Self-assertion Started It

“Genesis… contains two major parts: the primeval history… which tells how human self-assertion brought the world to the brink of destruction; and the history of Israel’s ancestors” (The Oxford Study Bible, page 11).

Human self-assertion.

That is an interesting way to put it – and by far the most non-judgmental way I think I’ve ever heard to frame these first stories. Human self-assertion. To assert oneself isn’t inherently evil or wrong, and yet to do it in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons… the way we’ve been dealing with the environment for the last seventy-five years, and with natural resources since the whole colonial era, comes to mind.