Paradise Lost
My time in Italy brought me back to regularly reading the Bible for the first time in several years, and the story of the Fall in Genesis fascinated me like no other. I had just become a father myself at the time, and I spent about a year constantly returning to the story of Adam and Eve, obsessing over it’s meaning. Finally, I had an epiphany on why I connected so closely with the story. This is the story of the responsibilities of Fathers to their children, and for the first time in my life I fully understood it.
Genesis 3 tells the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the decisions that lead to the first sin. In the story, God is Adam’s father, having created him from the dust of the ground in the previous chapter. As his father, God has an incredible responsibility to protect Adam from the difficulties of the world He knows. Even though he is fully grown, Adam still possesses the innocence of a child. God creates a paradise where Adam can live and is insulated from the vagaries of the world outside the garden. God gives everything to Adam but instructs him and his companion Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As the story goes, Eve is tempted by a serpent, eats from the tree, and then convinces Adam to do the same. Once God finds out, He expels them from the Garden to live in toil and experience the world as it truly exists.
I was seven years when I was put outside the garden. In 1991, my parents divorced. I don’t really remember much of my life prior to this time. My parents both found new relationships, and I was quickly shown what the world is really like. My mother picked the most vulgar human I have ever met, and after two years of constant verbal abuse, she finally threw him out of the house. In return, we were treated with stalking, death threats, and a summer of homelessness while we avoided the man. With my dad, things were different but certainly not a sanctuary. My dad had remarried someone that wanted nothing more than to become a mother, but she was never able to have a child of her own. The next few years were a time of subtle degradation that led me to constantly fight with my stepmother and always feel unwelcome in my father’s house. Until I was 18 years old and fled my home to join the navy, this constant upheaval was played on repeat as a whole series of men showed me the real world, whether I was ready or not.
As I have grown and become a parent, I always think about how my past shapes the way I want to raise my own son. My upbringing turned me into a tough son of a bitch, with emphasis on the son of a bitch part at times. My wife comes from a very different background, and she lived a very sheltered existence in her childhood. Sometimes I laugh at her naivete towards the world, but more often I love and appreciate her ability to soften and civilize me. Together we have had discussions, as all parents do, about how we want to raise our child. The main thing we agree upon is the need to protect our son’s innocence. To both of us, this point is completely non-negotiable. Understanding the way the world really works is an incredible burden, especially when gained prematurely. I know that once that innocence is lost it can never be found again.
Which brings us back to the Garden of Eden. The story is an allegory of the innocence of childhood and the true cost of knowledge of good and evil. Childhood is a time of blissful ignorance, where none of us are burdened by the difficulties of life. As Adam’s father and the creator of the entire world, God fully understands what lies outside the garden. Any parent, especially God, who has seen the joy and wonder in their children should naturally desire to nurture and protect this innocence and introduce them to the reality of adult life only when necessary.
When Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they gained knowledge that God knows that they are not ready to have. Their sin; however, is not gaining knowledge, but disobedience to their Father. In His wisdom, God fully understands the consequences of the knowledge that the fruit of the tree provides. Also, as a father, God understands that His children must be able to explore the world around them, which leads to the inevitable encounter with temptation. That temptation arrives in the form of the serpent, who represents all those things outside of a parent’s control that our children encounter. When faced with a cunning seducer for the first time, Eve and then Adam eschew the wisdom of their father to learn about the world for themselves. God is left with no choice but to send his children out of the garden to encounter the world.
I have an incredible reverence for tradition, and the Biblical narrative serves as a foundation stone for my life. To me, the first 11 books of Genesis serve as the perfect allegorical framework for how to live the right life. For our ancestors living in a violent and dangerous world, these stories showed how to organize their lives to create and develop the next generation. Especially for men, these stories convey a fundamental truth: if you live the right life then a piece of you will live forever in the offspring that you create, develop, and protect. All men have a responsibility to protect their families from danger and destruction, and we must heed this wisdom at our own peril.
So how does this traditional viewpoint connect to our modern culture? For me it is best expressed in the reactions this summer to children at drag shows. In a way, the drag shows have served as a kind of cultural Rorschach test, where each reaction reflects the fundamental values of the viewer. The right has responded with anger and disgust, as exposing children to overt sexuality is seen as an abusive violation of parents’ responsibility to protect children. The left has largely celebrated these spectacles, saying that this exposure to alternative lifestyles creates a more inclusive world where children learn to be tolerant adults. This tolerance in turn will lead to a better culture and society where everyone is free to be who they really are. As a traditionalist, let’s just say my kid’s next birthday won’t feature a RuPaul’s All Stars themed bouncy house.
The vulgarity of a drag show is not related to the sexual preferences of the performers. I can only speak for myself, but as an adult I really don’t find any sexual expression distasteful to my senses. What consenting adults do in the bedroom is no concern of mine, and I owe everyone that liberty as I expect the same for myself. However, it is highly offensive to see parents robbing their children of their innocence in such a vulgar scene. Watching children stuff dollars in a g-string while their parents clap along like a deranged group of trained seals is the height of decadence. This is true as much for a strip club as it is for a drag show. Children are incapable of understanding the context of the sexual scene in front of them, but they sure as hell can’t unsee it once it’s happened.
Since I was robbed on my innocence at about the same age as these children, I fully understand the consequences of knowing too much too early. These parents, in their rush to be socially accepted, are violating their most fundamental responsibility to their children. As someone who often shows the scars of my own upbringing, I have difficulty comprehending why someone would sacrifice their own children in this way. Looking at my own parents, they at least tried to protect us, but they just never got it right. I have learned to forgive them, but some things can’t be forgotten.
Perhaps the most absurd part is the fact that this is being pushed by upper middle-class people that had the luxury of a sheltered childhood themselves. The same group dragging their kids to pride parades also demand an indefinite extension of adolescence and protection from the harmful realities of the world. Through college and into the corporate world, the same people erecting a police state to protect their own feelings are robbing their own children of their innocence. I wish I could understand how such revulsion for tradition could spawn from a group that benefitted from the fruits of that tradition so thoroughly. I guess the helicopter parents just want to chuck their children from the helicopters themselves.
At the end of the day, this profound difference in values within our culture leaves me wondering how we can remain united as a political unit. The foundational value of protecting children goes back to time immemorial, and I for one have no interest in associating freely with others who would expose their children to the world so enthusiastically and malevolently. While it is true that some on the right are prudish in general, to assume that everyone (regardless of age) needs to be desensitized to all sexualities is an unbridgeable divide for me and many others. This doesn’t create an inclusive world of understanding; it just punishes children for their parents’ misunderstanding of responsibility.