[Thankful Jane]

Originally Posted by Igzy

Because the biblical principle is the wife is supposed to submit to the husband (you know the verses). So, ultimately the husband is responsible, especially if he in the end goes along with his wife's suggestion to sin.

Originally Posted by Igzy

Think of it this way, a captain and a corporal are on a mission together. The captain is in command by rank. The corporal suggests they go AWOL. The captain goes along with it. They get caught and are brought before a general. Who do you think the general is going to hold ultimately responsible for what they did? The captain, of course, because it was his responsibility to control those under his command, in this case the corporal. Although the corporal will be punished too, the captain will be ultimately responsible. It can be no other way.

Hi Igzy,

Thanks for your answer.

It was also the captain’s own independent responsibility not to go AWOL. He was to listen to the general's voice only. He had been instructed and had full understanding about what was expected of him, and possibly had such knowledge before the corporal had even joined the service.

Actually, I disagree with you somewhat in your response because I don’t think Adam should bear all the blame. Does that surprise you? Maybe it appears that I am contending that he should? You know, blame Adam, not Eve (and all her female descendants.)

No. I am not doing that. I believe that it was both Adam and Eve who toppled the situation. They were both responsible, but in varying degrees.

However, I do thank you for what you wrote. It means to me that the message I have been trying to get across in my last few posts (since one of the captain's descendants wanted to pursue this discussion) is coming through to some degree, though this has come about in somewhat backwards way.

To clarify what message I have been trying to communicate, maybe working some more with your word picture will be the best way:

The consequence of the captain and corporal’s AWOL act was that many people lost their lives for years to come because the enemy took control of the place the captain had been assigned to guard. At one point, the general came on the scene and defeated the enemy and extended a pardon to both the captain and the corporal.

The story of the captain and the corporal was passed down for centuries and was translated into other languages by relatives of the captain. Along the way it morphed until it read like this: The corporal caused the death of millions of people by going AWOL; the corporal’s descendants cannot be trusted and must be carefully guarded and controlled lest they do it again. Because of this, many of the captain's descendants viewed the corporal’s descendants with suspicion and actually treated them as if they had not been pardoned.

One day, hundreds of years later, one of the corporal’s descendants, who had mastered the original language, read the story as it was first written and then studied the history of the story’s translations and traced its gradual emphasis and content change. In so doing, this researching descendant discovered that in the original story, the captain had been directly commanded by the general to guard the place and never to go AWOL. The researcher also discovered that other writings about this story, which were also in the early languages, said plainly that the captain was responsible, but these writings had been overlooked and minimized by the captain’s descendants.

The light began to dawn that the captain was actually the one with more accountability than the corporal because he was in the service before the corporal and had risen to a higher level of responsibility. The captain had been given the marching orders directly by the general before the corporal arrived on the scene and he had knowingly disobeyed them.

The corporal’s descendants, who had borne the blame for all the mess that happened and had suffered under centuries of abuse because of this, had not deserved this.

When the corporal’s descendant tried to talk to the captain’s descendants about what had really happened, hoping to put the whole event in proper perspective, an intense discussion broke out. One of the captain’s descendants would not budge and ultimately insisted, “The corporal put us in the ‘mess we're in.’ The captain responded to his mistake by joining him in that mess.” “He did what he had to do.”

But, another one of the captain’s descendants, growing somewhat weary of the corporal’s descendant continuing to press the point of the captain’s involvement and responsibility finally said it was true that the captain was responsible and everybody knew that. It was just the way it was in the military, always was, and always would be. The captain was to blame.

Guess what the corporal’s descendant said to this honest admission?

“No, dear captain’s descendant, it wasn’t all the captain’s fault. Both the captain and the corporal failed. But, thanks so much for this acknowledgement from all of us who descended from the corporal, who to this very day have been maligned and mistreated because of the traditional repetition and misemphasis of this story, for acknowledging the role that the captain played. Thanks for indirectly admitting that the blame has wrongly placed for centuries.”

Well, I guess I have to say, as one of the corporal’s descendants who has been seeking to communicate this point to some of the captain’s descendants, “mission accomplished” though, as I said, I had to come at it a backwards way.

Thankful