I asked myself a silly question about this topic “Forbidden Fruits.” Am I a fruit? I answered it easily. Of course I am, but I still didn’t have a story to tell. I wrote a very long paper exploring different approaches but found myself arguing with an ancient story of origins way back there in the old book. I kept telling myself to write a personal story that in some way connected. If what follows fills the bill, good. If it doesn’t, enjoy it anyway.
I didn’t need a prohibition to make the fruit attractive. No one slithered my way to tempt me, at least not anyone I was very interested in.
As a child I liked sexual games with friends, especially those with other boys. As a teen I was open to the advances of an acquaintance, a boy a year younger than I. When the ensuing months of sexual play ended (he moved away) I didn’t find anyone to relate to in what I was discovering was an experience with social sanctions against it. I went on living my life, realizing more and more about difference (sexual, social, racial, and cultural) and grew more fascinated by the array of perspectives related not only to my sexual desires but also concerning common habits (for example, eating), pallets (such as favorite colors), sounds (like in musical styles), even reality (including visions cultural, philosophical, theological and anthropological). I came to know the great variety of religious values held sacred and true by peoples around the world and even in a single country town. I learned about prejudice and grew to appreciate my parents’ values as they were demonstrated with other people, society, and the world.
Although my mother was a prohibitionist as relates to alcohol, she still taught an open attitude toward life and allowed great freedom for her children. Both she and my dad had personal standards that they chose to teach through their consistent practice rather than judgmental and manipulative badgering. Although we kids really liked each other, we bickered a lot. Some activity might be judged inappropriate by one of us prompting a pointed finger and the words ‘shame on you’ just like a national politico may do today over a personal misbehavior of someone in the opposing party. I realized that the very voice that said ‘shame on you’ one minute in the next chanted ‘finders keepers; losers weepers.’ Oh the world I discovered and loved revealed itself in ways quiet varied and often inconsistent.
Of course, my parents and siblings were not the only teachers. The culture with its lore and assumptions, history and laws taught much more and powerfully. I keep thinking about the dynamics of the second Genesis creation story, that ‘just so’ tale that still defines so many peoples’ attitudes toward men and women, toward animals and earth, toward sin and salvation, toward action and consequence—that truly ethos forming mythos (Genesis 2:4b-3:24). The word temptation seems defined by that story, but the temptation is impossible without the forbidding. The story’s power comes from its heavenly array of a very human god, his angels, his creations, his prohibitions, his curse which focused only on the snake, and his explanations of consequences related to behaviors he as the assumed creator made possible in his plants, animals, and new people. It’s a story of guilt mongering. To say so may sound cheeky. So be it.
What eventually gets to me is the misogyny of the whole scene. The god Yahweh is too human meaning way too male with too much power. He, this desert god, is too egotistical. Of course, this was eons before Moses and other prophets started training him for international diplomacy, eons before the Greeks insisted he be consistent and perfect, before they demanded that if he was going to insist on a purity code for his creatures, he act that way himself. By the time I met whatever was left of that footloose deity, he’d become so pure and abstract as to seem missing. Eventually I learned more about how the prophet Jesus undid purity laws and taught a justice based on consistent standards that sought a dynamic goodness honoring the spirit of law rather than a legalistic adherence to wooden rules.
AND so much more had occurred that I would never know of but that still informs the cultural understanding around and even within me. One thing I escaped in all this was the feeling of guilt. I don’t know if such a proclivity in me was related to the home and circumstance in which I was reared or arose genetically or developed for some other undefinable reason. I did see the beauty of some men, an unconventional male beauty not based on Greek-like muscles or shape of face, not based on the accrual of power and influence and money, but something more elusive and simple. I liked that attraction and wondered when it would become consequential for me. I knew I could not resist it out of some feeling of prohibition or guilt. It would be like my experience of finally finding a piano teacher who succeeded in establishing a technical approach to the keyboard, or a voice teacher who actually helped focus my voice away from the throat tension that had compromised its fluidity, or finding myself in my best job of a lifetime, or working in a church I actually loved—all these what I call do-not-expect-a-repeat experiences. So at age thirty I fell in love with an unlikely man. At fifty-five I had another such experience that went far beyond the one a quarter of a century earlier. I tended these relationships both against convention and as acts of love. Of course, in conventional sin-and-redemption, prohibition-and-disobedience terms, I am just hopeless.
But where in all this was I in line with the powerful Hebrew story? It seems to me it was in the VERY IMPORTANT FACT that I was not egotistical in my acts. I was not trying to have the same powers as God. I was not vaunting my own importance. And in the desires and acts of love with these other fruits in God’s great garden, I was discovering new aspects of the ultimately loving God—trained as he was by generations of prophets and philosophers. I found so much love as to transform me into a useful vessel of the eternal and lively divinity. Surely there’s no shame that.
Denver, 2014
About the Author
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot
