Curses

RELIGION IS A CURSE
Religion first appears obscurely in the symbolism of the creation story. The new life that Adam and Eve enjoyed in their relationship with God is characterized as the Garden of Eden or a garden of pleasure. This life is a preview of the Promised Land which is equated with the New Covenant. What we see introduced in Genesis, therefore, is the first telling of the story that is told again and again in the Bible. It goes like this:

  • Man lives in a sinful religious environment.
  • God intervenes and gives man a new life in a garden of pleasure (i.e. promised land) in which the worship is pure and unadulterated by religious forms or practices of any kind.
  • God establishes a covenant with man: Eat from the Tree of Life, but do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
  • Man breaks the covenant by choosing religion (i.e. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) instead of Tree of Life (i.e. New Covenant obedience where the law is written on his heart).
  • God intervenes again with the following:
  1. forgiveness
  2. exile from the garden
  3. a curse (i.e.religion)
  4. a way of reentering the garden (i.e. dying by encountering the cherubim with their swords).
  • People escape the power of the curse, die to their efforts to be reconnected to God through religious works, and reenter the garden (i.e.Promised Land, and the New Covenant).

Those who have read the creation story for its symbolic meaning and not just its literal meaning understand that the curse of religion is the real consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin. As long as they ate from the Tree of Life, their job to dress and keep the garden was easy. This life symbolically represents the life of New Covenant disciples. But when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, life was hard for them (i.e. they toiled in it). This life symbolically represents the life of Old/First Covenant religionists. God made it hard because he did not, and still does not, want his people to live lives that are controlled by the many rules and regulations of religious do’s and do not’s that define each and every religion.

In other words, what God wants is that his people to be free from the curse of religious traditions, rules and regulations (i.e. legalism) that have been conceived by, taught by, and administered by religious leaders. It is in this state of freedom that God’s Spirit can have full reign over the spirit of man so that man can best represent God’s loving character to a lost and hurting world. It only works, however, when God himself writes his laws on the hearts of people and teaches them himself how and when to fulfill those laws in their everyday lives.