The Paradise Lost - Essay Example

Module Paradise Lost Christianity teaches that God created ancestors of the human species and put them in a paradise-like Gardenof Eden. They had the freedom to do anything in the garden except eat fruits from one of the trees. Satan used a talking serpent to deceive the first woman (Eve) to eat the fruit. The woman shared the fruit with her husband, which marked the first fallout between God and His most valued creation. This act of disobedience marked the fall of man. After sinning, Adam and Eve did not do what God tells us to do, repent. Instead of repenting, they started engaging in mutual recrimination, which showed the spirit of rebellion in them. Powerful as God is, if they repented, he would have forgiven them and put things the way they previously were. God cared for man and thus immediately started the process of reclaiming His people from Satan’s grip. First were judges, kings, and prophets who were prominent leaders whose work was to convince the humankind to stop sinning and start obeying their Creator. As a last resort, God sent His son to save humankind from sins before they can join His everlasting Kingdom (Matthews & Platt 110). On the other hand, final destruction awaits those who will be sinning when the Kingdom comes. This is the story about the fall of man as Christianity tells it. The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of man in God’s eternal plan as presented by Milton in his epic book, Paradise Lost. Purpose of the Book. This book explains the origin of today’s cultures and beliefs starting with the fallout between God and one of His archangels, Lucifer. Lucifer then declared war on God, his main aim being to reclaim heaven and overthrow his Creator and Master. First, he organized his supporters among angels and then went on to recruit God’s latest creation; man to his ranks. Man fell to many of Satan’s, another of Lucifer’s aliases, tricks. By writing this book, Milton aims to convince people that the notion of freewill is misplaced since God has a grand plan for His creations. In this grand plan, all that humankind has to do is to obey and everything else will fall into place. Milton’s epic effectively portrays the fall of humans and attempts to raise them again. Using symbolism and poetry, he also portrays the underlying factors that led to the fall including; Lucifer’s rebellion, the archangel Raphael who was sent to warn Adam of the looming danger and the fight between Michael and Lucifer which led to the latter being thrown out of heaven (Matthews & Platt 111 – 112). In addition, he tells the story about the coming of Jesus and salvation of humankind. Social Sin during Birth. According to Milton, Christianity states that since the original humans sinned, we are all guilty, and have to be forgiven regardless of whether we have sinned or not. Failure to ask for forgiveness condemns humankind to destruction together with Lucifer and his comrades come the last day. Though this is the general belief, humans are not guilty at birth because it is not their fault that the original parents sinned. Earlier teachers of law who used the Torah in their teachings propagated this belief in Exodus 21. However, the truth is that people are born with the potential to do both good and evil things, and not born evil or good. A person becomes good or evil depending on the line of actions or thought they take. Freewill versus Obedience. Satan was the first angel to exercise freewill. This put Lucifer in opposition to his master, God. God’s anger at him was justified since it brought disorder in the heavenly monarch. Freewill made Lucifer do things that were against laid rules. Despite being a rebel, Satan’s resolve and reasoning is intriguing. His greatest mistake is that he used and continues to use his freewill to go against the Ruler in propagation of evil. If he had decided to have a parallel government ruled by good, maybe his master would have obliged to give him a position of power in His government. Instead, he chose to rebel which resulted in his expulsion from heaven. Alternatively, he could have repented and since we are told that his Master is merciful, He may have forgiven Lucifer and accepted him back as an angel instead of banishing him forever. Discussion. Milton presents the conservative Christian view of the world. In this view humankind are supposed to obey God without question. This means that no exception whatsoever to obedience to their Maker. He presents that we should believe all that we are told without critique. Consequently, humans are treated like machines or robots who cannot think on their own on matters of faith. The implication is that the human mind is quite an advanced and complex tool whose full functionality should not be exploited at the command of the Maker (Matthews and Platt 98). This defeats the purpose of having a cognitive center after all. It would be effortless to make a tool that serves no purpose. On the other hand, Milton is right in his assertion because without order we would have the chaos that existed before the world came into being. Having utter rebellion and disobedience like the one Lucifer had would result in collapse of the world due to conflicting ideas from different competing sources. Obedience is also a key value in anyone or any creature that finds itself in the predicament that angels, humankind, and other creatures found themselves. For starters, none of them existed before God, so a right to opinion or even life is not something they can demand. One cannot ask for more if they have nothing in the first place. Unfair as it seems, only the Creator would know what is good for His creations regardless of what the creations think they know (Matthews and Platt 110). CONCLUSION Order is quite an essential aspect in any sane society. However, enforcement of order should not be too stifling. All governments should find a balance between freewill and obedience for effective sustainability. In contrast to Milton’s portrayal of heaven, I believe obedience is essential but there is freedom that allows humankind to make rational independent decisions without undue control. Work Cited Matthews, Roy and Platt, Dewitt. Readings in the Western Humanities. McGraw-Hill. 2007. Print. Read More