Fourth in a series on the Christian Tariqah. See the third here
Adam and Eve were our great, great, great ... grandparents. They are our first parents. Their name is our name. Their shame is our shame.
Imagine your father was a traitor to his community, or your mother was the village prostitute. The shame that you would bearis only a fraction of the infinite dishonor and disrepute we all live under as members of Adam and Eve's family and ex-members of the community of God.
When God sees us, He sees the muddied name of the family of Adam and Eve, the ones who scorned His glorious paradise and followed His enemy instead.
When God sees us, He sees us doing the same thing. Each of us, regardless of the actions of our first mother and father, continue to dishonor the Most High God and sully His name whenever we disobey Him.
With such shame hanging around our necks, the Most Honorable Being, Almighty God, will never allow us to join His community. For a short time, on this earth, we have the mercy of remote proximity to the community of God and the chance to change our destiny. But when we die, we will be buried in our shame and, like pigs and outhouses, forever cast out from the magnificent, glorious presence of Almighty God, lest we sully His glory further.
Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. Across the world, across religious divides, and across history, man has not stopped trying to remove his shame. Through any number and variety of self-effacing acts of piety and good works, mankind has tried, desperately, to restore themselves to a position of honor before God. The devastating fact is that, in so doing, mankind has simply heaped more shame upon themselves.
No amount of effort or works will ever restore honor to mankind. Nothing we can do will ever work us back into the community of God. We are outcasts. We cannot force our way in. We have to be invited in. We have to be taken in.
Fourth in a series on the Christian Tariqah. See the fifth here