True story

The reason I love the Bible so much is because I find it to be true. Not, primarily, on the basis that the events told therein happened to someone a long time ago in lands far away; but because they resonate, in my deepest being, with my personal experience of being part of humanity. And not only with me, but with everyone I see around me; indeed, I would suggest, with everyone who has ever lived. The largest scientific sample ever undertaken.

Take, for example, the Great Lie, in which our first parents, the archetypal Earthling and the Mother Of All The Living were deceived into believing that God did not want the very best for them. There were consequences to such a belief. Are consequences.

For one thing, the Earthling, knowing the world to be not as it should be, not all it could be, would strive to make the world right, to subdue and cultivate it according to their will; until their strength was spent, and, at last, they would have to make peace with their own limitations...

For another, all the children of the Mother Of All The Living would know pain, in the bearing and sustaining and letting-go of more children, of one another. Pain matched by, and at least in part caused by, the desire to love and be loved, to protect and be protected...

If you can honestly tell me that this is not your story, not the story of your family and friends, not the story you read in the paper each morning, then I recommend that you don't waste your time reading any further with the Bible.

But if, in all honesty, you know this story to be true, then I can only recommend that you waste no more time in not reading the Bible.