2:15 וַיִּקַּ֛ח ה’ אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ” – בראשית“
“and the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to tend and take care of it“ – Genesis 2:15
Before the ten commandments, before Moses and all the prophets. Before all the Abrahamic Religions formed. Before every tenet, law, tradition, and prayer. God gave men its most important mission, its reason and role on Earth – to tend and take care of it. That was, is, and always will be our central mission in this world. A mission we are grossly failing at.
We were gifted the privilege to be partners in this world, in this Garden of Eden that we have turned upside down. Given the intelligence and capacity to modify, manage, and tend. And for a while, we did well; we were part of ecosystems across the world, from the tribes in the deep Amazon to the Fjords of Norway, the basins of the Niles and Euphrates, the coastal regions of Asia, and into the Mongolian Stepe. Integrated and essential to each space. Following the Buffalo Herds in the Midwest Plains, creating dams and artificial rivers to create greenery and produce. We allied ourselves with all types of mammals, from horses to man’s best friend, the dog. We even entered into unwritten contracts with hens, sheep, and cows. We blended in, perhaps not perfectly, but our sages and ancestors in all corners of the earth were in tune with nature, with this beautiful creation, with this Garden of Eden called Earth.
And then somewhere along the lines of history we began to stray. What started as progress and development soon turned into detachment, and with it, pain ensued. During that long and slow detachment, we turned our backs to Mother Earth. From partners, we turned into its enemies, earth, which gave us all that is good. The industrial age was the final tipping point. We left our ecosystems, our partnerships and cities began their expansion. Cities that slowly became cancers to their surroundings. Wars, colonization, and destruction became by-products if this new path we embarked on. Yet progress and development can not be viewed as just destruction and horror, life is not black and white, it is ful of colors and shades of grey and that is not the point of the article. It is thoughtless, aimless, reckless progress that has always been the problem.
The problem is of course, complex; greed, ego and lust for power where so many man are lost, wondering why their lives are a wreck, why they’re unhappy, why the misery, why the depression, why the anxiety … why there is no peace in their lives, why it feels empty. Yet the solution is quite simple, it just seems complex in this age of individualism and detachment. A solution that was part of our existence when we acted in the best interest of the tribe, group, of the collective. Then everyone understood that the actions of the individual shape the collective, and there lies the key to transformation.
Religion can be a powerful force for good. It can be a driver for good, unfortunately, often, those lost men and women have spoken on its behalf. Among the many wrong choices made by many of these leaders, the wrong priorities have been set in place for their congregants. But those congregations, at least in the Abrahamic Religions, which encompass the majority of the population, have only to read that single first commandment “to tend and care for it”. It is placed there, right at the beginning, before everything else, for that specific reason – that this action comes before everything else you do.
…. ( TO BE CONTINUED )