An Apology First....... Then a Small Thought

Firstly I must apologise for my apparent tardiness at adding thoughts and rants to this Blog. My only defence is one of technology, my laptop gave up the ghost, the home PC's I have that the children and my wife use I could not get on with and it has taken until now to get fully (ish) back up and running. Now I just complain a lot as the buttons on my new laptop are in different places to those on my old. You would have thought that it wouldn't be asking for much if the manufacturers of machines could just agree on a format..... Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway etc but all different!!! the same until you try and delete an item and find yourself "home" or "end" and all you want is to knock out a letter that should not be there to start with!!!!!!!!!!!!

But enough, here is a thought derived from my current (or always had) strangeness and my new found desire to question things that I have never looked at before..........

Many, many years ago Adam and Eve lived in "paradise", everyone loved everyone. Cats and dogs lived together, snakes and serpents walked around, and lions never ate giraffes!! Everyone could understand each other and they all lived together.

Then out of the blue a cunning serpent suggests to Eve that she tries an apple, after all it is only an apple. He knows the fruit is forbidden but hey, who would know? and if they did then what? Well the rest as they say is history......

Now my thought stems a little bit left of centre and has been started after I began looking through an unpublished work of my Late and Great Grandfather about sex in the bible. This work is not a saucy piece of literature as such, although pretty frank, but more a questioning book that explores the hows and whys.

Why did Eve tell Adam to put on a figleaf to cover "his bits"? Why does she cover her breasts and "bits" as well? I am not suggesting that we should all be nude, but why cover the sexual organs if she never realised they were "interesting"?

Why does Eve not say "Adam, cover up your feet, you'll get cuts all over them and put blood on the grass bed covers!" or why not "Adam will you put some leaves on your chest before you catch a nasty cold, honestly look at you stood there with nothing to keep you warm, you will catch your death"

No Eve covered her genitals and then told Adam to do the same. Never mind the cold, never mind the odd cut, just get those dangly bits covered before all and sundry start pointing!!

Now all of this happened a long long time ago, the jewish year is 5768, so why??

In 5000 years time is everyone going to be "Potters or Voldemorts" depending on the religion they follow? Be honest the bible is a fantastic work of literature, in a few thousand years time will the Harry Potter books of today be viewed as fact not fiction?

So I guess my thought is two fold -
1) Why did life as we know it begin with Adam and Eve and their banishment from the Garden of Eden?
2) Was the bible a reality when first written or was it the "novel" of its time?

Now I am anything but a non-believing heathen. My belief and faith if anything is now growing, although I would still question if I believe in a religion as such or more in a faith of some describution. My current personal situation means I now am actually "believing" and questioning.

Maybe this is actually the thought. We don't really care if the bible (Old or New Testament) is based on real fact. We realise something must have happened to spur these tales along. We all know how "chinese whispers" can grow a very small act into a huge life saving action from which all sorts of other acts grow. Can we assume that this is how the bible grew?

So faith today is not actually based entirely upon fact. We know something happened. We know somehow a chap called Moses was given some pointers to follow from somewhere. This is the 10 commandments we use as the basis of all living. We know somewhere along the line a chap called Jesus lived about 2000 years ago. Did he really feed 5000 people with a loaf of bread and some water, or was he a waiter of sorts who served a lot of people?

From humble and often insignificant acts whole religions have developed and these offer us some sort of comfort.

I question the origins, I question the reality of the stories, however, and this is important to realise, I do not question the faith these acts deliver.

And so that is my thought, do we really care where the Bible stories came from or if they are true. I say who cares, we want them to have existed, we want them to be true and from these thoughts, whether on a religious level or a faith level, we still worship and look towards something. The stability that this sense of belonging brings is enough for now. It is this the steadying thought that we must instill upon our children to maintain their stability and to try and give them something to cling to.

I know that religion is not the answer to all, but, it is the level of "order" that this brings that we need to impress upon our children. The small amount of respect that religion gives might just keep some from being wild and having nothing to steady them.

And that is my thought, preach and rant over for today..... But i would welcome other opinions????