated. For, Freedom has its intrinsic results, and that fact will never change.

If you know anything about derivatives in atomic physics, you can see why this anti-God reflex is so undefeatable. If you know nothing about physics, you still probably remember hearing, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Well, negative volition reacts against Infinity, so it's the power of Infinity, not the power of the reaction itself, which is greater than the reactor itself. Hence, a mating contact between the reaction and the object (Infinity) occurred, even though the mating is negative (separatist). So, the resultant power of the reaction, being derived from the power of what it reacted TO, will henceforth be forever ongoing; and it will be stronger than the reactor itself (Satan's volition, man's volition): only death ends the reaction. Fortunately for us, God knows what He was doing when He created the immortal soul in a mortal body; for the effect of Adam's sin is on the body (hence the word "flesh" in Bible denotes the sin nature). The body, happily, dies. Taking that horrible reactive reflex, with it.

Question is, during your lifetime, how much of that sin-nature reflex did your free will accept, and did the reflex get replaced with God's Reflexes, obtained via (Part I's) God's Script? The acceptance level determines whether any reflex goes on forever in your soul, and how much. The person who never believes in Christ accepted all of the sin-nature reflex; the one who did believe, but doesn't get on Doctrine, accepted nearly all the reflex, but because he at least once believed, the reflex's effect on his soul is wiped out at death (1Cor3&15,1Jn3 one layer of meaning there). However, there isn't any Divine reflex accumulated to replace it, so such a believer only gets a de minimis level of relationship with God forever (Part III-IV will explain why). The one who grows in God's Script to Pleroma (Eph3:15-21), by contrast, comes to habitually remove the sin-nature reflex from his soul: replacing that reflex with Christ's Thinking, Bible Doctrine. Via the Spirit's Power, only. Just as Christ Himself did, while He was down here.

So now you know the power of a derivative derives from the power it bounces off (rejects), so if that power is Infinite, and the item bounces off True Infinity (largest data set, includes all immaterial), then the destructive power inuring to the item due to the bounce-off is total, far bigger than the item itself. Like, an atom bomb. See, that's why Satan's temptation in the Garden could only be resisted by Isha and Adam preferring God. For, the power of the temptation derived from Satan's rejection of God, Who is Infinite. So, the power of the temptation was way bigger than Isha or Adam could alone 'take'. So, the only counter is a Bigger Power: God's. By, Preferring Him.

Nerd note: Calvinism throws out the baby with the bathwater when it maintains man lost his free will after Adam's fall, mistaking the power for the existence of free will. The truth is much worse than that babyish idea. Even perfect Adam couldn't resist the temptation in his own strength! Even Christ couldn't resist the temptation in His Own Perfect Strength, and instead Relied On The Spirit.

Free will is an indissoluble part of personhood, and you are still a person, so still possessed of free will, but trashed up, due to the sin-nature's genetic effect on your brain. Because, the sin nature is a derivative power which bounced against Infinity so it is stronger than humanity. So yes, you have total free will, but you are only human. So the sin's reflex is sooo seductive, only Wanting Doctrine will repel it. Doctrine is God's Thinking, and it takes God's Power to enable you to effectively will something beyond human power. Else, you can will all you like, impotent. [James 2:18-26, Philippians 2:1-13, 'God works in you to will and to do.]

See, the Fall of Adam completely trashed all his definitions of things, as if his hard drive 'brain' changed operating systems (really, quite true), compared to the operating system God initially gave him. So, all definitions are screwed up. So, if a new believer reads the Bible, he'll have trashed definitions of each word he reads, so will derive a trashed interpretation (i.e., can lose salvation, you don't go to heaven if you kill yourself, gays go to hell, you-name-it-stupidity). So my pastor says that the steps of "1 John's Outline of God's Script" (which he calls "Operation Z"), cause a continual process of "epistemological rehabilitation"; which then eventuate in building "doctrinal reflexes" to counter the sin-nature (i.e., defense-mechanism) reflexes. Over time, the recall and use of these Doctrinal reflexes become more proficient, culminating in "artios": 2Tim3:17. Greek "artios", usually translated "mature", really means "maturely EQUIPPED" -- by God's Thinking, 1Jn's Outline of God's Script. Part III will cover how this works in extreme detail, so you can have a hands-on sense of the mechanics and how your soul matures. GodSystem.htm (link in upper-left corner at pagetop) is what you can begin doing right now, to get that soul-growth mechanic operating immediately: it's the most important of all my webpages, and is blissfully short.

Respect the anti-God derivative power of sin and the sin nature, which exceeds human power. Look at Adam's and Isha's behavior in Gen3 when the Lord calls to Adam and queries them about whether they ate the fruit. Note how they first must accuse God before they can admit what they did. That's the reflex, operating. So, when we are in a 'spot of bother', our first impulses will be rejections: wanting-to-tell-but-not-be-told, distrust, blaming, anger, accusing, complaining, fear (remember how Adam first hid?), etc. ad nauseam. So, the task is to stay IN the problem long enough so that these reflexes cycle through as mere temptations and thus exhaust themselves, yet without you sinning. You can only avoid sin by persevering in repeated uses of doctrinal counter-thoughts over time, analogous to physical exercise; so in the beginning, you'll "faint" (Bible word for succumbing to sin) a lot; over time, you'll faint less often and/or for shorter periods, because "Christ in you", Bible Doctrine, His Thinking -- is stronger. If you don't use Doctrine, what seems to be relief from the temptation is just a different sin-nature reflex taking over (analogous to 'healing', where one demon tells another demon to leave a person so that the 'healer' seems effective). This is the mistake the self-righteous make: fooled by what they think is a superiority or prosperity in themselves, they tyrannize. So, because they resist the gross sins with their self-righteousness, they don't use 1Jn1:9, and think they are not in a state of sin. 1Jn1:6-10 says otherwise.

So, each time the sin-nature reflex hits, use 1Jn1:9 just in case you tripped up; for, if you're in a state of 1Jn1:9 used, you are Filled with the Spirit -- that's the power to will to resist. He also built you to some extent in doctrinal thinking under your right pastor, and His Power cycles that doctrinal recall instead (á la Jn14:26). So, you 'parry' the sin-nature reflex with some doctrine you've habitually learned under your right pastor, which 'now' you remember. "Christ's Combat" table in PartIV illustrates how the Lord's Humanity did it on the Cross. Matt4 shows how He did it even more clearly.

So, if you stay on God's Script, you gradually become aware of the sin-nature "Energizer Bunny" reflex AS a mere reflex; you become aware of the fact that you have Doctrinal reflexes to counter the sin-nature ones. Until that point, you will mistake the sin-nature reflexes as valid desires, and give into them. So, if you stick with God's Script, even if you become Spiritually Mature (covered in Part III), the sin-nature reflex activity will remain: but it will be kinda like the end of the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", when John Nash 'sees' his hallucinatory 'friends' walking on a parallel Princeton sidewalk. You are aware of the sin-nature reflex activity, but it's normally held at bay. Sin, of course, doesn't stop until you die: but it becomes a lot more refined as you age in Christ (shift from physical to merely mental, and very sophisticated, like Matt4), a lot more devastating, but happily, a lot less frequent.

When Christ was on the Cross, He FUSED Truth to the incoming sins by 'replying' to them with Truth He learned under the Holy Spirit. That is why we can be saved. That FUSION which occurred, enlarged His Own Soul such that even in His Humanity, He attained the Oneness with Father. For the only area in which He lacked Oneness, was in the knowledge of sin, since He was sinless. At the bottom of this page you'll see something of the enormity of the pressure such FUSION creates. All of Part III and Part IVd, are dedicated to explaining more about it. Point here, is this: we fissioned in Adam. Our souls are like Hiroshimas after the bombing. Only God can clean us up: and He does, by our persisting in 1Jn's Script from Part I, aka God's System -- to Pleroma Spiritual Maturity (see "Pleroma" link in Part III). It really works, this fusion. Takes a lifetime, but every day is a series of victories, right alongside the daily defeats. As you age in Christ -- which you do, by the same mechanic as He paid for our sins, 'replying' with what Truth you know to the incoming temptations -- you will see this inner-soul transformation occur. Worth it!

How can God best make this demonstration, so we can find His Love port?

See His Humor? "Work" was what the pair tried to do with the fig leaves, since "earn" is their new, sin-stained, replacement mindset, in lieu of Love, Righteousness, God. So, as is typical of Him, He 'condemns' them to have what they chose, which is yet another way to say He always Insures Freedom. Here, freedom to have the consequences of a bad decision. The Garden was a place beyond improvement: no work. Don't work! Works don't work. Hence by condemning man to his naturally consequent, figleaf mentality, God graciously supplies the way for Sisyphean man to see that his works, don't work!

NOTE WELL: Work Is A Punishment, Never A Rewardable Thing. That punishment was a blessing, for it now talks to fallen man in the only language he can understand: improvement. Just as Satan got to take over the world, so he could learn that life without God is hell, so also man gets the same grace. Okay, let man try to do it 'his way': improve. After awhile, he will see his efforts avail nothing. Then he can transcend his insanity, admit he's irretrievably broken, and can "turn and be healed". By God he will thus learn to appreciate and enjoy. That's why God allows life to be bad. We won't see Him unless we see ourselves helpless.

Thus, Cursing-By-Association: man is now born in totally-depraved bodies with no human spirit, and thus no way to know God.

1. Adam, not the woman, is the one whose sin is the judicial link here. Adam sinned with full cognizance -- unlike the woman, who "was deceived", as Paul explained to Timothy. (She had a self-deceived idea of what eating that fruit meant.)
2. So "in Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive", and the use of the constantive aorist in Romans 5:12, to show that "all sinned WHEN Adam sinned."
3. In short, the human body at birth would be judicially imputed with Adam's Original Sin, as that is the cause of the body's depravity.
4. We know it's the body which is depraved, not the soul, since the soul is immaterial and can't be propagated; since God, Who is Perfect, creates each soul individually and imputes it as the fetus exits the womb (all the "mi rechem" and "mi beten" verses, for example).
5. So it's a GENETIC condemnation and a real imputation, for the body is real, and Adam's Original Sin is what caused it to become corrupt.

6. For Adam's sin is in the genes,
7. so until those genes BIRTH something on which God must rule,
8. God would be interferring with the free results of sin.
9. Even, the 'sin' of mindless corpuscles, reproducing.
10. So no soul can ever be in a womb, hence a fetus is NOT a legal person -- see Exo21:22 -- because what is NOT alive, has NO judicial relevance.
11. Only when the fetus EXITS the womb does it become necessary to rule on whether a soul should be imputed to it -- and that, is God's Sovereign Decision.
12. For the soul is God's creation, alone.
13. Materiality never begets immateriality, however much man (evolutionists, or even demons) might fancy such magical power.
14. Psalm 139:11-17 says all this only in God-breathed, original-language texts: David is astounded that God ruled to MAKE David a human being at birth. Unfortunately, the translations of the passage are lies, period. No kind way to talk about the translations, sorry: lying is the only accurate description, once you compare the original-language texts. See NoWombLife.htm for the proof: search on "Don't Abort My Word", which is a table providing exegesis and a corrected translation. Spend time on exegeting the passage yourself, if the abortion issue troubles you. It's positively sickening how this most-important proof of salvation's judicial structure, is masked by petty religious people with political agendas. If you don't know there's no soul life in the womb, then you cannot prove why the Cross works to save us. Satan isn't stupid: he knows that to crusade on abortion, aborts understanding of the Cross!

So, free will always receives the consequences of its own decisions, just as God's Free Will does. No matter why the decision was made. No matter the ignorance, the cognizance, no matter how deceived. One chose, so one gets the consequence of that choice. For better, or for worse. So, Adam and the woman immediately became genetically depraved as a result of their sins (it was a natural result). So also, their procreation would be genetically depraved. The consequence was physical corruption, just as God promised when He said in Hebrew of Genesis 2:17, "dying [spiritually], you will die [physically]." (English Bibles incorrectly translate Hebrew moth-tamuth as "thou shalt surely die." That Hebrew legal phrase is used often in the OT, to explain the two deaths Christ will suffer on the Cross. For example, Isaiah references both deaths in Hebrew of Isa53:9, bemotayw clause.)

God's genetic Condemnation meant that He would no longer make man's body directly, lest the free consequence of Adam's free decision be tyrannically overridden. So, God waits until biological life exits the womb, and then imputes the soul to that body. Thus, God has not compromised what He makes, for the soul is Perfect, just as everything God makes is Perfect. He doesn't impute the soul to an incomplete body, because that is wrong: an incomplete body would be imbalanced relative to the COMPLETE soul. Just as He didn't breathe "lives" into Adam (and the woman) until the body was first fully formed, Gen 2:7. Here's why.

Important Trial Principle: The sine qua non of Perfection, is BALANCE. Satan's entire argument rests on what's considered "good", but God's entire argument is based on what's PERFECT, which means PERFECTLY BALANCED. Absent Balance, not even God would be God. All The Attributes In An Entity Must Be BALANCED, Or There Is Zero Integrity To The Resultant Structure. Integrity, in turn, MEDIATES Balance. So, absent Balance in Integrity, any "mediation" is unbalanced, as well. Destruction results, in that case. The essence of sin, is Imbalance. So: ABSOLUTE and therefore Holy, Balanced God Never Makes An Imperfect Thing Or Person -- 'key issue, in the Trial. What's immaterial (soul, spirit), only God can make. So also, only God can remake (viz., at salvation). Man can't make immateriality from his own nature. (Trial issue: Neither can the angels.) Immateriality must be BALANCED to materiality at all times. That is why sin destroys. It removes the "spirit", an essential component of immateriality, so the being is no longer complete. So, only God can remake the self-imploded being (viz., save him). To do this, man must henceforth be born. The human spirit cannot be made until the person believes in Christ. So, to preserve balance, only the soul can be imputed, which alone makes one human. (Trial parallel: Satan&Co. can't make man 'good enough' to win the Trial, no matter how they empower man's body, e.g., by thought transmission or possession. This disclosure, like all others, is kindness, so they can avoid the frustration God foreknows they'll have if they don't give up and 'repent'.) So -- especially since Satan's always arguing partialities -- What God makes, what God wants, must be COMPLETE and therefore CONNECTED to God. It's either "the absolute BEST!" -- or nothing. Partial good, partial truth, partial life -- is never His Desire, is always unacceptable. God's Plan is for creatures to have Full Enjoyment -- never merely "partial". That's why sin must be paid for -- and on God's terms, never the creature's. Sin does two things which delete the potential of "Full": a) it deletes the Connection to God (destruction of the component of spiritual beingness); b) sin adds to the number of "competing loves". Thus, Fullness can only develop solely from what God does. Hence, God's Terms: Christ's Paying for the sins financed restoration. So creature merit is never the issue. So the issue with fallen creatures is exactly the same as if perfect: Grow In Love. Integrity requires DEPENDENCE On God to get that Completeness, so to be Independent, Free. For example, even biological life must be fully-developed, for there to be Independent Function; so until it is, there can be no soul life -- for the soul was designed for integrated relationship with God, but the body is now sin-tainted. Accordingly, substitutes for God will like spiritual cancer, drive the person crazy. For the only thing which can take God's Place, is "nothing". (Isaiah 44:9ff ties in, here.) Ergo (beautiful irony!) Integration with God, thus Dependence on Him, causes Absolute, Balanced, Complete, Full Independence and Freedom. Revolt, negative orientation to God which at root is in the 'name' of independence, instead causes ENSLAVEMENT to the item or person replacing "God".

• One can't learn until one is independent of the womb. So there is no way to say "yes" to God in the womb. So there is no way to get any information from God in the womb, because one is not independent. So if God put a soul in the womb, He's condemning that soul to say no, because it cannot yet be independent and learn "yes". Thus there would be no Christ.
• Further, to have a soul means to have awareness, and volition; so, to have a soul, AWARE of being trapped in the womb? Well, that's tyranny. Is God the author of tyranny, or is Satan?
• One would have no freedom, no potential for independence, in the womb. Satan's desire, but never God's.
• The formation of fetal body parts is gradual, and would be extremely painful (far worse than "teething"), were there any awareness. Awareness is in the soul. So, if there were a soul in the womb, the baby would be TORTURED with PAIN. Is God the author of torture?
• The developing brain is genetic: material, not immaterial. Early in its development, it has and 'tests' reflexes: 'called "reflex motility" in biology. It has these, so to have a software-type coordination with the body. These reflexes are not soul life; worse, any thoughts from the mother IMPOSE on the developing fetal brain a response. In short, the fetal brain has no ability to reject the mother's bodily responses to her thoughts or emotions. So, if she's joyous, the fetus "jumps". So, if the soul were in the womb, God would force the baby to receive the mother's thoughts and sins. Is God a Sadist?
• The brain doesn't finish developing until just before birth. So the soul-at-conception would have no brain to go with it. Without a brain, the soul can't say no to bodily temptation (i.e., to being trapped). So Christ would not have been able to be sinless, if His Soul ever was in a womb. Shall the Father force His Son to sin?
• He said "born again", not 'conceived again'. 'Conception' of the Gospel doesn't save you.
• Moreover, "Spontaneous abortion" (beyond human cause), which often occurs, would mean God's a murderer, if any soul were thus 'aborted'. Further still, if God had put the soul in the womb: if HE were to then permit any caused abortion, HE is the real murderer, since He trapped the soul there. Would God so mercilessly trap an innocent soul?
• To say God puts a complete soul into a trapped, PARTIAL body in the womb -- makes the yet-defective body the ARBITER of the soul. That's Satan's contention: that God is tyrannical, unfair and stupid.

• Bible's Hebrew & Greek (etc.) always deny human-soul-in-womb. Now maybe now you can start to see why. I had hoped to list all the verses here, but there are too many! There are well over 300 applicable verses in BibleWorks, even if only searching KJV. Many are mistranslated in any English version, though lexicons admit that phrases like "from the womb" mean BIRTH. I don't have time to go through all the verses in this site. Some Bible keywords to search on and evaluate in context of all the keywords are: "breath", "soul", "born", "formed" (several Heb/Greek verbs are translated "formed"; "womb" (but "from" always means OUT FROM -- even TWOT lexicon, Badillos, Boman, Gesenius and basic Biblical Hebrew books explain this -- even "in..womb" construction means OUT FROM -- weird); "seed", born-vs.-conceived analogies like in James 1, John 3, Gal1:15, Gal4:19; "born of God"; "born again"; and miscellaneous verses like Gen2:7 (note the order; study Bible will list parallel passages); Job33:3-6; Ex21:22(NAS, Douhay-Rheims, Jewish Pub Society and others listed in the Appendix link for the same verse); Ecc3:2's definition of the beginning-and-ending of life; these are all I've time to list.

  So, use logic as you read through the ones you find in your search: Note how God uses the words -- ALL instances. Thoughtfully compare Scripture with Scripture. Notice stuff like, in the "born" verses, how the faculty of naming or knowing is tied to being BORN; that "called" verses always have separated from the womb monikers (easy one in English is Gal1:15); nearly all "formed" verses talk of God forming, not man. Interesting thing there is that the Hebrew words translated "formed" depict God as first forming a structure, or giving BIRTH. Oh -- if you read French, it's easier to see all this in French: Louis Segond seems ok. If you're reading other webpages of mine, search on "abortion" to find any other references. I've not got time to find them all. The Appendix link in this website shows how Satan uses the so-called 'prolife' issue to denigrate God (at that webpage end).

  See, the importance of this study is not to defend abortion, either; far more importantly, to see what God is really saying about Himself. And why Satan uses prolife to 'hide' what God is saying about Himself, His Plan, His Son. See, without knowing life-begins-at-birth, a whole lot of critical things about God's Nature and salvation go unnoticed or get distorted, because the life-begins-at-birth doctrine is used as a foundation for so many others: viz, "salvation" is regeneration, BORN again (Tit3:5, John3). Shall we be aborted from the implanted Word? Let's not!

• Talmudic rabbis acknowledged that Bible says life began at birth, but 'just to be safe', the rabbis agreed to counsel people that life began soon after pregnancy, i.e., 40 days. For the people's 'good'. They still teach that today: ask any Reformed or Orthodox rabbi. Roman Catholicism continued that tradition. But it's not in the Bible.
• Any believed blasphemy provokes obsession. Satan loves to make believers obsess over other people's sins -- and the prolifers are all obsessive, like the Pharisees who accused the adulteress before Christ. "Prolife" is a substitute for learning Christ, and it shows. Instead of spending the time learning Christ, thus obeying the First Commandment, they crusade. So who are they loving? Not God.
• So where does the abortion issue fit in? The at-birth creation and imputation of the soul doesn't make abortion 'okay', because abortion isn't the issue: God is the issue. So a pregnant woman should consult God about whether He wants an abortion, since it is a sin to not learn His Will on everything!  (How can one avoid violating the First Commandment, if one doesn't consult God on everything? Think about it.)]

Man now starts out with no knowledge or power. He starts out born, a baby, no longer fully-formed from the 'dust of the ground' as an adult. He is independent and alive, from the second he exits the womb. But he is an empty shell, at that point. Alive, now technically able to develop independently, but -- no knowledge.

Well, man also has this quasi-knowledge programming -- good-and-evil -- in his genetic structure. As noted above, the programming is a complex of dissociative, me-be-good urges. Thus God gives Satan a level playing field. Thus God gives Satan a truly helpless person, one addicted to against-God needs. After all, Satan's accused God of being a hypocrite, right? Ok -- Let Us create a truly enslaved person, like the type Satan wanted in hell c) and d), in Part I. So Satan can play god with them, using his 'saving' style: seduction.

Remember hell c)? Its primary characteristic was a being with unrejectably seductive knowledge. Remember hell d)? Its main attribute was impotence: whatever decision you made 'against', had no efficacious power. You couldn't get what you wanted. That's Satan's fantasy-world, and you and I are in it. From Birth.

Due to Adam's Fall, we can't get rid of our inborn anti-programming. We can fight it, but we can't fight it without knowing alternatives. And we can't know alternatives, until we can reason. And we can't even reason, until we have reached a certain age. Remember, Integrity demands Balance. The child must grow up enough mentally, so that the soul-brain connection can process reason. It takes reason to evaluate the question, "Does God Exist?" Some of us (me, for example), have had a nourished childhood, so by (for me) maybe the age of four, the child can process the reasoning about God. Obviously, for others, this age may be much later.

One is not "accountable" to God until one can reason out the question, "Does God Exist?" -- which is the gateway to know 'alternatives'. So anyone who dies while yet unable to do this, is automatically SAVED. That means Heaven is a big place, for infant and other too-ill mortality is high, in history. Malnutrition has been the norm, so the development of the brain to the needed level is a kind of miracle, all by itself. People routinely leave their ill behind, or sacrificed or abused them: so many a deceased, tortured person is happily in heaven, right now. Demonic practices have been dominant in world history and still dominate today. We call them by nice names, now: but they've NEVER been nice, but rather brutal. It's nice to know that all the murdered and raped and tortured children or mongolids are likely very happy in heaven, far away from the brutal "traditions" of their cultures.

So, until that age of accountability, the against-God programming is unopposable. So, any child who dies before reaching that "age of accountability" is automatically saved: everyone is in the Book of Life at birth. He can only be "blotted out", by always refusing God. 'Can't refuse God, until the brain has sufficiently developed, which occurs maybe long after birth, given the varying nutritional (and other) problems man faces (i.e., in Africa). So if can't refuse, saved, since born condemned -- and Christ paid. See the utter Beauty, the utter independent completeness, the Genius of God?

[Important Sidenote: The "Book of Life" is God the Father's roster of everyone who was, is, or will be born -- elect angels administer it. But that's not all it is. It's also His Testament, as it were, naming us as (potential) beneficiaries: a list of His highest-and-best Will for everyone who will be born. Individually. By "name". So, there is a paragraph (or more) about you in this "Book", which lists all God wants you to have. This, because God's Will is for The Best, especially for the Christ, who is the Foremost Person Written in the Book of Life. This, because Christ is glorified by us receiving all these benefits. If we do get "blotted out", the benefits we lose still bless Christ, but in the form of a memorial. Believers will be able to visit this memorial in heaven -- and later on, in the eternal state. In short, the benefits are irrevocable, like an escrow. You have to fulfill the conditions of the escrow -- just like the angels, just like Adam and the woman -- to actually receive the conveyance of these blessings. If you don't fulfill the escrow conditions, the part you didn't fulfill gets blotted out of the list, and remains in memorial, instead.

Hence, everyone is in The Book of Life, and is registered with all the blessings God wants for that person: starting with salvation, of course, for fallen man. One can only lose that status. Just as for the angels, just as for Adam and the woman. (See, sin is never the issue.) As for all other rational creation, fallen man can only lose God's Will for him, by being "blotted out". Fallen man loses salvation by always refusing Christ, from the beginning of his "age of accountability", until he dies. Saved man can lose his 'rewards'. That's why, for example, you'll see "Blot" verses in Revelation -- they talk of blotting out TITLES, not "names" (English nearly always fails to translate idiomatically in important passages). There are many "blot" verses, and synonymal verses, to back up what's said here, because "blot" is a common metaphor in both OT and NT. Unfortunately, English doesn't always translate with the word "blot".]

Look at how the knowings all seem to work against wanting God: we are born in a humiliating condition: we need to constantly tend this dysfunctional body. We are easily beset by every external handicap; we get cold, hot, hungry, need to urinate and defecate, need shelter, clothing, are prone to disease, injustices by others. God does nothing, it seems, to make our hapless lot easier. Moreover, the weather -- doesn't God control it? And we are destroyed by earthquakes, storms, drought -- you name it. Did we cause these things to happen? No! Only God can do them. So it's natural to conclude God is a sadist (just like Satan wants us to conclude).

Further, the very Bigness of God, in the light of our own frailty, looks like a threat and a cruelty. So, the idea that offense against Him which we can't help but commit -- warrants punishment, even a 'hell' -- wow, that sure doesn't sound like a loving God! So: for us to want Him despite all this apparent 'badness' means our choosing him certainly is not enticed, doesn't it? (Again, Satan is given maximum advantage, in making his anti-God claims.)

How, then, is man's Castor-and-Pollux handicap -- Fair? The "covenant" is the key to the answer. Man is universally given sufficient disclosure -- through the nature of the universe, which man can naturally see, for example, to know that God exists. This gentle method of Self-Revelation protects man's free will, yet also guarantees that he doesn't even need to hear the Gospel, in order to decide whether he wants "God". God insures man's free will, yet does not influence it. Again, God preserves a balance between knowing, and not-knowing.

Watch how God protects volition from harm, even with respect to the Gospel. Gotta first want "God", to want the Gospel. To give the Gospel at the wrong time imposes on the person, and creates a liability: for the person getting it at the wrong time will say "No", which increases his negativity, scarring him. Yes, it's his own fault he scars himself, but God would share in the guilt if HE initiates the Gospel, since He knows the person is already negative. So, God is judicious about it. To give the Gospel to a negative person must be required for some overriding reason, to justify God transmitting it. [That's why Christ is so careful, in the Gospels. He talks in parables, or gives out just a few details, carefully worded so the person doesn't understand them, at first. To 'get' the meaning, the person would have to want to figure out what Christ meant. Thus, volition is protected from scarring. You never see Christ give the Gospel to an individual, until the individual is interested. Only in crowds does He talk generically, and even then, His Words are pretty guarded. He's relying on the Spirit to 'translate'. He knows some will be positive, in that crowd -- but should have their privacy to listen, undetected by others. Even by Him. (Speaker needs to be 'invisible', so that God will be 'visible'.)]

Furthermore, one can figure out the Gospel without even hearing it. It's not rocket science: God is Big, 'I' am small. I am too small for a Too-Big God. Wouldn't God want to solve this problem? God doesn't waste anything, for it would be to His Own Disadvantage. God thus has to solve the problem, because 'I' cannot. So: "God, whatever-Your-Name-is, I believe in You. Please tell me whatever You want me to know and do, so we can be together." See? One only needs to be able to reason. The Gospel can be deduced. The only 'unknown' would be the 'name' of the person to believe in, as one can see from verses like Acts 8:27. That verse also shows how God 'manages', thank you, to provide someone to answer that question, 'just in time'. The Omnipotent Holy Spirit is rather good at His Job, enabling even isolated folks to figure out how to be saved, thank you very much.

Man thus has the option of choosing to know of God based on Part I's #2, what he thinks he knows, and #3, what he thinks he doesn't know. See how God made ignorance no hindrance to seeking God? See His Genius? The person is free to want Him, no matter where he is, no matter how old he is, no matter what he knows, no matter what he doesn't know. Even a child's ignorance cannot separate him from God. The knowledge just sits there, available for man to choose to reason out the question, "does God exist?" Once the person concludes he wants God, details of the applicable "covenants" are made available, beginning with how-to-be-saved. So, even though man is born post-Fall with no knowledge of God, and instead, innate urges to prefer self-good to God -- which Satan needed to happen, so that he could prove his arguments -- man is nonetheless able to freely receive and choose God. God insures it so. For every human. Always. For He always, infinitely, intensively, wants sons! -- if they want to become "sons"! Always.

• Well, for one thing, there has to be a Savior, now.
• And God WAITS until there is someone on earth MATURE enough to be His Progenitor.
• That's why Genesis 5 and 11 read as they do: they are tracking that Lineage, all by means of Faith in those listed.
• Progenitor of the Bloodline of THE Son of "sons".
• Also, Satan's got to have enough time to run through ALL his arguments,
• during which time "many sons" can be brought into glory (Heb 2:9-10).
• So, Satan gets to have time,
• and God gets His Objective. Freely.

• However, a Freely-allowed reproduction of humans in numbers means there will be a big push on individual volition to conform, from yet another enslaving source: one's own fellows.
• After all, look how crushing the pressure was on Adam, when he had the 'smaller' choice between 'only' Isha ("woman"), and God?
• So, then, how much more will be the pressure of masses?
• How to prevent the sheer mass of humanity from pressing down on any one person's volition?
• Break man up into smaller corporate units-of-loyalty, since love (here, in the form of loyalty) protects volition.

That's another reason why the woman becomes pregnant, instead of the man, for example. Paul gets a big kick out of God's Wit here, the woman will be delivered by delivering a Savior! in 1Tim 2:15. My pastor had no end of fun teaching us that quip. It's not the dour-God crowd's idea of a woman's place is behind a sweaty kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Paul says that her domestic role, avowedly as the servant of her husband, does not mean she is unequal spiritually. But the primary wit is the fact that the Savior will be born -- hence the delivered-by-delivery wordplay (sozw in Greek first means rescue, deliver, and then "save", so it's a great play word on pregnancy, being "delivered" of a child).

"Family" teaches synergistic love, ideally. Hence, the human is free, whatever his status, to freely enjoy receiving love from those placed higher than him in authority, and to freely enjoy giving love to those under his authority. So, always, some analogy to marriage is being displayed, even before there was a Bride. After all, who loves more than God does? Who ideally wants to be loved by God more than creation? So, it doesn't matter that some are "high", and others, "low". We all get the opportunity to grow to full enjoyment.

'Because creature ability is not the issue. Love is the issue. If one feels guilty, ashamed, resentful (etc.) about being "lower" -- or, about being "higher" -- that feeling is not based on love at all. It is not virtuous to feel bad about being lower. It is not virtuous to feel good about being lower. It is not virtuous to feel bad about being higher. It is not virtuous to feel good about being higher. Why do you think Paul stresses rejoicing in one's freedom, if a slave, or slavery, if free? Why do you think James stresses rejoicing in one's wealth, if poor, or one's poverty, if rich? To awaken the reader: one rejects Love, and instead stabs himself, by focusing obsessively on his relative "status". All such feelings are contentions that creature ability matters. Creature-merit is Satan's core mindset. That's why he sinned, that's why he rebelled, that's why to the end of time he will be irrevocably hostile to God. 'Because, if ability is the issue, then Love has no room to exist.

Merit-claims and Love are mutually-exclusive. Moreover, God is full-spectrum. So, Paul notes "they who compare themselves by themselves, are not wise." James notes the jealousy and strife that come from people comparing their relative merit (in their own minds, of course) to others. Paul counters that merit is for enjoyment, not for status: "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound." And: "when I am weak, then I am strong." The purpose of merit is to spend it, not to hoard it, preening. Love spends, not earns, as Paul so tenderly recounts in 1Cor13 and end of Eph5. James pleads the same 'cause' as Paul: "let faith [doctrine].. have its completing work" in James 1:3-4. God works. We benefit. That's the role of "merit". So, God works to make us into the "sons" He wants! 'More like the Most High. And while He does this, He causes others to be blessed-by-association from those "sons", even if they do no 'works', even during their growth periods -- Full-Spectrum. You'll see how, as you progress through Parts II-V. It's truly amazing.

For we are all one Big Family, and those of us advancing with God spiritually, would love to be used to bless those of us still lagging behind. No one in his right mind wants anyone else to be deprived of God. Least of all, God Who Invented Blessing by Association -- through the Cross!

So, as the OT population increased from the first family onward, world-wide, and it gained some technological proficiency due to Satan's plan, it became progressively apostate. It focused more and more on "earthly things", because of the me-be-good drive, and because it was succeeding in relieving the punishment of "work". Thus man was homogenizing in his negativity toward God. Satan&Co. finally succeeded with such good results, they were able to interest the human race in inter-copulation with the "gods". So thoroughly did people agree with these many years of orgies (e.g., Greek and Roman mythology), so much did they reject God, that a world-wide Flood was needed: only Noah's family remained purely human. The gene pool which was supposed to produce the Savior was down to that family. So, the world got a warning period of 120 years. Then -- gone. The population started over again.

It didn't remain positive for long. The Tower of Babel was an example of the return to homogenized apostacy: people tried to build a "tower" (really, a ziggurat) to "touch" God. They mistakenly thought if they could go high enough, they would be as good as God. Satan&Co. promoted this scheme, in hopes that God would have to wipe out the human race. (Since they failed to accomplish the genetic dilution by only one family! they reverted back to religion.)

Like "family", "nations" divide loyalties so man's volition is protected against the crush of 'majority opinion'. That's Witty, particularly in the manner He did it, taking a bunch of people at the Tower of Babel (where Babylon would later sit) and confuse (babel) their language. Funny how people divide up when they don't understand one another. Ignorance makes us hostile, insular. So the sin nature is actually turned to good account! Of course, you know that Babel was just ground zero for that Decree, so everywhere in the world the same phenomenon happened. The population was post-Flood, so it wasn't very large. [Don't go by buildings to guess population. Human bodies in the water for the year the Flood engulfed the earth would not leave relics behind. The buildings would of course survive, so you won't be able to tell if there is a hiatus in population. Frequent travel was a norm in those days, so often a skeleton crew was left behind while a larger population moved on, even when the earth was populated. Nomadic lifestyle was the norm. By the way Babel, like the Gen 6 invasion of the gene pool, broke Trial rules.]

There's a deep lesson, here. Division/competition protects and diffuses the problem of competing loves' pressure on the soul. Freedom requires competition. Social homogeneity eventuates in evil. What's popular will be (unknowingly, of course) satanic, at the core. So, any crusades, any activism, any ideas of world government/world religion are all from Satan, never from God. Whoever crusades or propounds such ideas is speaking for the 'wrong side' in the Trial. Beware of such folks.

So, there are to be nations, and God preserves them. (Acts 17:26. It's interesting that even in the eternal state -- see the last chapter in Rev -- nations remain.) Even so, the resultant nations themselves become progressively apostate. Clearly, blessing-by-association with individuals ebbs, for a nation is but an aggregate of individuals. So individual corruption spreads (albeit more slowly, due to the national divisions), and cursing-by-association still occurs. Despite nations. So how do the Covenants, whether God's or Satan's, interrelate?