Religious, Spiritual, Secular

Quote of the day:
“There are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can’t.”
--Richard Lederer

Actually there are two kinds of people. Those who implicitly trust other people, and those who are implicitly suspicious of other people. If you’ve been around a few people at some time in your life, you probably have noticed this.

Of course, any individual may be “good” or “bad” at any particular moment in his life. What I’m talking about here is our assumption about the most-essential nature of human beings. Deep down, when everything is stripped away, are we essentially “good,” or essentially “bad”? I’m saying that all of us go through life consciously or unconsciously believing one or the other.

This is not necessarily a religious or spiritual belief, but there is a religious framework for it. Among Christians, Jews or Muslims, there are two kinds of people. Those who have an affinity with the first creation story (people are essentially “good”), and those who have an affinity with the second (people are essentially “bad”).

There are two separate and distinct creation stories in the bible. The first is the seven-day creation, which begins, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...” For each of the first six days, Gods speaks, and something is created. When God is halfway done, God looks out and sees that creation is “good.” When God is completely done, God looks over all of creation, including humans, and sees that is is “very good.” On the seventh day, God rests.

As a religious person, if this story resonates with you, you believe that human nature is essentially good.

The second creation story is the one with Adam and Eve, and it comes from a different tradition than the first. We know this right away because the name of God becomes “Lord God.”

In this story God forms Adam from the dust of the ground, and then uses Adam’s rib to create Eve. Then the trouble starts when God tells Adam that he can eat from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The snake tells Eve that it’s really ok to eat from the tree, Eve tells Adam, who then has an apple. God gets mad and throws them both out of the garden.

If this story resonates with you, you likely are suspicious of human nature.