The Tree of Knowledge

It started with a YouTube video.

That’s what was on the news on July 7th, 2012 when I got back home.

There wasn’t much to it. No elaborate cinematography. No cuts or transitions. Just a man sitting in an arm chair. He was in his 60’s. Grey hair. Fine wrinkles. Pale blue eyes. Stern expression. He wore a white suit with a gold silk tie. The chair was light gold leather. The kind you know just by looking at it will be soft to the touch.

Just a man, sitting in an arm chair, in front of a camera.

And the man said, “I am who I am. I am Yahweh. God of your fathers. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have come to make my power and my name known in all the earth, as I did when I brought the plagues against Egypt. You wander, lost in the darkness without my light. You have come to rely on your own worthless wisdom and words instead of mine. You think you can pick and choose from my laws and still call yourselves faithful, and generations of your people have burned in Hell for this mistake.”

With one hand, he held up the Bible.

“It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid. I say unto you, every word of this book is law, and all who disobey will surely never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Pay strict attention to everything I have said to you.”

That was it. Easy enough to write off as a crazy man’s ramblings.

But on the news, they called it a miracle. They said, right then, this video was being watched all over the world. 195 different countries speaking 6,500 different languages. Seven billion people and counting, and every single one heard this man speaking in their own tongue.

The very same video, but in Japan, the man was speaking Japanese. In Russia, he was speaking Russian. These two men in California, one born here and one that moved here from El Salvador when he was sixteen watched the video at exactly the same time, on the same computer. The man born here heard it in English, and the man from El Salvador heard a curious mixture of English and Spanish.

The news said there were anthropologists on North Sentinel Island. The Sentinelese are a culture with almost no contact with the outside world, aside from slaughtering the occasional fisherman who wanders too close to their turf. They have their own language spoken by no one else in the entire world. They understood it. Or, at least the anthropologists kind of think they understood it.

Biblical scholars were quick to point out, this was not the first time this had happened. It also happened in Acts chapter two verses six through twelve. The disciples spoke to a great, multicultural crowd, and everyone heard their own language. “And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?” they asked.

Church attendance had never been higher.

My family, we hardly ever went to church before that night. My dad was just Catholic enough to get me baptized and show up to mass every other Christmas. My mom was a card carrying atheist and a science teacher with a little fish with legs decal on the back of her hybrid.

I inherited my mother’s skepticism and my dad’s habit of crossing myself for good luck. My only real concept of church was one Christmas mass a thousand years ago my dad dragged me to; my little feet in shiny dress shoes dangling off the edge of the pew.

That night, we couldn’t find an empty pew to sit it. Kneeling figures filled every pew, every aisle. When they ran out of space they crowded onto the altar. Into the bathrooms. Everywhere they were kneeling, crying, clutching their rosaries. A never ending chorus of “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” echoing through the church.

And in the coming weeks and months, when we were all through crying, and deigning it, and processing our shock, we picked up our Bibles and began to read. And then no one said any more Hail Mary’s.

I mean, outside of theology school, how many people had read the Bible before then? And I don’t mean the little selections and passages read aloud in church. The whole thing. Cover to cover. Every word. Every law.

It wasn’t long before many of the more prevalent myths about what was and was not in the Bible were brought to light. First and foremost, the false perception that when Jesus died for our sins he abolished the need for the old, archaic laws of the Old Testament. People soon noticed that many times throughout the New Testament (eight, to be precise) Jesus says that all of the old laws are still in effect. Gone were the days when Christians could follow the Ten Commandments and shame gay people but ignore the part about not eating bacon. Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass way, not the smallest part of the smallest letter will pass from the law.”

He said that, in Matthew 5:17, and Leviticus 11:7 says, “The swine, though he divide the hoof, and he clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud. He is unclean to you.” And so the pig farms went out of business. They were followed shortly by the tabloids, the tattoo parlors, palm readers, and shrimp boats.

Other industries just adapted. The fashion industry actually experienced a boom as everyone rushed out to buy blouses with tassels sewn into the corners made from non-blended fabrics. Head scarves and hats for women to cover our heads. Plain clothes became fashionable.

There were a lot of bonfires in those first few months. In went the synthetic fabrics. Men’s hats. Women’s pants. Art with images of other gods. Stoves and frying pans that had been used to cook pork. Thousands of books went up in flames before a bunch of librarians and literature professors got together and cut every offending word out of every book by hand. The names of other gods, they can’t be written or spoken. They turned to ash. Rebecca’s baby, she’ll never know them. All alternate theology wiped from the Earth within a generation.

Oral sex is forbidden.

Women are not allowed to teach.

Lighting a fire on a Sunday is punishable by death.

Raping a virgin is a totally effective and legal way to obtain a wife.

Women cannot speak in church.

And remember, Jesus loves you.

Everyone was sure the credit card companies would fail. Exodus 22:25 forbids the charging of interest on loans. Interest charges had to be wiped off everyone’s credit card debt. But they still owed. And while interest was verboten, collateral was acceptable.

And so was slavery.

The credit card companies and the banks, they adapted too. They became the new slave traders.

Can’t pay off your debts immediately? You will be seized and you will be sold.

And my dad, with a second mortgage on the house and my mom out of a job, faced with him and my mom being seized by American Express…

My dad sold me.