I’ve never been nor will I ever be a theologian. But I disagree with Gordon’s words here. He says in the first paragraph, “…one day man went away from God. And then he went farther away. He left home. He left his native land, Eden, where he lived with God. He emigrated from God. And through going away he lost his mother-tongue.”
If you believe the creation story(s) and think they’re factual, Gordon can’t be right here. Leaving wasn’t Adam’s choice and it’s wrong to suggest it was. Man didn’t voluntarily leave the Garden. God forced him out and left angels to guard the place, keeping everyone away forever.
Gordon goes on to say that “man lost his native speech” because he went away from his native land. Again, not Adam’s choice. It was God’s decision to send Adam away, so don’t blame him for the loss of language.
I think this is a well-meaning but very poor metaphor and it illustrates some of the problems I have with the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent god. It’s just not true. If it is, God failed miserably.
If it were true—if this really was language humanity could understand, then why are there some 1,400 Christian denominations?
Why are there so many bible translations? I’m not talking about languages. I get that part. But Christians can’t even agree on which translation is correct. King James? New Revised Standard Version? New International Version? The Message?
How many verses are supposed to be in Mark 16?
What about the woman caught in adultery in the Book of John?
How can this be “language humanity could understand” if we can’t even agree on the things Jesus supposedly said or did?
If God really wanted us to understand everything about Jesus, why didn’t he do a better job of presenting and preserving Jesus’ teachings? An omniscient god should have known how we’d butcher the translations of his words. An omnipotent god should have been able to preserve those teachings in a form people could still understand without years of study.
Yet here we are, a few hundred years later, still trying to figure out what the first verse of the Bible actually says.
You’d think an omniscient, omnipotent being could have done a better job preparing for something like this.
