The Real First Commandment: Have Sex

A couple of years ago I was at a little reunion with some high school friends, many of whom are n.p.c.'s (that is, non-practicing Catholics...not non-player characters). At the said gathering, the topic of religion came up. Rather, an encomium on atheism came up. I don't really recall what arguments, if any, I made in defense of faith. I sometimes find you score the most persuasion points by not getting in the fight at all in these types of situations. Anyway, at one point, a certain friend made the comment that if he were an omnipotent creator, then all of his created beings would just undergo a permanent experience of maximized physical pleasure. He used a little less circumlocution and a little more graphic language. It wasn't just that there was suffering in the world that upset him; it was that God wouldn't make us permanently pleasured.

It was a puerile argument to say the least.

That argument from several years ago came to mind, and it occurred to me that, as juvenile and sophomoric as that philosophical point appeared to be, he actually wasn't that far off from the mark. That is, I turned to God's first words to man in the first account of creation in Genesis:

God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it..." (Genesis 1.1:28)

I rather wish I could have thought of the line when my friend made his comment, since it suggests that God's original plan was, in fact, for man to pretty much do precisely what my friend's more concupiscent heart had hoped for.

That is, God's first commandment was for us to have sex. That's it. Pretty simple. His original first commandment wasn't even a reminder that he was God. He only had to do that long afterwards. But, at first, our primary duty was to be fertile...followed by keeping the plants and animals in line.

Not a bad deal, if you ask me. But the important thing to note here is that we turned it down.

We were the ones who complicated things. We were the ones who decided that pleasure wasn't enough to satisfy us. We decided (according to the second story of creation) that we needed power in addition to pleasure. It was in grasping for illicit power that we came to have knowledge of good and evil, and that desire for power is what ultimately led us to forsake the existence my friend thought would be totally gratifying.

Comments

[Lindsay]

As Maura and I like to say when our feeble humanity gets frustrating, "Stupid Fall! Went and ruined everything!"

[PeterTerp]

Well, I suppose it could have been worse. We could have not been offered redemption.

And at least we fell while trying to take a back door to becoming more like God.

That must have been somewhat flattering to God...if only in the same way it is flattering to catch someone trying to plagiarize your research.