Originally posted by Zahlanzi
how do you define better life?
is it lack of hardship? a life where nothing happens to you is preferable to a life where good and bad happen, even if the bad happens more often?
what did adam and eve get to do in the garden of eden? they had a naming ceremony of all the plants and animals and that was about it. sitting in the sun, eating fruit. taki ...[text shortened]... g more enlightened than those shepherds(or so we claim) we can find new meanings to this story.
Ouch.
how do you define better life?
is it lack of hardship?
Here, a 'better life' is defined first and foremost as communion with God: the very point of our creation in the first place. Granted, all of the other stuff that went along with Eden is certainly far preferred to the crap we go through on a daily basis, but that aspect is--- by far--- the pinnacle of man's existence.
a life where nothing happens to you is preferable to a life where good and bad happen, even if the bad happens more often?
What happened before the fall can hardly be considered 'nothing.' Their lives were overflowing with joy. I'd say that's a pretty good state.
what did adam and eve get to do in the garden of eden? they had a naming ceremony of all the plants and animals and that was about it. sitting in the sun, eating fruit. taking a dump, eating some fruit. sleeping. eating some more fruit. sitting in the sun.
To hear you say it, their life sounds so... ordinary. Let's examine our lives:
we organize and categorize our lives into manageable compartments
set aside some time in the day for work
set aside some time in the day for play
set aside some time in the day for eating
set aside some time in the day for sleeping
every once in a rare while, we
set aside some time in the day for sex
oh, and we take dumps every so often, too.
Yet, on top of these damn exciting activities, we also
set aside time in the day to shovel snow (or chop wood/hoe weeds/etc.)
set aside some time in the day to pay bills
set aside some time in the day to deal with the IRS
set aside some time in the day avoiding traffic police
set aside some time in the day battling our ex'es in divorce court
Contrast our blissful existence with that of Adam and the woman, wherein their days were unmarred by physical pain, their surroundings were perfect and they each had an unbelievable specimen of physical perfection upon which to gaze. So thoroughly stimulating was their existence that the only vacation possible was sex! What we fantasize about, they lived. Whole industries have been created in a vain attempt to replicate what these two had without effort.
Every situation we consider a negative from our existence, they didn't have. But they had the biggest positive which only a few now ever experience: daily communion with the Creator of the universe.
What you consider satisfying sounds more like an attempt at 'reverse sour grapes.'