FROM THE PULPIT: TO WHAT-WHO-DO WE LISTEN GENESIS 3:1-7

Well I finally did it and I am overwhelmed, I became an Internet subscriber. Since my youth I have believed the public library was a wonderful place to go and spend the day. To dig deep into the stacks and looking into all the knowledge humankind has amassed over the last four or five or maybe six millenniums. Not only the non-fiction, but the fiction as well. If the facts of history and the technological advances of the past generation become dry and sometimes boring reading, we could always turn to the fantasy of fiction. Go any place do anything, Be anyone we ever dreamed of being, here on earth or to the galaxies beyond our solar system. And with the Internet I do not even need to leave the confines of the office. It can be wonderfully and yet frighteningly addictive. A friends wife calls it his electronic mistress, a device that leads him in ways he should not go. A problem that has confronted God's creation since Adam and Eve ate from the tree in the center of the Garden. Some translation call it the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, another, The Tree of Wisdom, and yet another the Tree of Conscience. By what ever name we care to place upon "The Tree" Adam and Eve were confronted with two conditions they were not prepared for, first their disobedience and second what to do about their understanding of their nakedness. We in this generation are confronted with the same condition present to Adam and Eve only in astronomically greater proportions.

This information age we live in continues to compile data at an exponential rate, if we were to put it on a chart the line would be going straight up. It comes to us from every direction, the morning newspaper, the evening news, television sit-coms and drama, books, trade journals, educational institutions, the Internet (for some), politicians and talk shows, our friends, in casual conversation, our spouses, and even our pastors. And for what purpose? For the purpose of influencing others. Democrats see the solution to our nations problems from one perspective; the Republications from another . Each presents information to present their position to solicit a supportive response from the general public. Listen to the talk shows, whether on television or the radio and the confusion multiplies. So we turn on the TV to be entertained and we find some underlying social condition being presented with a suggested resolution. Oh, we may not always realize that there is an underlying message, but it is there. The same holds true for novels. All information, fiction and non fiction alike, is presented to solicit a specific response from you and I.

We pastors would probably be insulted if someone accused us of influence peddling, but even we are attempting to make input to our congregations by which they can make the correct decisions about how one is to live life according to God' s will. And do we have problems on being able to agree on our understanding of how God wants us to respond to his will ? Just look at the number of religious denominations there are in the world, and then the number of sects with in each denomination. Our belief that we have the proper understanding has been so strong we have and continue to go to war over our beliefs and our understanding of God's will.

If all the information we receive would just come from the snake, the serpent, it seems that we should be able to discern that the snake does not speak for God but speaks to deceive humankind into believing that we have the knowledge and wisdom and conscience to do what is needed to correct our human condition. It seems that the crafty serpent was the founder of secular Humanism. We will always need to deal with the question of what our world would be like if Adam and Eve had not hid.

In our modern society we are not far removed from the Garden of Eden. Serpents are all around us, whispering so subtly that we will not surely die if we partake of what the world has to offer. Yet we have God's word as to what is acceptable nourishment and what is not. We need to filter through all of the data we receive, from what ever source through God' s word to man and God' s desire that we spend our lives in fellowship together with God at the center.

Christ's Servant Fred Rister John 15:16