Comments for The Key that Fits the Lock, Part Three at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 23 May 2013 23:00:02 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12935 To go before the face of God to me implies me being judged, and is quite fearful. But "seeing God face to face" sounds more like God as He really is, with both His judgement and His mercy, and us humbly before Him but also with Him. Even Adam and Eve were promised His mercy, so I think the Hebrew might translate somehow into seeing Him face to face, at least in our American English way of thinking. I will try to better understand these verses that way, translating them for myself with this way of looking at them. - patricia Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:37:59 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12933 Another one from Bishop Sheen: Adam, pointing to Eve and commenting to his kids: "Your mother ate us out of house and home." badabing - Grump Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:13:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12932 Yet another example of why Esolen is, as they say, 'da man! I do mean it, in just one short essay you have shed more light on the Adam and Eve story than I what I got from my RCIA experience. That says two things 1)Your very insightful/very good at what you do AND 2)the RCIA classes I took stunk! :) @Grump "If Adam and Eve were Chinese, they'd still be in paradise because they would have eaten the snake instead of the apple." Heheh! Good one - Aeneas Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:46:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12931 ...Sooo, Adam and Eve would have eaten the insurance salesman? Sorry Tony. It WAS a good piece, but I couldn't resist. - Layman Tom Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:29:07 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12928 (This may be too long for a comment here. If so, no offence taken if you decide to reject it for inclusion in the comments section of course) Humor and the Fall I have a theory where I speculate that humor is a result of the Fall. When I describe it to people, they very often stand aghast at the idea of attributing something they consider so “good” to be associated with what seems like its very opposite. And so I always have to explain that I am not at all saying that humor is bad (though of course there are many bad corruptions and misuses of humor as can happen with virtually any good thing). I then have to go on to tell them that it is good in much the same way that one could say that the Resurrection of Christ was a “result” of the Fall – ie, if the Fall had never happened (though, as C.S. Lewis likes to point out in the Narnian stories, we can never know “what would have happened”), Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection would not have been necessary. And of course no Christian would ever say that the Resurrection was not a good thing just because it was “made necessary” by the Fall. A perhaps better example is the idea that Adam and Eve donned clothing to cover the shame of their nakedness after eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One might say that Jesus himself, being unfallen, should not have needed clothing, and yet he wore clothes anyway. Of course it could be argued that whether he needed them or not, he wore them more for our benefit, being fallen ourselves, than any need of his. But even apart from that, it is interesting that though the necessity for clothing seems to be a result of the Fall, Scripture itself is replete with references to clothes as “holy” things – eg, being clothed with righteousness, heavenly apparel, white robes, and such like. Clothes in Scripture have apparently become (if they were not always so – hard to say, certainly) forevermore associated with something good, even though, for us at least, they were a result of the Fall. (And in connection with Christ himself wearing clothes, I have also wondered if his being stripped of his garments at the Cross had some sort of symbolic connection with his taking on our sins so that those sins would no longer be hidden, but conquered on the Cross for all the world to see in their naked fullness and not having the shame of them covered up, as Adam and Eve did with their shame.) The reason I described clothing above as a “perhaps better example” to illustrate my “humor and the Fall” theory is that I have often wondered if we might not see humor as a kind of “spiritual clothing” that we “put on” to cover up the shame of our fallen nature in this fallen world – a state that would otherwise be too bitter for us to bear or contemplate – in the same way that Adam and Eve apparently couldn’t bear or contemplate the shame of their nakedness and attempted to cover it with physical clothes. And this leads me to another of my speculations: Knowledgeable Christians are fond of insisting that Scripture does not explicitly identify the forbidden fruit as the popular fabled apple. But I say it was actually a banana, and that Eve, when she had finished eating from it, threw the peeling down onto the Garden grounds, whereupon Adam unwittingly slipped on it, thereby introducing humor and the Fall of Man into the world simultaneously. (Running for cover.) - Stanley Anderson Wed, 15 Aug 2012 05:25:21 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-key-that-fits-the-lock-part-three.html#comment-12927 Tony, well done but if you don't mind a bit of levity: Q. Where is the first mention of insurance in the Bible? A. When Adam and Eve needed more coverage. If Adam and Eve were Chinese, they'd still be in paradise because they would have eaten the snake instead of the apple. - Grump Wed, 15 Aug 2012 02:52:13 +0100