BIBLE STORIES RETOLD: ANGELS & DEVILS; ADAM & EVE

 

First God created heaven. Then he created angels to populate heaven. They were categorized into different orders: cherubim, virtues, powers, thrones etc. Lucifer (whose name means light bearer), a cherub, was God’s most beautiful angel. However, he was not content to play second fiddle to the Almighty, but wanted to be equal to Him. So one day, for a start, he tried to raise his throne to the level of God’s throne and all hell broke loose, so to speak. Then he recruited his own army of discontented angels and started waging a war against God. God was really mad and to lead his own troops, he appointed Archangel Michael as his field commander. As can be expected, Lucifer lost and was thrown along with his army into hell.

According to Pope John XXI, then Bishop of Tusculum, the number of angels who sided with Lucifer numbered 133306668 while those with God were 266613336! These figures were later confirmed by the 15^th century scholar Alphonso de Spina. I am still to figure out how they came to those numbers. Once in hell, Lucifer was known as satan. The angels who fell with him became the demons.

The second great endeavor God undertook was to create earth and put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam was created first so as to give him a chance to say something. Again, God was quite thoughtful in creating man first since He didn’t want any advice! He formed the shape of a man out of clay and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and presto Adam came alive. After creating Adam, He stood back, looked at him carefully, and scratching His Head, He told Himself: “I think I can do better than that.” Then He created Eve. He put Adam to sleep, took one of his ribs and turned it into the woman.

After admiring his newly created children for a few minutes, He briefly addressed them: “Don’t.” Just like that. “Don’t what?” asked the two. “Do you see those two trees laden with fruit in the middle of the garden? The apple tree on the left is the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the other on the right is the tree of life. Do not eat the fruits of these two. You may eat all others.” “Why?” chorused Adam and Eve in unison. “Because I said so”, replied God, clearly irritated by audacity of the two. Calming down he explained: “You will die if you eat the fruits.” Leaving them to explore the garden He went back to His heavenly abode to reflect on the day’s creative activities.

Archangel Gabriel noticed that God was in an unusually pensive mood. There was something bothering Him. Neither the heavenly choirs nor the harp and flute players were able to calm His nerves with their soothing music. “What is the problem, my Lord?” gently prodded Gabriel. “Gabe, did I make a mistake in creating man? Maybe, just maybe, I should have stopped with the elephant. At least these animals don’t talk back, unlike these two”, replied God with an inaudible sigh. “I think we should not worry”, advised the Archangel. “In case they become cheeky, we will flood the earth and drown them all.”

Adam and Eve were happy to roam around discovering the delights of the garden. In course of time they settled into a kind of routine. Adam would tend to the animals and cultivate the fields, while Eve took care of the house. There was hardly any need to cook, since there were plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts available all round the year. So Eve spent most of the time in the fields looking for beauty herbs.

During one of her perambulations through the thick undergrowth, she heard a hissing sound coming from close to where she stood. Looking closely, she saw a big snake in the grass looking up at her. “Hi Cutie”, it addressed her. At first she was taken aback at hearing a snake talking to her. Soon however, she became quite puffed up by the fact that there was someone who appreciated her beauty. Lately, Adam had been neglecting her, having got used to her. Besides, there was no other female as a point of reference for comparison. Another thing that struck her was that it was speaking with a forked tongue. “Thanks”, replied Eve. “What can I do for you?”

The snake said: “I understand God has forbidden the two of you to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. That’s because He knows that when you eat the fruit of that tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like Him. You will also have carnal knowledge.” “What is carnal knowledge?” asked Eve in her naivety. “It means you will know how to have fun. Anyway, you will understand what I am talking about after you eat the fruit”, replied the snake with a sleazy dart of its tongue. The serpent knew that God, for some reason, was slightly distracted when creating Eve and as a result forgot to fill a tiny part in her brain dealing mainly with judgment. So she fell for his charm and ate the apple.

It was Lucifer, now known as Satan, who appeared as a serpent and tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Though unwilling at first, Adam was incessantly nagged by his partner to partake of the apple, and he gave in to her immoral demand most reluctantly. This apple had a magical effect on them: they became aware that they were both naked! Adam, the gallant man that he was, quickly found two fig leaves and gave one to Eve. He wisely chose fig leaves since they are large in size compared to other leaves. However, his wife wouldn’t go for it. She looked around the garden for something more stylish and flashy. She considered mango leaves (too narrow), curry leaves (too small), banana leaves (too big) and a few more, ultimately settling for the fig leaf Adam had originally suggested. Now you know why, after detailed examination of umpteen sarees in the shop for three hours, your wife finally goes for the first one that you had suggested!! This is the clearest proof that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve.

In the evening when God came around for a stroll, he could not find the couple. So he called out to Adam and said, “Where are you?” Adam replied that he was afraid because he realized that he was naked and so had hid himself. Looking around, God could see the outline of two heads peeking from behind a jacaranda tree. “Come out you disobedient children; you have eaten the forbidden fruit, that is why you are ashamed of your nakedness”, God was really angry. “Why did you disobey my commandment?” demanded God. The blame game now started. “The woman you created for me gave me the fruit and I ate” said the man. “The serpent beguiled me and I ate” was the woman’s excuse. Since the serpent had none to fall back upon, he just lay there staring into the distance. This is the same vacant stare that the check-in clerk at the airport has perfected when faced with an angry passenger who is left stranded on the ground as the plane is overbooked!

God decided that suitable punishment should be meted out for this crime of disobedience. He cursed the serpent and told him: “You will crawl on your belly and live on dust for the rest of your life. I will put enmity between your children and the woman’s children; since you will be crawling hereafter, you will bite her children’s heels and they will smash your head into pulp.” One can see this often happening in God’s own country where snakes are out to bite people and people are determined to kill them.

To the woman He said: “You will bring forth children in extreme pain. However, in spite of this pain, your desire for your husband will increase so that you continue to bear children. Henceforth, your husband will be your absolute boss.” A cynic has observed that the eighth wonder in the world is the woman getting pregnant again after she has gone through a very painful childbirth!

Lastly, to Adam He said: “Since you listened to your wife and disobeyed me, your wife shall wear the pants in the house when no one is looking. You will eat by the sweat of your brow till you die and return to the ground from where I created you. You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Then He chased them out of the garden. A Cherubim with a rotating flaming sword was placed as security guard at the entrance to the garden so that they don’t sneak back in to eat the fruit of the tree of life and live forever.

In course of time, earth began to be populated by humans. Satan and his legions, now condemned to everlasting torture in hell, and with nothing else better to do and to avenge themselves, found a new vocation, namely that of tempting and corrupting man and leading him to sin against God.

There is another story about the origin of demons that I came across recently while surfing the net. Once earth began to be populated by humans, God decided to appoint some angels to watch over them. They were called ‘watchers’. No touching, no meddling, no contact, just watching. Well, it was a bad decision on the part of God. When the watchers saw how beautiful the daughters of men were, they took them as wives and began to have children with them.

These children were called nephilim who were giant monsters. They began to eat humans and when humans were not available, each other. Fed up with all this, God summoned his commander-in-chief Archangel Michael and told him to throw them all into the eternal fires of hell. Demons are the evil spirits of the nephilim and they also form part of Lucifer’s army.

Derived from the idea of ‘watchers’ was the belief of an angel hovering over our right shoulder. He was known as the ‘guardian angel’. He is there to protect and guard us 24/7. As a counter, Lucifer also sends one of his devils to hang around our left shoulder, tempting us to do bad things and disobey God. We, as children, were taught to call upon our guardian angel when in doubt and need, and to thank him daily before we went to bed for protecting us from the vile Lucifer who wants us to offend God so that he can drag us into hell’s eternal fires.

[Published in the January issue of Snehasandesham]

MORAL RELATIVISM AND DIVISION BY A FRACTION: MEMORY BYTES OF A BYGONE ERA

In the 1950’s when I was growing up, we lived in rural Kaipuzha, right in the heart of Upper Kuttanad. Electricity was only just beginning to be available. So, for most of us, no television, no fridge, no microwave, no music system, no i-pod, no cell phone, not even a landline, no nothing. The present generation must be wondering how we survived. Well, our lives and activities revolved around the local parish church, the school and the paddy fields.

We were taught to respect priests and nuns as God’s representatives on earth. Talking back or showing the slightest sign of disrespect to them would be punished with sound beatings. Bishops were in a higher category as far as subservience and obedience was concerned. Our Bishop, as I was growing up, was Thomas Tharayil, who was my father’s cousin. His visits to the parish were occasions of great joy and celebration. He would alight from his foreign car dressed in a white cassock with red buttons and tied with a red sash and wearing his red skull cap. There was also the large gold cross attached to a very thick gold chain hanging around his neck. We would all kneel before him and kiss his ring as a sign of respect. He would celebrate the solemn mass wearing the mitre (the cap that looks like the crocodile’s mouth) and golden staff in his hand. We would all make sure we took Holy Communion from him only. On his annual official visit, he would distribute prizes to the top catechism student in each class, the first price going to the one who can best memorize the catechism book which was in question answer format. None of us understood what the contents really meant. In fact they were not meant to be understood or questioned, rather they were to be believed and obeyed.

God created you. He is 3 in 1: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The first humans created by Him were Adam and Eve. They were put in a garden and told not to eat the fruit of the apple tree. Satan in the form of a snake tempted Eve and she ate the fruit and then forced Adam to eat the apple. God was very angry and He chased them out of the garden. Because of this disobedience, all descendents of Adam and Eve, with the exception of Jesus and Mary, His mother, are tainted with original sin. Jesus the Son of God, the second in the Holy Trinity, took flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, had a virgin birth and was crucified on a cross by the Romans and Jews for sedition. On the third day He rose from the dead and moved around visiting his apostles. Forty days later, He ascended bodily into heaven to sit permanently at God the Father’s side. His death saved us all. In memory, we celebrate the holy mass, during which the priest changes bread and wine into the real body and the real blood of Christ which we eat and drink. Before we take communion we should confess our sins and be purified.

Sins are of two types: venial and mortal. Lying to your mother about the cookie that disappeared is a venial sin. Killing someone in cold blood or looking at a girl with lust is regarded as mortal. If you die without confessing a venial sin, you go to purgatory and stay there until some of your relatives and friends acquire sufficient indulgences on your behalf. You may collect indulgences through good works and prayer and in the good old days you could buy them. Anyway, the length of your stay depends on the total number of venial sins against you and how fast your friends and relatives can gather enough indulgences to get you out and send you to heaven. On the other hand if you die without confessing a mortal sin you are sent straight to hell. However, if you are clean of sins, both mortal and venial, you go directly to heaven. In those days, these two places, heaven and hell, were very important in the Catholic Church’s scheme of things.

The tortures of hell and the joys of heaven were explained to us in detail during our catechism classes. Heaven is the place where God sits on a high throne surrounded by his angels. Some of these angels form choirs and continually sing His praises. Others play the harp and the bugle, eternally playing those instruments and keeping God and other saved souls happy with their soothing music. Since they are all spirits, they need not spend time on cooking and eating and brushing teeth in the morning etc. like us humans. If we are good, then after death we go to heaven where we become angels and join the choirs or assigned to play the harp forever. Anyway, this was much better than burning in hell for all eternity! There is a special type of very hot non-extinguishable fire that burns without turning you to cinder.

The end result of all this was that in case we thought we did something wrong, even minor, we would become paranoid and run to the nearest available priest, wait in the queue to confess so that we would be ready for heaven if something tragic were suddenly to happen to us with no time to repent. By all means we had to avoid the fires and snakes of hell.

Apostle Paul, based on visions of Jesus, in which he claimed direct revelation by Him, made Jesus divine and preached a morality based on the pre-Christian Greco-Roman culture in which he grew up. Following Paul, and later Augustine, morality was mainly confined to sexual matters. Other sins, regarded as mortal, though at a lower level of gravity, were: not attending Sunday Mass, not confessing during the Lenten season, not taking communion once a year at least, eating meat on Fridays, and being disrespectful of priests and nuns. They were designed to keep the sheep in the pen. With the exception of lust, the deadly sins – gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride - were considered as not really serious sins but rather aberrations. Fraud, cheating, and betrayal – they were in the minor league.

Let me illustrate.

There were two grandfathers in my neighborhood, both closely related. One had two brothers who were priests and the other a son who was a priest. There were also nuns in their families but I am not sure of the exact numbers. One needs to remember that the more priests and nuns a family produces, the more exalted is its standing in Catholic society. Such families were regarded as having ‘superior pedigree’ and hence marriage alliances were eagerly sought from them.

The two grandfathers were regulars at daily mass. One had two of his grandsons kneeling beside him on either side. At the time of the consecration of the bread and wine, both would half-close their eyes, lift their heads upwards and raise their hands heavenward in supplication. Both went and received communion daily. Overall, it was the demonstration of an extremely saintly behavior inside the church.

Outside, however, it was a completely different story. They would not speak to each other. Moreover, each took every chance to malign the other to anyone who cared to listen. Both were very well off financially. They owned large tracts of coconut orchards and paddy fields. It happened that the two of them owned some paddy fields with a common boundary. In the darkness of night one would get his workers to shift the entire length of boundary mud wall, about a foot high, into the other’s field by a couple of feet. Since the soil was dark clayish, it was very soft and moist and easily shifted. The other gentleman, once he realized his loss, would move the mud wall, not to its original position, but further into his enemy’s territory by a good three feet! This back and forth shifting of boundaries amused the locals no end. At one time one of them planted a coconut sapling just on the boundary so that most of the nutrition is taken from the other’s property. Within a few days, the other gentleman did the same just on his side of the boundary so that the two coconut trees grew up like Siamese twins.

One time my father and his friend Mathaisir, who was also my drawing master at school, wanted to broaden and raise the small stretch of village road connecting our houses to the main road. Everyone including the very poor willingly shifted their boundaries bordering on the road and rebuilt them at their own expense. But not these two gentlemen! Their properties jetted out like sore thumbs. In those days it was thought unnecessary to confess selfish acts of this nature since there was nothing impure about them.

Of course murder, unlike these days when bands of contract killers roam the country, was very rare. I remember it was such a spectacle when someone was discovered stabbed to death on a narrow path we used as shortcut to school. We would never walk there alone, and if one happened to be alone, he would make a dash for it, making sure to jump over the spot where the man lay murdered, lest the victim’s evil spirit that was hovering around would possess him!

Our good behavior was, without doubt, the result not so much of looking forward to joining the choirs of angels in heaven but rather of fear of hellish fire and brimstone. Fear was an all pervading feeling then – fear of parents at home, fear of teachers in school, fear of church authorities, fear of hell hereafter, fear of God; in fact there was hardly anything we did not fear. This fear of nearly everything kept us in line. At school we were beaten black and blue for the smallest offence and we suffered in silence unlike today’s youngsters who would jump before a train and kill themselves because their demand for ‘chili chicken’ is denied or they failed their exams; suicides, like murder, were very rare and far between.

During my middle school years, one of my teachers was Thodukayil Pothakuttysir. One day he was teaching us math and the topic was division of a number by a fraction. The technique, as you know, is to multiply the numerator by the reciprocal of the denominator. To demonstrate practically how this is to be done, he led me, one of the smallest in stature, to the front of the class, held me up upside down by my heels and asked the class how I looked. They chorused, “upside down”. “So”, he continued, “do the same to the denominator and multiply the numerator.” My classmates may have forgotten the incident, but I certainly haven’t. And I have never made a mistake in division by a fraction!

[Published in the February 2009 issue of Snehasandesham]

Dear Friends

Sorry for the long gap in publishing my musings. Reasons range from sheer laziness to time taken to supervise the construction of a house in Adichira, Kottayam. Hope to spend quite some in Kerala in future.

Thanks for all your comments and words of encouragement.

I shall post those articles already published in Snehasandesham (SS)at digestible intervals. Even though some of you have already read them, go through them when you feel bored, or have nothing to do. You might discover a different perspective! Who knows!

I shall also post some musings that do not appear in SS. Since SS is only a monthly publication, any additional musings of mine can only appear here.

Remember, I write for fun. It is just a hobby.

Some of my writings serve a cathartic purpose; others are meant to provoke thought; still others are written in a light vein. If what I write makes readers sit up and debate, well and good; if anyone is offended, it is not intentional, rather incidental.

Kindly send in all your comments (even anonymously). They encourage and sustain my efforts.

Happy reading!

Maani.