00B.09 Chapter 2--"Where Art Thou?"

II. "Where Art Thou?”

1. If we take the Bible as our source of information, the second interrogatory that was ever uttered in the language of earth or that registered upon the human sense of hearing was Jehovah’s call to his fallen son, Adam, "Where art thou?" The first question had been propounded by Satan as a method of approach to the curiosity and vanity of the woman’s heart. "Hath God said?" It is significant that the first shadow that cast its dark form across the threshold of man’s happy home was caused by a question mark placed after Jehovah’s warning. It sought to discredit God’s word and to create a doubt in the heart of God’s child. First, God’s word must be taken out of the way by some means. If the woman can be made to forget or to disbelieve what God hath said, then she will give audience to the plea for the pleasures and advantages of this fruit. If she yields, there is no doubt about what man will do. There will be no necessity for talking to him about the falsity of God’s word or the advantages of sin, the woman’s soft request will be enough to captivate his responsive soul. But if the echo of Jehovah’s warning does give him pause, the same seduc­tive speech that beguiled the woman will drown the echo and silence his scruples. And who can make the speech better than the wife of his bosom?

2. Satan’s scheme was well laid, and his first attack was intended to sweep away the only barrier to sin. "Hath God said?" He knew what God had said, but he did not simply repeat the statement and then contradict it. Nay, that is too crude a method for the subtle artist that is Satan! He is talking to a woman, and he will not for a moment forget his finesse. He asks the question and evinces great surprise and bewilderment. "Hath God said?" Is it possible that he told you that? I am at a loss to know how he could have told you such a thing when the reverse is true. He must have underestimated your intellectual ability and thought he could scare you into submission. He wanted to limit your freedom, keep you in ignorance, and hold you under his authority. He threatened a fearful punishment, but you are too strong-minded to believe that. He was talking to you as though you were a child. Why, he himself is too good and loving to visit affliction upon you in any such unmerciful manner. He knows that no such calamity will befall you, but he knows that if you are strong enough, independent enough, intellectual enough and brave enough to defy him and eat this fruit you will become wise, free, intelligent, and the master of your own soul. In fact you will be a god yourself and no longer be the cringing slave of a tyrannical God who keeps you in bondage through superstition and fear! Come on now, assert yourself! Partake of this beau­tiful tree! Eat of this luscious fruit and enjoy it! Don’t be a stupid child! Don’t be an ignorant pagan! Join the intelligentsia, express your own personality, flout supersti­tion, defy tradition, and thumb your nose at God! Become a modern! You know this tree appeals to you; I can see that you admire its beauty and long to know its flavor and to enjoy its delicious goodness. Is it any worse to take it than it is to want it? Why not be brave and intelligent enough to do what in your heart you want to do? Why suppress your desires and dwarf your personality? Why yield to a false fear and pretend to obey God when you are disobedient in your heart? Why feign purity when your mind is filled with mephitic nastiness? Why become a repressed neurotic? Why mope about in morbid unhappi­ness and under restraints that you hate? Be yourself! Be frank and honest. There is no virtue in hypocrisy. If there is such a thing as right and wrong, you will be able to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong after you throw off this arbitrary authority.

3. Our poor progenitors fell victims to this false reason­ing and decided to try the high adventure of defying author­ity and of indulging their vanity with the thought that they were intellectually independent enough to do exactly what they desired to do! They, like all their posterity, were deluded into thinking that by sinning they were exhibiting broad-mindedness and intellectual independence. They were not analytical enough to see that instead of doing their own independent will they were doing exactly what someone else wanted them to do, and they were thereby becoming the most servile slaves of the forces of evil.

4. Now where is man? The next scene in the tragic drama shows him conscious of his guilt, ashamed and hiding. Had he found Satan’s promises true? No, he admits that he has been defrauded by deception. What else does beguile mean? True, he knew the difference between good and evil, only to find himself aligned with evil and conscious that he was a sinner. He now knew the difference between guilt and innocence by his sad loss of the joy of the latter and his poignant sense of the former. He did not enjoy his intellectual independence and was not proud of his acquired wisdom and was not bold toward God. He did not want to see God or rely upon him to supply his needs. He ran away into hiding and endeavored by his own devices to manufacture a covering for his shame. He thought he could cloak his sin in the flimsy pretense of fig leaves, but this miserable makeshift, instead of disguising his disobedi­ence, merely announced his guilt. He was afraid, ashamed, confused, and lost. Adam, "where art thou?" "Who told thee that thou wast naked?" Not merely who informed you that you were without covering, surely Adam and Eve knew this, but who made you conscious of your nudity? Who caused you to take notice of it and to be ashamed? What guilty feeling makes you hide from your Father, Adam? "Where art thou?"

Poor man could not justify his act, enjoy his condition, or get out of his predicament. He felt resentment toward his wife and tried to lay the blame on her. From that day to this, sinful men and women have antagonized each other and preyed upon each other. There is never a broken home but that each partner tries to lay the blame upon the other. Only where the order of the Lord is respected and the word of the Lord is obeyed can there be peace and harmony in the home.

Poor, trembling Mother Eve could not deny the charge of her husband, and in her humiliation and shame she felt keenly the fraud that had been perpetrated upon her. "The serpent beguiled me." Yes, he told her she would be free and independent and that she could ignore God or even throw him completely out of the reckoning. Ah, how monstrous that falsehood seems as she stands face to face with her Maker and must answer for her conduct. How dark and damnable is that lie as she is driven out of her beautiful home and away from the tree of life! Out into a cruel and bloody world to fight and struggle and toil for an existence; to suffer and sorrow and mourn for a few brief years and then grow old and decrepit and stumble into the grave and return to the dust!

"Where art thou?" Can you find yourselves in your present state of mind, with conflicting emotions tearing your hearts, with memories of lost joys haunting you and with the chaotic confusion of ideas, theories, doubts, and fears that fill your souls, O my children?

5. Thousands of generations have been born and buried since that first sin of our parents bequeathed suffering and death to all the human race. The voice of Jehovah has been calling to his children through the ages, and in his mercy he has offered us a way out of our woe through the cross of Christ. But Satan is still preaching his falsehoods and poor, vain mortals still lend their ears to his honeyed tones.

6. The old serpent has never changed his method or varied his plea. He attacks now just as he did on that bright Monday morning in the infancy of lime. His first move is to place a question mark after the word of God; beget doubt in the heart of his victim; deny that there is any punishment for sin and, if the subject seems attentive, deny that there is any sin; stir resentment against God’s "arbitrary author­ity" and incite rebellion against such unreasonable restraints! Then he flatters man’s intellect and urges him to demand freedom and independence. Next he pictures the pleasure of sin and points to the primrose path that to the beguiled vision of mortals leads into the garden of eternal delights.

7. We should not be ignorant of his devices. He de­stroys faith in God through falsehood and deception and then destroys souls through disbelief. Whether he is dealing with a dizzy daughter of Eve or a sapient son of Adam, he uses the same method and attacks at the same point. Whether his plea comes through the scholarly and sedate utterances of a doctor of philosophy in the college class­room, through the fulsome flattery of the social siren, through the seductive sounds of the ballroom, or through the raucous call of the roadside honky-tonk, it is directed at the same vital weakness in the human heart, and it accomplishes the same result in every case. It induces men to disregard God, and then come sin, suffering, and suicides; broken homes, wrecked Edens, divorces, drunkenness, death, and damnation: among nations, upheavals, revolutions, a confusion of tongues, a babel of voices, clashing ideologies, wars, and hell on earth. Where art thou, O human race?