Just read a great blog post by Dave Rogers on the importance of meaning, which includes a referral to a TED talk on the topic. He writes:

But as children, we were exposed, constantly and relentlessly to messages about achievement, about desire and acquisition, about competition and rank. We were saturated in these messages, and children today still are. We relentlessly observe each other, in part I suppose, in the traditional sense of getting to know other people. To make friends, or to learn who our enemies are. But mostly, I think, to compare ourselves with others.

I particularly agree with this description of how dualism is implanted in children by emphasizing achievement and merit that can only be determined through comparison.

In my opinion, one way to read Genesis 3 is as description for how all of us grow up. Our parents teach us right from wrong and in that we all eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Dualism becomes our default, evolutionary, mode of operation, which requires us to see everything and everyone apart from ourselves. Dualism prevents us from seeing ourselves as a part of something else, connected to everything and everyone around us.

What I find even worse, is that almost everyone’s experience with what is known as Christianity, reinforces this dualism. Whether it’s described as bible believing or not bible believing, protestant or catholic, saved or not, sinner or not a sinner, and we believe these things because we believe this is how God intends us to view things. All of this defines a hierarchical world with supremacy as the natural order, and that leads to all the “isms” that ills us.

It’s as if we convinced ourselves that the story of Genesis 3 is exactly how God intended, but is that true? Go back and read it. What if the whole purpose of what Jesus taught was to for us to change our minds about how we think of God?