Paradise Contested
A Plagiarized Genesis Is the Source for a Secular Utopia
by Jan Bentz
In these times of grave uncertainty and unrest, in which humanity is plagued by threats visible and invisible on a global scale, many ask for the meaning of it all and for clarity in the direction everything is supposed to be going. Not a few put their hope in the future and await the establishment of a New Normal in which peace and an improved condition of life will finally settle in.
Offers for this utopia are plentiful, and, as is oftentimes the case, much of what is being offered as the better society is already implemented or well underway.
Posed in starkest contrast to each other are two integral propositions for global transformation, both of which take the upheaval of a broken world as an opportunity for the establishment of a perfected society. One proposition is Christianity, which believes in a transcendent paradise instituted by God; the other is modern man's own secular design for utopia. As with all things created by a master less than the Creator himself, modern man's utopia is a degraded plagiarization of its divine opposite.
Beginning with Scripture
No source is better suited to providing the underlying logic of the conglomeration of contemporary ideologies than is sacred Scripture. Let us consider three passages. First, Genesis 3:16–19:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Second, we read in St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians (3:9–11):
Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.
This idea is echoed in his letter to the Galatians (3:26–28):
For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Jan Bentz writes from Germany, where he is the editor of the German edition of iFamNews.
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