Reflection on December 12, 1979
http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2tb11.htm
I think it is interesting to think about these chapters, not just as a story of the creation of man, but foundational to our own existence and meaning. JPII doesn’t want this to be left as a nice way to show the beginning, but these experiences and understandings “are always at the root of every human experience.” That takes Genesis out of the category of story that is either true or not true, ...myth or fantasy, and puts it into a category of teaching us about who we are as humans. The foundations that are taught are not thought about because they are seen as obvious and taken for granted. Whether it has been done maliciously or merely because we have just taken it for granted, some of these foundational truths have been put into doubt by the world. (I have already talked about secularist idea that man is just an animal as opposed to JPII’s original solitude)
JPII puts an emphasis on using our experiences to help us understand these things. But, it is hard for us to imagine original nakedness or what it is like to have no shame. We are so skewed that we cannot experience what that is like. But I think that anyone that has children can get a sense of what it might have been like. Little children have no shame, or at least don’t let it interfere with what they are doing. The innocence of a child is a helpful gauge for how original nakedness might have looked like. It is not that they are proud of their nakedness, it is more like they don’t know they are naked or that if they know they are naked, they doubt understand that is a shameful thing. Someone with older children can tell me when this ends.
The question it would seem then is what do we have to do to keep our children innocent? You teach a child what is right and wrong (tree of good and evil) and as you teach them, you, in the very same instance, take away their innocence. In order to teach them, you must tell them what is evil and at soon as that thought enters their mind, they cross that boundary and are forever changed. From that time on, it becomes a choice to do good or bad, where as before, in innocence, they had no choice. It makes you stop and realize that everything you do in front of your child is teaching them and taking them over more and more boundaries from which they can never get back.
I like the term “boundary experience”. JPII describes shame as one of these. It is something that once it happens, there is no going back. I was thinking that trust is a boundary experience. Once you are lied to by anybody, it is impossible to fully trust anyone, but when someone lies to you, it is especially hard to ever trust that person again. It doesn’t matter what happens or what they may say, that boundary is crossed and once on the other side, there is no way to go back to where they were.