A CORE ISSUE

By Stanley Collymore

The Bible says that Eve, at the instigation of a wily snake,

seduced Adam who she then persuaded to eat her apple,

and for his impertinence or altruistic gesture,

depending on how you view the matter, the

snake, as indeed all of his descendants,

were henceforth condemned to crawl

on their bellies, making them the

first living creatures ever to be

officially and disapprovingly

slapped with a communual

and ongoing ASBO.

A particularly harsh punishment, when carefully

scrutinized, for bringing some much needed

joie de vie into Adam’s daily and evidently

boring existence, without which

presumably none of us would be

here - at least not in the form

we are – without the selfless action of

the snake. For without the snake’s judicious

intervention - having obviously first and

quite naturally demonstrated to Eve what it was

all about - Adam would still have been totally

ignorant of the facts of life and what his manly

duties entailed. A neglect that would have

been catastrophic for human kind.

So let’s hear it for the snake; and rather than

condemn and even demonize him and his

kind celebrate instead his entrepreneurial

flair and sexual initiative in getting Eve to

recognize the value of her apple, while

simultaneously encouraging her

fortitude in convincingly

persuading Adam,

although somewhat

belatedly, to

eat it.

© Stanley V. Collymore

27 December 2009.