The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Genesis 3:6
Happy First Week in Lent!
The Old Testament reading is what has traditionally been called the Temptation of Eve. This strikes me as a comic scene: The Snake, for reasons of its own, points out to the woman that the fruit of the tree that she has just refused to eat will make her wise and calls God’s bluff, assuring her that God isn’t going to kill her. She looks at the tree, sees beautiful delicious fruit that will make her wise, and eats some. Then she gives some to the man, who is just standing there!
Does he say, “Uh, Eve, uh, yea, it all looks good but, uh, maybe we ought not do what God told us not to do”? Nah. He just eats the apple. I get the feeling that maybe the snake talked to the woman because the guy just wasn’t smart enough to recognize the value of beauty, nutrition and wisdom.
It seems that sin has two components: (1) it’s attractive and (2) it’s about us. There is an interesting article on homelessness in the January-February Atlantic magazine called “The Looming Revolt Over Homelessness” by Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer. Demsas cites a book by UW professor Gregg Colburn and data scientist Clayton Page Aldern whose argument is in its title – get ready for this: Homelessness Is A Housing Problem. The biggest finding is that once the cost of housing rises above 30% of income, homelessness becomes a public problem.
This apparently isn’t a big secret to those who study housing, so why can’t our politicians solve it? Because building more housing bumps up against us, the public; we like to preserve our neighborhoods and town as we have always known them. Putting multi-family homes in single family zones restricts the building of housing in large parts of cities. We like buildings that are attractive and well-kept with attractive and well-kept people living in them. Single Room Occupancy hotels have been removed because we found them unsightly, unsafe and unhealthy. We have created the homelessness crisis ourselves by choosing the good – for ourselves, or in the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”
St. Mary’s Food Bank can still use drivers to deliver food. If you have a car and some time on Thursday mornings, please contact Rose Hesselbrock at 206-817-0083 or rose.hesselbrock@gmail.com.