Living in the Avalanche
There are some scriptures and other sources which suggest that our first parents really did sin (or transgress). At least, that there may have been a better way to do what they were trying to do.
I think the sin of the Fall may have been thinking that since it had to be done, it must be possible to do it.
Like, you are on a high mountain and you have to get down. You notice there is high avalanche risk but you can’t think of any other way to get down. So–this is human nature–you assume it must be possible. It isn’t.
Down you go, and down goes the avalanche.
The sin of many Christians is different, though. It is to take the Fall as an instructive story about how we are to behave. As if it were primarily a moral lesson. “Watch where you step,” they say. “Speak softly. You don’t want to trigger an avalanche. That’s avalanche behavior, bro, that’s what got Adam and Eve in trouble.”
But the avalanche already happened. We are born in the avalanche. The avalanche is still roaring down. As anyone knows in our moments and days and seasons of despair and frustration and sickness and evil. We are being tossed in the air and then buried again under tons of plummeting snow.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
John Mansfield
February 10, 2026
This is the mood I was in this morning, listening to songs that fit with it. Good timing for me to read this now.
Sute
February 12, 2026
I realize from our perspective, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is not seen as sexual intercourse, but from a purely ancient metaphorical sense, I think there’s a case to be made.
Fruit, seed, off spring. The knowledge one can only get from becoming a parent.
I’ve seen some comments saying there’s no way it could have been that because the fruit was not a moral sexual sin. To which I agree, they were married. So no foul there.
That being said I’m not fixed on that at all, but just see it as one interpretation of an ancient story.
From a latter-day saint perspective, the idea of a fruit giving knowledge is something I feel we need to think deeper about.
We have the fruit of the tree of life, but we see that as a metaphor of love of God through the saviors atonement.
So what’s the tree of knowledge of good and evil? It must stand for *something* not just a dank looking apple.
Zen
February 13, 2026
To know someone is an idiom for sexual relations, eg. Adam knew Eve and she had children.
So, not Fornication, but Married Sex… not completely implausible. Worth thinking about.