Cause Before Symptom

In Part 3, we discovered something unexpected about the Bible's first mention of blood. Abel's blood was not placed on an altar. It did not cleanse sin or establish a covenant. It cried out from the ground because an innocent life had been taken. Blood entered the biblical story first as a witness to life and death. But after the Flood, God begins revealing something more.
 
In Part 4 of Why Did God Choose Blood?, I follow the trail from Abel to Noah, where the meaning of blood begins to come into focus. Noah leaves the ark and immediately builds an altar, offering clean animals to God. Then something remarkable happens. God gives humanity permission to eat animals, but He places one unmistakable restriction upon that permission: the flesh may be eaten, but the blood may not.
 
Why?
 
For the first time, God begins directly connecting blood with life. Humanity may receive the flesh for food, but the blood is treated differently because the life is associated with it. That raises an extraordinary possibility. Perhaps the biblical story was never primarily about God's desire for blood as a substance. Perhaps blood matters because life matters—and life ultimately belongs to God.
 
I will investigate whether humans ate animals before the Flood, where Noah learned to sacrifice, why he already understood the distinction between clean and unclean animals, and why God prohibited consuming blood immediately after permitting the eating of flesh. I will also examine why God's prohibition concerning animal blood is immediately followed by a warning concerning human blood: whoever sheds human blood will answer for it because humanity was created in the image of God.
 
That connection may reveal something much larger. Abel's blood cried out because his life had been unlawfully taken. After the Flood, God establishes the principle that He will require an accounting for human lifeblood. Blood is beginning to emerge not as something magical, but as the visible testimony of life—a life over which humanity does not possess absolute authority.
 
And then we encounter a clue that may eventually answer the question behind this entire series. God reserves the blood in Genesis, but later, in Leviticus, He will say something astonishing: "I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls." Humanity does not invent blood atonement and offer God something that belongs to us. God takes what He has already identified as belonging under His authority and gives it back for a purpose.
 
By the end of Part 4, we may discover that we have been asking the right question from the wrong direction. Why did God choose blood? Perhaps because blood represents something far more important than itself. Blood represents life. And if sin ultimately produces death, then God's answer may never have been about His desire for blood.
 
It may have been about His determination to restore life.
 
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Adam and Eve have been driven from the Garden of Eden, but humanity has not stopped seeking God. In the very next chapter of Genesis, two brothers stand before the Lord with offerings. One is accepted. The other is rejected. For generations, many Christians have been told that the explanation is simple: Abel brought blood, while Cain brought produce. But is that really what the Bible says?
 
In Part 3 of our investigation, I set aside centuries of assumptions and return to the text itself. Together, we will examine every verse of Genesis 4, explore the original Hebrew, compare ancient Jewish and Ethiopian traditions, and carefully separate what Scripture actually says from what later interpretations have added. We will investigate where Cain and Abel learned to bring offerings, whether God ever commanded sacrifice, what each brother truly presented before the Lord, why Abel's offering found favor, and what God's conversation with Cain reveals about the condition of the human heart.
 
As the investigation unfolds, the focus begins to shift from the offerings themselves to the worshipers who brought them. Genesis repeatedly reminds us that God saw both the person and the gift. That simple observation challenges many of the conclusions that have shaped Christian teaching for centuries and forces us to ask whether the first act of worship after Eden was really about blood—or whether it was about something even deeper.
 
The episode reaches its climax with one of the Bible's most mysterious statements: "Your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." Before blood becomes the means of atonement, it first becomes the witness to innocent life taken. That moment marks the beginning of a biblical theme that will stretch from Genesis to Revelation. By the end of Part 3, we will have a much clearer understanding of the first offerings, the first murder, and the first time blood speaks in Scripture, laying the foundation for discovering why blood would eventually become central to God's plan of redemption.
 
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In Part 1, our investigation led to an unexpected discovery. The Bible does not begin with blood—it begins with life. God breathed life into Adam, placed him in a perfect garden, and gave humanity access to the Tree of Life. There was no sacrifice, no priesthood, no altar, and no bloodshed because nothing had yet been broken.
 
Then everything changed.
 
For centuries, Christians have focused on the act of Adam's disobedience. But in this investigation, we will ask a different question: What actually changed the moment Adam sinned? God warned Adam, "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," yet Adam lived another 930 years. What kind of death began that day? Why did shame appear where innocence once existed? Why did fear replace fellowship? And why did God immediately guard the Tree of Life instead of allowing mankind to remain in the garden?
 
Rather than rushing to later theology, we will remain in Genesis and examine the evidence one step at a time. We will investigate the meaning of death, the loss of innocence, the breaking of humanity's relationship with God, and the profound significance of being cut off from the Tree of Life. Along the way, we will compare the Hebrew text, early Jewish understanding, ancient Christian interpretation, and the broader biblical narrative to see whether they point in the same direction.
 
By the end of Part 2, we will discover that the Fall was far more than the breaking of a commandment. It was the moment humanity became separated from the Source of Life, setting into motion everything that follows in the biblical story. Understanding that loss is essential, because before we can understand how God restores life, we must first understand exactly what was lost in Eden.
 
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For nearly two thousand years, Christians have proclaimed that salvation comes through the blood of Christ. But very few have ever stopped to ask a simple question: Why blood? Why did God choose blood instead of prayer, repentance, good works, or some other sign of forgiveness? Is blood inherently sacred, or does it point to something even deeper?
 
In this opening chapter, I begin a journey that starts not at the cross, not in Leviticus, but in the opening pages of Genesis. Using the Hebrew and Greek lexicons, Temple studies, the Mishnah, Dead Sea Scrolls, Church Fathers, and the Ethiopian canon as research companions, I set aside assumptions and ask Scripture to answer the question on its own terms.
 
What I discovered immediately surprised me. The Bible's story does not begin with blood. It begins with life. Before there was sacrifice, there was breath. Before there was an altar, there was a garden. Before there was death, there was the Tree of Life. Blood does not appear until something catastrophic changes, suggesting that the real mystery may not be blood at all—but what happened to life itself.
 
This first investigation lays the foundation for everything that follows. Rather than rushing toward conclusions, we will carefully examine the biblical evidence, asking one question at a time and allowing each discovery to lead naturally to the next. By the end of this episode, you may find yourself asking a very different question than the one you started with, because understanding why God chose blood may first require understanding what God meant by life.
 
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This episode explores one of the most profound questions of our time: if humanity could build a system that promised peace, security, fairness, health, prosperity, and perfect knowledge, would we gradually stop looking to God? Rather than arguing that artificial intelligence is inherently evil, this investigation asks whether human nature has always been willing to exchange divine authority for something that appears more immediate, efficient, and trustworthy. Drawing from history, psychology, political philosophy, theology, and Scripture, I examine the recurring patterns that have led civilizations to place their ultimate trust in kings, governments, ideologies, institutions, and now increasingly, technology.
 
Throughout history, every society has elevated something to the highest place of authority. The research behind this episode reveals that while evidence for a single coordinated master plan remains elusive, the mechanisms that influence entire populations are remarkably consistent. Fear, propaganda, division, the desire for security, and the promise of a better future have repeatedly persuaded people to surrender freedoms and embrace centralized authority. The question is whether those same forces could eventually persuade humanity to replace faith in God with faith in a system that claims to know us better than we know ourselves.
 
The Last Religion is not a warning against innovation or technological progress. It is an examination of worship itself. If an algorithm could answer every question, settle every dispute, predict every crisis, optimize every decision, and offer solutions to nearly every human problem, would it quietly become the final authority in our lives? Long before anyone bows to a machine, they may simply begin trusting it more than the voice of God. That possibility raises one of the most important spiritual questions of our generation: not whether artificial intelligence will become our master, but whether we will willingly make it one.
 
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A Biblical Investigation of Genesis 3
This may be one of the most controversial questions ever asked about the opening chapters of the Bible: Did Eve have sex with the serpent? For centuries, most Christians have dismissed the idea outright, while others have built entire doctrines around it. Some point to the shame of nakedness, the pain of childbirth, the language of "knowing," or the birth of Cain as evidence that something far more than eating fruit occurred in the Garden of Eden. Others argue that the biblical text never says any such thing and that later traditions have read ideas into Genesis that simply are not there.
 
In this investigation, I am setting aside assumptions and following the evidence wherever it leads. Together, we will examine the Hebrew text of Genesis 2–4, the meaning of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the identity of the serpent, the symbolism of nakedness and clothing, ancient Near Eastern parallels, Jewish traditions, early Christian writings, Gnostic interpretations, the Serpent Seed doctrine, and even modern scientific claims involving genetics and microchimerism. Every claim will be measured against Scripture, history, language, and evidence rather than speculation.
 
Whether the theory ultimately stands or falls is not the real purpose of this episode. The greater question is how we should approach difficult passages of Scripture. Are we willing to investigate honestly without forcing the Bible to say what we want it to say? By the end of this study, I hope you will not only have a deeper understanding of one of the Bible's greatest mysteries, but also a renewed confidence in testing every teaching against God's Word. Because sometimes the greatest discoveries are not found in proving a controversial theory—but in learning to recognize the difference between truth, tradition, and imagination.
 
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Part 2
 
Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. But how do we actually do that? How do we make ourselves love God more when the desire is there, but the flesh keeps getting in the way?
 
Fifteen years ago, I was praying and telling God how much I loved Him. My business was doing well. My family was doing well. I was sober, and life seemed good. Then a question entered my mind that stopped me: “Do you really love Him?” When I searched my heart, I realized I was grateful to God, but I did not truly love Him. So I admitted it: “Lord, I don’t love You.” I expected anger. Instead, what followed changed my relationship with God forever. The message I understood was simple: “Of course you don’t love Me, because you don’t know Me. Now we can start working on that.”
 
Since that night, I have spent years asking questions because I wanted to know the God I claimed to love. But recently another question emerged. Perhaps knowing God is only part of what Jesus meant. What does it mean to love Him with all of me?
 
In this episode, I investigate the words Jesus used—heart, soul, mind, strength, and especially the word “all.” I examine how Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Paul, and Christians who came after them actually lived their love for God. Again and again, a pattern emerges. They did not manufacture stronger religious feelings. They learned to trust, surrender, abide, obey, return, and include God in increasingly larger portions of their lives.
 
Perhaps loving God is not about adding more religious activity to our schedules. Perhaps it is about ending the division between our time with God and the rest of our lives. Scripture speaks of God when we sit down, when we walk, when we lie down, when we rise, when we eat, when we drink, and in whatsoever we do. God was never meant to be someone we visit during prayer and then leave behind when ordinary life resumes.
 
What if loving God with all of ourselves means bringing Him into all of it—the work, the family, the decisions, the pleasures, the disappointments, the temptations, the money, the ambitions, the failures, the questions, and even the parts of ourselves that still resist Him?
 
Maybe the prayer does not need to be complicated.
 
Maybe it begins with four words:
 
“Come with me, Lord.”
 
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Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. But how do we actually do that? How do we make ourselves love God more when the desire is there, but the flesh keeps getting in the way?
 
Fifteen years ago, I was praying and telling God how much I loved Him. My business was doing well. My family was doing well. I was sober, and life seemed good. Then a question entered my mind that stopped me: “Do you really love Him?” When I searched my heart, I realized I was grateful to God, but I did not truly love Him. So I admitted it: “Lord, I don’t love You.” I expected anger. Instead, what followed changed my relationship with God forever. The message I understood was simple: “Of course you don’t love Me, because you don’t know Me. Now we can start working on that.”
 
Since that night, I have spent years asking questions because I wanted to know the God I claimed to love. But recently another question emerged. Perhaps knowing God is only part of what Jesus meant. What does it mean to love Him with all of me?
 
In this episode, I investigate the words Jesus used—heart, soul, mind, strength, and especially the word “all.” I examine how Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Mary, Peter, Paul, and Christians who came after them actually lived their love for God. Again and again, a pattern emerges. They did not manufacture stronger religious feelings. They learned to trust, surrender, abide, obey, return, and include God in increasingly larger portions of their lives.
 
Perhaps loving God is not about adding more religious activity to our schedules. Perhaps it is about ending the division between our time with God and the rest of our lives. Scripture speaks of God when we sit down, when we walk, when we lie down, when we rise, when we eat, when we drink, and in whatsoever we do. God was never meant to be someone we visit during prayer and then leave behind when ordinary life resumes.
 
What if loving God with all of ourselves means bringing Him into all of it—the work, the family, the decisions, the pleasures, the disappointments, the temptations, the money, the ambitions, the failures, the questions, and even the parts of ourselves that still resist Him?
 
Maybe the prayer does not need to be complicated.
 
Maybe it begins with four words:
 
“Come with me, Lord.”
 
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Christians are told to seek truth, defend the faith, recognize deception, study Scripture, and stand firm in what they believe. All of those things matter. But somewhere along the way, something can go terribly wrong. Being right can become more important than being merciful. Correcting someone can become more important than helping them. Winning an argument can become more important than loving the person standing in front of us.
 
Jesus never taught that truth does not matter. He called Himself “the truth.” He confronted error, exposed hypocrisy, and warned His followers about deception. But when Jesus was asked which commandment mattered most, He brought everything back to two things: love God and love your neighbor. He even said that all the Law and the Prophets hang upon these two commandments.
 
In this episode of Cause Before Symptom, I want to examine a question that reaches far beyond theological arguments: What is all of our knowledge supposed to produce in us? Jesus continually moved beyond outward obedience and into the human heart. Anger mattered. Mercy mattered. Forgiveness mattered. How we treated enemies mattered. How we treated strangers mattered. How we treated the hungry, the sick, the forgotten, and the unwanted mattered.
 
Paul gave an extraordinary warning in 1 Corinthians 13. A person could possess prophecy, understand mysteries, have tremendous knowledge and extraordinary faith, yet without love, Paul said, “I am nothing.” That warning should stop every Christian in their tracks. It means spiritual knowledge alone is not proof of spiritual maturity.
 
Tonight, I want to ask whether Christianity has sometimes confused knowing Christ with knowing things about Christ. I want to examine what happens when discernment becomes suspicion, conviction becomes superiority, correction becomes humiliation, and the pursuit of truth produces pride instead of transformation.
 
Because perhaps the question at the end of our lives will not simply be how much Scripture we understood, how many mysteries we solved, how accurately we interpreted prophecy, or how many arguments we won.
 
Perhaps the evidence will be found in something much simpler.
 
Did knowing Jesus change the way I treated people?
 
Did I forgive? Did I show mercy? Did I feed the hungry? Did I care about the lonely? Could I admit when I was wrong? Did I love people who could give me nothing in return? Did I become more patient, more gentle, more truthful, and more compassionate?
 
Truth matters. Doctrine matters. Scripture matters. But Jesus showed us what truth is supposed to produce.
 
The question is not whether we should be right or whether we should love.
 
The question is whether being right ever taught us how to love.
 
Because we could spend our entire lives studying the road to Jesus and still forget to walk it.
 
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Genesis contains one of the most troubling statements in the entire Bible: God looked at humanity and regretted that He had made us. But how can an all-knowing God regret something He already knew would happen? Did God make a mistake when He created humanity, or have we misunderstood what this passage is actually telling us?
 
In this episode of Cause Before Symptom, I investigate Genesis 6 from the Hebrew text, the Ethiopian biblical tradition, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and ancient Flood accounts to understand what had happened to humanity before God expressed this extraordinary grief. The earth was not merely filled with people who occasionally sinned. Scripture describes a world consumed by corruption and violence, while the Ethiopian tradition preserves a larger story involving the Watchers, the giants, forbidden knowledge, and the corruption surrounding humanity.
 
I will also examine the Hebrew word translated as “regretted” and compare Genesis with other passages where God appears to repent or change His course—including the remarkable story of Saul, where Scripture says God regretted making Saul king and then, in the very same chapter, declares that God does not repent like a human being. That apparent contradiction may provide an important key to understanding what Genesis actually means.
 
But perhaps the greatest clue comes after the Flood. God acknowledges that the human heart is still inclined toward evil, yet instead of abandoning humanity, He establishes a covenant with Noah and preserves the human race. That changes the question completely. Perhaps the greatest mystery is not simply why God regretted creating us, but why, after seeing exactly what humanity was capable of becoming, He chose to keep us.
 
This investigation ultimately leads beyond judgment and into something far more personal: the possibility that Genesis 6 is showing us what human violence does to the heart of God—and why humanity could break God's heart and still be worth saving.
 
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