"The Way of G-d"

Part 1: "The Fundamental Principles of Reality"

Ch. 3: "Mankind"

Paragraphs 8

As we indicated before, Adam and Eve's gross misjudgment caused a change in the cosmic reality.

At first, evil only existed so that Adam and Eve could be allowed the opportunity to opt for either true good or *apparent* good (i.e., evil). Had they opted for true, unalloyed, G-dly good, they'd have achieved perfection and the state of true humanness instantaneously (for they were actually only potentially truly human). They chose apparent good instead, and did nearly irreparable damage to themselves and to us as well as to the world, who all depended on them to perfect it all right then and there.

(But let's not cluck our tongues at them and be surprised at how "asinine" they could have been; for they are us. We, too, settle for something that *seems* to be good at the moment, but which clearly proves not to be in the end. And we accept that in ourselves, simply because we're "merely human" and "imperfect", as we put it. They, too, were "merely human"-- in the manner in which we depicted it-- and imperfect; and they too thought they were right. It would thus do us well to step back from ourselves and cluck our tongues at what *we're* about to do the next time we're faced with a moral choice. For mistakes in that realm continue to affect us, those around us, and the world at large, detrimentally.)

Nonetheless they erred, and as a consequence the original equibalance of good and evil tipped toward the side of evil. And it became easier to err, and harder to rectify.

For evil originally had a specific, limited mission (the above-mentioned need to offer a choice, so as to allow for evil's own undoing), and it was easy to conquer it. And as soon as it would have been conquered, mankind would have achieved perfection (i.e., true humanness)

Evil, henceforth, took on a life of its own. It began to grow accustomed to the power it had attained, and has since become entrenched in the world. What would have seemed clearly wrong now seems "de rigeur", "normal", and "human nature", despite its clear moral ambiguity *at best*.

It has therefore become much more difficult to choose to be good; much harder to abandon our faults and earn perfection.

Whereas once all we needed to do was to conquer our own tendency for wrong and go on from there, now we must work twice as hard, as a consequence of Adam and Eve's cosmic error. We must not only fight our own battles, and win-- but we must also fight Adam and Eve's. We must undo our own mistaken bravado, return to the Adamic state, then fight the battle Adam and Eve did not, and must win it when they couldn't.

Only then will we have achieved true humanness.

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