Reflection - 2/13

By Steve Hall

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021321.cfm
Genesis 3:9-24
Mark 8:1-10

In a passage from a novel I recently read the principle character calls the reader’s attention to his “blood knowledge of his inheritance” — an inheritance “given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical.” Though the lives of our immediate forefathers may not have been obscure and hard and stoical, they certainly passed on to each of us an inheritance that bears directly on who we are today. 

T. S. Eliot, in his 1944 essay “What Is a Classic?,” complained that a new kind of provincialism was becoming apparent in our culture: “a provincialism, not of space, but of time.” What Eliot had in mind was provincialism about the past: a failure to think of dead generations as fully real. Nevertheless, some of the things we value most we have inherited from the past and those people were very real. A former professor of mine used to refer to today’s scholars as men who were standing on the shoulders of giants. We have to go a long way back if we wish to find the roots of so much that is valuable to us today and n doing so we will frequently be jumping from one set of shoulders to another.

Like it or not, our inheritance is not something we get to choose. In some ways it comes to us genetically. But apart from that, we receive, in a variety of ways: an inheritance from our family, our community, our city, our country, our national historical background, our physical location on the planet, and i’m sure I missed many other sources.

Archeologists are still today discovering ancient but unknown civilizations. But the ones we find most significant are not those lost to us for centuries, but those which have lived on and which have provided an inheritance to those alive today. The philosophies of classical Greece have influenced every subsequent philosophy in Western Culture. Construction principles from the Roman Empire and other peoples of the time have provided a basis for the architects of today. Our structure for civil and criminal law are from Classical Rome with significant additions and modifications added through the centuries. “Zero” is not a modern concept, but was introduced and became an important factor in mathematics in ancient times. All of these and so much more are part of our inheritance.

With today’s reading it is useful to turn our attention to our spiritual inheritance. Many of the so-called gods of ancient times were justified by their adherents in the decadent sexual behavior those gods ‘required’. Those god’s disappeared when men discovered that god’s were unnecessary to justify such behavior. Those of the Romans and Greeks had been deemed unworthy of the title by a skeptical populace even before the advent of Christianity. Nevertheless, even in skepticism the belief in a higher power persisted. In the end, the God the Western World would inherit was the God of Judaism.

Most of the time, when we attend to the Scriptural account of Adam and Eve, our focus is directed toward sin and its consequences. But, like all of Scripture, the account is given to tell us about God. The depth of theological insight in the account is amazing. In it we learn that God didn’t need anything to work with when he created everything. We learn that his word alone was sufficient to accomplish his will. We learn that all things were good in their original state. We learn that evil was introduced into the world by man. We learn that, even after man’s failure, God was solicitous of man’s well being. We learn that God does not punish and that man must endure the natural consequences of his behavior. We learn that the opportunity for eternal life was present at the beginning of creation and that God protected man by removing him from the misery of living eternally in his fallen state.

Moreover, we learn that man in union with God was the original arrangement. That ‘friendship’ with God was natural. That man was not abandoned by God because of his failure.

This is the God of our inheritance. Through the centuries there have been those who would diminish him in one way or another. The most egregious of those distortions would separate him from his creation or presume him to be indifferently watchful of what happens within it. Others, including some of his ministers, have embraced the notion that he is judgmental and vengeful, even anxious to punish. But these errors are from men. This is not the God who has made himself known.

While, through the centuries of men, other gods have come and gone, only one is our true inheritance. It is He who makes us the best of what we are today.