This
morning I have listened to two very different recordings which now evoke a common
theme. On my way to Meeting, I listened
to a TED talk about violence treated prophylactically, as a public health
problem, rather than with reaction, judgment and punishment. Over and over, where this approach was
applied, murder rates were cut by about fifty percent.
Second,
here before Meeting, watching a lecture on “Lost Christianities,” I learned of,
and marveled at, some of the intellectual gymnastics of early Christian writers
seeking to defend and advance their theories of the meaning of The Old
Testament in light of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
These
talks remind me of the notion that the proverbial tree of the knowledge of good
and evil is better seen as the tree of the perception
of the knowledge of good and evil; the tree of the perception of the knowledge of right and wrong; that is, the tree
of self-righteousness.
