The Garden of Eden

At Sunday School I was taught how the Israelites won battles and prospered because they worshiped God. Then in senior school I learned that in the trenches of WW1 the Germans raised a board which said, "Gott mit uns" (God is with Us) and the Brits replied with a board saying "So have we" (Got mittens.) Both believing God was on their side made me wonder if there was more to the Bible than worshiping; if it had more in it than was obvious.
Let us suppose that Adam was not the first Homo Sapien but was the first one to look around and recognise beauty and realise there was more to living than picking berries and taking a spear to a boar. Even suppose Adam was not one man but many around the world; in fact humanity. This realisation would be a giant leap in understanding, a huge leap in evolution, and would explain the 'other men' in Genesis.
Naturally Adam would talk it over in his grunts and whistles with Eve, stuck in the cave, cooking and washing.
With his new appreciation of things, Adam becomes absorbed in boar and buffalo and how they move around and their general habits but starts to complain about Eve's cooking - do we always have to have spinach with boar?
This irritates Eve and she too looks around, notices the apples and introduces apple sauce to their diet.
Instead of just a story,
we have a view of family life, not just in prehistory but in many present-day households, Adam might be the Might Hunter but it is Eve who is making the family decisions.
Both Adam and Eve are becoming curious and curious people are never content, their legacy to mankind is to be ever seeking the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
There is no location of the Garden of Eden, it is a state of mind called contentment where people are neither curious nor seeking new experiences.
This leads to a view of the Bible as a teaching document with broader scope than pure theology - for example, where did the idea that we need a holiday come from?

Heroes are human

When it gets to Kings, the story of the Israelites is the story of a whole nation, or a major corporation and we can see all the politics of multi nation companies at work. Nevertheless, let’s look at David. David is a hero king yet he is humble; his real concern is for the wellbeing of the nation. The nation is bigger than David, not the other way round as some politicians come to imagine. Yet the story tells of David lusting after another man’s wife, not only lusting but engineering the man’s death so that he can have her for himself. If this is true, why not just ignore it and keep the hero king’s moral reputation clean? Because it shows David as a human being. We have so many heroes from history who have no faults or defects, Arthur, Robert Bruce, yet David is not one of them. This is one of the non- religious lessons the Bible teaches – honour people for what they do, but remember they are humans and have human motivations: Robert Burns poetry is a gift to the world and should not be tainted with his human failings; Turner’s landscapes are magnificent and his treatment of women should not detract from that. The wonder of it is that humans could create such things and that should be a motivation for each of us to try.

Saul's statue

As predicted, in the end Saul took advantage of the people. He was king for forty years and, not surprisingly started to think he was something special, even having monuments erected to himself. He'd become so set in his ways he became a danger to the community and unable to use Jonathan and his new tactics. It’s the same in many spheres of human activity, business, management, clubs and teams; leave someone in the same position and they feel they are indispensable or that no one can, or will, take their place. It assumes that if they drop dead the activity will collapse. It also means they start to enforce their opinions on the organisation and, often, in business hang on to outdated ideas and systems because they introduced them or they are comfortable with them. Several organisations insist on moving senior people every three years. What can one achieve in three years? Motivation and reinforcing goals and culture. But not long enough to change and upset the entire organisation nor long enough to become a statue. For the team, the new person has no preconceived ideas about products, tools or tactics. No one has a chance to set up an ivory tower or an empire and the organisation stays lean and mean. In a club, without intent, things get swept under the carpet if one of the officers is too long in one post. One misconception is that a club will die if the chairman or secretary gives up. If the remaining members are not motivated enough to keep it going, why does it exist anyway? The nation didn’t exist because Saul was there, Saul was there because the nation existed.

What a king does is rule.

If there was ever a lesson from the Bible for today’s world it is the warnings issued by Samuel to the Israelites when they demand a king. He warns that the king will destroy their family life, take their sons and daughters for servants and soldiers. The modern situation may be a mirror image but it has the same effect. Working for a multinational demands an employee will give up their family and friends and spend their waking hours working for the corporation’s benefit. Which takes us back to the first lesson of – six days working and then a day of rest; a day to readjust and remember the reasons for working.

Some say their corporation will look after them when they retire but it is well to remember the corporation’s first responsibility is to its shareholders, second to its creditors, and only then, to the employees.

The employees primary responsibility is to their dependents. The corporation can replace even its chairman but the employee can not replace the love and concern of a friend or one of their family; those who will, in the bad times, always be a support.

I read recently of a man whose aim was to make enough money to retire at 54 and spend time with his family. One has to ask what his priority is? Why not spend time with the family now and retire at 60 or 65. Many people die before 54. Many young people have cancer in their thirties and quality time is hard to come by.

That seventh day is to make sure you know what your priorities are.

Looking into the Ark

Looking into the Ark
After the Philistines returned the Ark of the Covenant, several people looked inside and died. My first thoughts were that this is what happens to an employee, a member of a political party, or a team member who questions the ethos and morals of the organisation; they are ostracised or fired. Then I noticed a comment in the newspaper that a head transplant would be possible within ten years and the Bible story took on a more important lesson. Let's assume we have a student who has applied for assisted suicide at a time when the head of a Stephen Hawkins; a twenty two year old soccer star, for whom his English team have paid a million pounds; a millionaire in America; or the director of a Polit Bureau in Russia, all need a body and make up your own mind about the outcome. It takes morality into the financial arena. If we accept head transplant, what will this be the harvest of this whirlwind? The murder of those sleeping in the street or the sale of children in a return of the days of the body snatchers? So the real lesson is that, when it comes to morality, there are no free lunches. Adultery sacrifices loyalty, murder sacrifices security (if it's all right for one person to do it, they justify for them to be murdered) etc. etc.

Losing the Ark

After Ruth, the Israelite story shifts to Eli, the prophet, and his son’s. The sons are abusing their father’s power and Eli is warned there will be consequences, not for his person but his family and his reputation. This is one of the incidents that make me think the Bible is not just for the church but for all of us and for our daily and  business lives; a precursor of Aesop and his moral fables. The lesson here is that the stigma of a misuse of power, even a dishonourable deed, not only affects the perpetrator but their parents and clings to a family for at least another generation. In the case of Eli’s sons, it affected the war with the Philistines; even bringing their most miraculous artefact, the Ark of the Covenant, didn’t save them, in fact, they lost the Ark. That brings a warning for business managers, executives and owners that dishonest trading kills a business for years. Individuals and even governments that promise things they cannot produce will suffer consequences, not only for the moment but in the future.  Not only that, their actions will enhance the reputation of those they cheat, their rivals, making them appear victims.

Enough is not enough

The story of Samuel begins with his mother Hannah and her rivalry with Peninnah the other wife of Elkanah. Hannah was childless and ridiculed by Peninnah. Peninnah was doing her job and bearing children. Elkanah saw Hannah's job as just loving him but she wanted more. She took a risk and, in return for children, dedicated Samuel to work for the community. (I am assuming working for the church is community service.) Peninnah is not mentioned again and the heroine of this episode is Hannah, why? Because she was prepared to do more than just her job, or the job Elkana alloted her. The tale is one of those repetitions of the maxim that, to succeed, you must do more than your job. We all know who Hanna's god was. The god of a business is sales profit and a business will fail if it only just satisfies the current needs of its customers; someone else will give better service, a cheaper price,or a slightly better product and any organisation must be constantly looking for a better way to do things. If your god is promotion, there are other people 'doing their job' and to satisfy your god you need to do more than that. If your god is job satisfaction, just staying in a boring but safe job won't work for you, you need to take a risk.
There is a spin-off in the tale - while Hannah was praying, Eli the priest thought she was drunk - don't judge the book by its cover is what fills the bill there. Don't assume, because the Bible is used by the church,that it has no messages about living, business and personal relationships for others. It is the original self help book.