Now the most cunning serpent approaches my garden and asks me: "Did God really tell you not to take all that pleases you?" I answer the serpent: "I have my spouse and my spouse has me, and we are happy being one body, pleasing to God. We are free to take and enjoy everything around us except what the Lord God has forbidden us to touch lest we die." But the serpent says to me: "You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you take what you think God has forbidden you, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods who know best what is good and what is bad." (Gen 3:1-5)
The serpent got closer to me and says: "Are you happy with your life? Does your spouse bring you joy, pleasure, and happiness? Does your spouse satisfy and fulfill all your dreams and wants? Is your spouse young and full of beauty? Is your spouse exciting and full of life? Are you in love with your spouse? Are you really happy? Is what you have as good as God says it is?"
Then the serpent sweeps me further away from my garden and my family and places in my presence someone other than my spouse. The serpent then says: "All of this can be yours." [Luke 4:7]
My heart floods with new desires and needs, my blood overflows and rushes from it and fills the tiniest of my veins. With every passing second, I fall deeper and deeper in love, gliding toward an endless pit of seduction and a horizon of disordered sexual wants. With my intellect enslaved and my will distorted, I consume the fruits of the forbidden tree, and I have become indeed one of the gods, deciding for myself what is good and what is not.
My reason, puffed-up with pride, justifies it all: "I am made to enjoy it all and am truly deserving of it all. I am a higher level of being than my spouse and deserve someone better. I deserve the freedom to experience life unbounded by self-imposed human restrictions. Suppressed emotions and unrealistic expectations are counter to my nature and lead to nothing but unnecessary misery. I am free to love and free to live, more than ever before."
"I am in love and nothing at all matters to me except being with my new lover. My previous obligations, promises, and vows, to my loved ones and to God, are now meaningless empty words of self-imposed human misery. Nothing can entice me to let go of my newly found love. I am not the least concerned with what anyone else thinks of me, not even God. Who on earth or even in heaven can judge me? Who can judge love? And if someone did, even with good intentions to set my path straight, they are simply ignorant and incapable of understanding my special case."
"I want it all, and if pressed, I am willing to give everything else away for the sake of my new possession, my new love. Yes, of course, my spouse and my family remain important to me, and I love them too. Surely they would understand that I am in love?! They would understand that I want them with me too, outside the garden. If they don't understand and are not willing to be with me, I am willing to let go of them as well, for I will do whatever it takes to protect my new possession."
Pride consumes my reason, and I am so blind to that fact. My will is distorted and no longer belongs to me. I am lost in a dark world, and the light within me is shutout from me, as if turned into darkness. I am now absolutely careless of anything and anyone except myself. I am stuck in a dream and incapable of waking up. I am away from home, outside God's garden, and back where the serpent lives, and day by day the vision of my family fades away from me.
I look up toward God as I fall even deeper, and I look back down and choose pride over mercy, and mumble, "I am so far gone and there is no way back home for me, so I might as well go deeper. I place my trust in the serpent who encourages me and sympathizes with me. It tells me about God and how God is unfair in how God made me. How God is unfair in judging me after making the fruit of the forbidden tree desirable to me. How God emphasizes the value of the family, how husband and wife are to be one while it is obvious that dullness occupies such union and burdens of daily life suffocate it. The serpent assures me that there is something unjust about the whole design of the family. But it assures me that there is no way back. 'God's mercy' the serpent says, 'is not welcomed here' "
"Sometimes in secret, I pray to God, but God remains silent and says nothing. It is like God understands and approves of my new affair with my lover. I bargain with God to take everything except my new way of life. Perhaps all these human laws and burdens of marriage vows are designed by people to control the masses and not originated by God. Perhaps God never intended such heavy burdens on us. Perhaps God does not really care. It makes no difference anyway, now that I am my own god, and my will is what matters most; I will to do whatever it takes to make me happy. I am on this road but not alone, the serpent guides me. If God wants to be silent, let God remain silent!"
My soul, my soul, who will lift you up from the pit of darkness? My soul, my soul, who can descend into hell and give you life? So proud yet so blind. So free yet so enslaved. You have gained it all but lost yourself. Who will turn you around and show you that your sin can never be greater than God's mercy? My soul, my soul, who will save you and give you true life?
